Project Organized: Project Life

We interrupt this five month blog posting sabbatical to bring you the latest on what is going on at The Guin's: ORGANIZING! Everything.

As you know, I love Project Life. Especially the album sitting on our coffee table in the living room. I LOVE that when we have visitors, they always sit down and start flipping through it. Our memories, our life, recorded.

But I am behind, and I don't love that. I have completed through June, which is great, but it's October. So my goal by the end of the month of October is to catch up. On Saturday night, I took a step in the right direction -- I organized ALL of my Project Life supplies.

This is what I started with. A few boxes, random bags of cards, edge rounders, and no organization. It was driving me crazy. I had no clue what I had.

So I dumped the cards out of my Blush kit and started organizing them by types, i.e. calendar, grey based, pink based, cover cards, etc.

Then, I dropped them into labeled zip bags. This is AWESOME because they stay in their stacks, and I can fan them out and see them on both sides. (See also: OCD)

After they were all in their little baggies, I put them in my new Initials, Inc. divider bag - the Get a Grip (small). It's a game changer. I can just pull them out when I need them! {Side note: Kristy that sold me the bag is the same friend that got me hooked on Project Life}

In the awesome side pockets, I stuck my edge rounders, washi tape, date stamp, and 4x6 cards.

Lastly, I put ALL of my PL pages in an extra album I had. I added dividers, so it's easy to look at and see what I have or am running low on. I also discovered I probably won't need to buy ANY design A pages for two years. HAHA. Oops.

Do you think there is a Type A personality and Layout A relation? I do!

And this, my friends, is what I ended up with:

A bag, a binder, and totally organized and useable.

And pretty.

Time to catch up on Project Life, I have no excuses now! :)

And maybe my blog, too.

Project Life: Check-in

Well, I've been sucked in. I bought the kit, started and got hooked. I have really gotten hooked on making DIGITAL core kit cards of my own (um hello cutesy fonts and fun colors and original ideas!) and I've gotten hooked on looking through it. The 4-ish pages I have finished I just flip back and forth through because I LOVE looking through them and remembering.

And that's what this is all about. Remembering those moments.

Like....

New Year's Eve - fun times with friends and confetti cannons messes 

Jack's first car (and ride in that car), Trip to ATL, losing my job (ha)

Close-up on my detail of NYE party :) I looove using cutesy font on PL (and only PL)

Valentine's Day & Baby Miller's early arrival!

Denim and Diamonds - FAVE non-profit event of the year.

I danced so much my shoes broke.

Yay for writing things down you want to remember -- like Miller's EARLY arrival!

These planner pages are AMAZING. My SIL Sarah (who I got hooked on PL - WOO!) found these babies online and they are AWESOME. You pick out your layout and print them and write in what goes where. This is much easier than the notebook I had been scribbling in.

And since I am OCD and like to have a design plan, this is GREAT!

 These Fiskars edge rounders are a MUST! I got the Large and medium sizes and they are perfect!

 And if you are doing it for a year, you NEED month dividers. :) You could probably make your own but I bought the ones that matched my book, of course. :)

In my next Project Life check-in: money-saving tips and layout tricks! And more pictures, of course!

Project Life: 2013

Kristy (that leads the high school girls small group with me) has gotten me hooked a new addiction: Project Life. Here's a short video on what exactly it is.

Basically it's scrapbooking without the mess, the expensive embellishments, major time commitment, and it's EASY. And pretty.

What's even more awesome about it is that it's not super time consuming AND if you have graphic design background, you can make your own cards to go in the pages!

So I ordered the Seafoam Green kit thinking I would scrapbook "Our first married year" (anniversary in a month and a half BTW) and decided  would just start with 2013 and do one annually. I had the old blog to remember our first married year and pre-marriage.

This is out of the box condition :) {Seafoam Edition} And Zoe.  These "editions" mean the color you pick -- so the binder color coordinates with the core kit. You don't HAVE to do it this way, but if you are OCD like I am, you get everything that matches.

Pictured: Seafoam 12x12 binder, insert pages (more like sleeves), and Project Life Core Kit.

Closeup on the PL Core Kit:

Core Kit is really a box of cards that go in the sleeves. You write memories on them (short), things you don't want to forget, or integrate them in as part of your full design.

And here is my first page (no pictures, yet):

I are really excited to get started. I have a lot of things I want to include from January-March, and need to go ahead and start printing pictures. Another neat thing about PL is that they encourage you to print pictures weekly and have them mailed to you, so you can just stick them in your binder. You can even get rounded edges like the PL core kit cards.

And as with most things, you can find other products with these cards that are seasonal-themed, free printables on Pinterest, or make your own!

I am suuuper excited about this ongoing project and hoping that I can hang in there with it. I know one day I will be glad to look back and remember the little things. To help hold me accountable, I will be posting updates biweekly (maybe weekly? I don't want to be too ambitious) with some of my layouts.

So are you excited and ready to get hooked? Buy it now and let's start documenting life better than we have been. :)