OK, so I know that technically the year is more than halfway over, but I was super excited this morning when my shipment from Project Life’s Christmas in July sale arrived at my door after some drama with FedEx… In spite of the rain storm and destroyed box I couldn’t wait to open my order. (I know, I lead a very exciting life… but it’s the little things, right? Especially during a summer in Phoenix.) That arrival meant I could start assembling the first half of our family album for the year.It’s so easy to get bogged down in the day to day minutia of staying at home with a toddler. Sometimes I miss that the everyday moments are what I’m going to miss- so I’m glad I’ve had a greater impetus to document those. And the big stuff- shows, trips, special outings- it’s helpful that I’ve documented those too because it has been really easy for me to feel like I haven’t done very much this year (especially compared to 2016 and our marathon of show involvement!) but as I stick my completed pages into our family album, I realize it has been a rich, challenging, full year so far. And while part of me just wants to get on to 2017, I know that the rest of 2016 will have more beautiful things to chronicle and remember fondly in the future.

I have done all of our family album on the project life app. I wrote already about how I caught up on all the travel my husband and I did pre-Desmond with the physical project life products. And just last week I finished up my album from the trip I took to London with my undergraduate theatre department (an album in the making for a decade… seriously. It’s amazing what you can FINALLY accomplish when you’re intentional about how to spend your free time!). That album used no project life materials so I’m all about variety! I’m getting ready to print a new batch of pictures where I may mix and match scrapbooking styles. I’m not sold on the idea but can’t hurt to try it out.

I also wanted to share what I think might be my actual first scrapbook. I know I shared my theatre group scrapbook but I found something even earlier than that- an elementary school project that my mom found when she was cleaning her house that scrapbooked the life of Walt Disney. I’m not going to lie… there were more stickers and embellishments than in the actual baby scrapbook I made for my son last year. But you know what? That ended up being an awesome lesson for me. I didn’t care about all the fancy scrapbooking things my mom probably helped me with. I mean they were neat to see but I didn’t keep the book after I’d paged through it. I threw it out because, as much as I love me some Disney and Disneyland, I have no emotional connection to Walt Disney and don’t need a scrapbook about his life. And conversely- any way I end up documenting our family will be meaningful to me and hopefully meaningful to other close friends and family.

Yup, this scrapbook was a decade in the making… but now it’s done!

So if any of my readers have pictures that they have been putting off sorting or doing anything with- I can’t tell you how rewarding this resolution has been for me and I encourage you to just get started with what you have if this is something on your heart! Even if you just put them in photo safe albums and get some sort of label on there instead of a full or fancy scrapbook, even if you organize it digitally with some sort of description (though I am finding that, while I love minimalism in some areas of my life, pictures in my house really only get looked at on a regular basis when they are in some kind of physical form!) it will be so meaningful to other family members and future generations.