If I were to pick one category where I was most successful this year, it would have to be chronicling. This is where daily and weekly habits came together with  big extra pushes throughout the year to make  some serious progress.

Even in my worst days of morning sickness I managed to snap a few pictures on my iPhone. That period of time made me extra thankful for the Project Life App so that once a week or once a month I could scrapbook right from those pictures on my phone and I could even do it while I lay in bed on a day I felt awful physically. I just took advantage of a Black Friday printing special and recently received my photos from most of the second half of this year. Only one more month to finish up! And while I didn’t blog as much as I wanted this summer, I at least have journaled a bit about what those rough days were like and all the happy memories we managed to make in spite of the physical setbacks.

This spring I made use of my husband being out of town to go through and organize all the physical pictures I had in giant bins in our office. I purged about half the photos and organized the rest chronologically. They are now only in one bin in our office and I’m hoping to keep pushing this project in bursts in the future as I decide how I want to preserve memories from high school and even earlier!

I also made a travel scrapbook of all the trips my husband and I took before our son was born. I used the physical project life kit for this and found I love it just as much as the app but in different ways. (the app has less potential for a toddler to wander in and decide journaling cards are his crafting materials… but more in the moment creativity for embellishments!) And I finished up an old scrapbook about my college trip to London and Scotland.

This summer and early this fall, I finished up organizing all my digital files which was a HUGE project. I have the peace of knowing that these are now backed up and I am creating the habit of backing up photos off my phone and organizing them onto our external hard drive once a month. There are still probably 3x more digital pictures than anyone would want to go through, but they are as minimal as I can get for the moment and all organized at least by year and major events. I also made a digital scrapbook on shutterfly of my post-college trip to Scotland that is just waiting to be printed based on when I get my next free photobook offer that comes up every once in a while.

Going forward, I plan to continue using project life for our yearly family scrapbook- at least for the next year when I know I’ll be adjusting to two kids and anticipate late night feeding sessions where catching up on scrapbooking through the app will probably be perfect. I also plan to make a physical baby book for our second child and even got the core kit I was hoping for from my shower . I am now thinking this would be a FABULOUS gift for any expecting moms who are going to be too busy to scrapbook traditionally! (I have also been talking everyone’s ear off about the app because you can use that during late night feedings!)  The kit has wonderful journal prompts and I’m looking forward to doing something a little different than the books I had for my first child. (Especially since I wasn’t so sick that pregnancy so I was much better a things like weekly journaling and bump pictures…) but more on that in posts to come…

Finally, I hope once we adjust to our new family size that I can keep catching up on older pictures and find a system I like for choosing how to pass down those memories. I’d also love to help my husband journal about his old family photos that have very little description so that we don’t lose the family history on that side.

I hope you have some wonderful memories from this year that you were able to document. Looking back at the pages I printed has really helped me shift my attitude about 2016 and reminded me that for how rough it was for myself and many others I knew, there were really beautiful blessings this year too.

**This post contains affiliate links. I was not paid to use or gush about these projects, though and all opinions are my own. Feel free to ask me any questions about this. Thanks!***