with pages in and out of rings or anything like that, they're just stitched in.
This
right here is a value kit. The value kit has way less cards, so it's just a collection,
and so when you don't feel like you want to do an entire full 12x12 album with that one
topic, you go for a value kit, because it's just a sampling. So I thought Landon would
like this one - it's called "Boys Rule." You talked about that preparation of really wanting
to get the pregnancy, document the story of getting him here, and then he's here, and
so the way that I love to document a baby's entry to life is with this. This is the Baby
Boy Edition of Project Life.
You can see a lot of the cards right here, and this is different
than just cute cards. This actually gives you a lot of prompts to give you ideas on
specifically what to document as you lead up to baby's arrival, and then after they're
here, and so I'm going to show you how to put all this together. Does that sound good?
Yes! Okay awesome. I'm going to show you my son's album.
I'm showing this to you because
I think it's going to help drive something home for you in terms of being able to see
what it looks like complete. This is where I have heritage. So I'm including us and my
parents and my husband's parents, and our grandparents, and what I'm going to do is
do a little bit of journaling to say "this is who they are." Then it goes into the story
of us, meaning Mom and Dad. For this concept when you get to that layout it really can
just be random pictures of you and David over the years that are just togetherness, right?
And there's different prompts to have you write about random things about you guys,
your favorite things, stuff like that.
When I get into the core of this scrapbook this
is where I go into my months, and so in this one album the theory is this is Crew's one-year
album. So his whole first year, his history, his family, where he came from, his birth,
and then that whole first year is in this one album. And I put parameters around the
process so that I know I'm only doing a layout or two per month, and the reason why I need
those parameters is because as a mom I think every single picture of my child is cute,
right? So then that prevents me from doing a ton of duplicates, and it prevents me from
doing fifteen layouts about that one day at the park. The whole point here is that we
want to tell a story, and the way that we've organized and created the product is so that
it helps you to tell the story, and then make it easy so when it comes to slipping those
photos in, that's literally what you're doing.
You're slipping photos in, you're grabbing
that pen and you're going to write a little bit of journaling, and that's it. I like it.
I like how organized and structured it is. Knowing that Project Life can be a way that
you move forward in not just the new baby book, but also the way that you complete the
albums that you still haven't finished, do you feel like you are good in keeping all
of your supplies? Some I can, like eliminate, but I feel like that would be the pile that
I have for the kids that I don't care about, vs. Going out to get more when I want to be
creative.
I think that we sort and organize according to type. So, like you did your stamps,
all of your stamps are in a drawer, so it makes the most sense that we have all of your
embellishments in a drawer, all of your paper pads in a drawer, and so forth. And I also
think, hearing you yesterday and then talking with you again about this today that it makes
the most sense that your kids have a dedicated drawer. We'll pick which one that makes the
most sense after we sort, so that they have a drawer that's theirs.
Alright lets dive
in. We're going to make piles by category, and then we're going to put everything back
in an organized fashion. We picked this up from Ikea for you, and it is like our favorite
organizing bin right now, but this is going to be for the kids stuff, and the point of
that would be that we put the kids stuff in here and it has the lid, then since you mentioned
that the kids like to do crafting sometimes downstairs, then it makes this more portable
to be able to take up and down as you want. Thank you! Yeah, I'm feeling super good because
now we've gotten all our piles, and we have pretty much a plan to put each of those piles
back into a drawer.
Then this right here, you've determined is the stuff that you feel
comfortable giving away, so this is our giveaway pile. Final piece of organization is to label.
When you label your drawers you know exactly where things are - you don't have to guess
even though you can see through a little bit, you don't have to wonder "is that really where
my embellishments go, is that really where my paper pads go?" And so we'll label everything,
and then we're done with organizing. So yesterday we found out that all of the physical photos,
or the physical prints of photographs that you have are in this box, which to me is amazing
that they are just fitting in one box, so how not overwhelming, right? Because we can
manage that. One thing to kind of point out already that I'm noticing is that they all
look like, for the most part, 99% of them are 4x6, which is "bingo," perfect, because
with Project Life everything is pretty much 4x6 and 3x4, so these are literally ready
to just slip into the page protectors, which is...
I mean you've done half the work right
here. So my advice would be to use a post it note and a pen, and what you're going to
do is basically separate into categories of subject or of scrapbook. That probably is
the most logical thing to do, is separate and create piles based on the subject matter
for the album it's going to go in, and we'll use the post it note and spread out on the
table and just sort accordingly. Does that sound okay? Yeah.
Okay. You are going to take
all of your pictures, because they fit in here, and you'll sort them and keep them in
an organized fashion. So we picked up these tabs that will give you the ability to just
label each of those sections. When you go to scrapbook, you're not shuffling through
the whole box, you'll go right to your section, you know that you're going straight to Landon's
section or right to Nick's section or right to baby #3, does that make sense? Okay, perfect.
Yesterday we talked and talked and talked, and that for me was really beneficial in helping
understand where you're coming from, what your situation is, what your goals are, so
we did that full assessment and really figured out a lot of what you're hoping to get out
of this experience, and also where you've been.
We also talked about your big picture
goals, because once we understood more of what you're aiming for and what you're hoping
out of your scrapbooking experience and what you ultimately want to have, beginning with
the end in mind, that how we were able to really make more of a clear game plan on how
to move forward. We also talked about who these scrapbooks are for, and that's really
interesting, because it's so different for everybody, and a lot of people make scrapbooking
very personal and just for them, and a lot of people make them as gifts. For you it really
was about for your family - other people can enjoy it, but really you're thinking long-term,
"my children are going to inherit these books. My grandchildren and great grandchildren,
who knows how many generations to come, will see these books." So that storytelling element
was really important to you, which then kind of brought us to talking about journaling
and how important that is and something that you want to incorporate more, so hopefully
you felt some good takeaways from how to get the words in there with the pictures.
Yes.
Yeah, I'm excited about that for you. What was really fun was to be able to say "hey,
Jaime, let's get all of your scrapbooks, hey Jaime how many scrapbooks do you think you
have?" What did you say? Like 4 or 5. About 4 or 5. And how many did you have? 22.
So
that's really fun of course, because we got to see the reality of how amazing you have
been at documenting. You have got to give yourself more credit. So you actually have
done a lot more than you anticipated, but the other big takeaway that happened with
that is that you were like "holy cow, I have 22 albums which means I don't really need
to create more albums right now. I need to finish the ones that aren't done," and that
was a huge "aha" moment for me.
I don't know about you, but that was a big deal. It was.
And that was a really cool understanding about the whole process. We were able to talk about
moving forward, and creating a game plan about which albums you really do want to do, which
comes back to completing the ones that you started. We talked about organizing your space,
and more importantly, we actually went up there and did it, so we got all of your scrapbooking
supplies sorted, and you were able to get rid of some things and declutter a little
bit, sort out what's for the kids, what's for you, and that's really helpful.
Now you
know exactly where to go for certain supplies, and it's all labeled and all set to go. The
first priority, according to you, not me, is going to be this baby album. Do you feel
like you can get it done over the weekend before he comes? Just come by Tuesday, I'll
show you. Oh my word! I'm feeling so excited about what's happened here at Jaime's house.
She was really ready for this.
She loves scrapbooking already, but she just needed a new approach,
and a method that made more sense for her. She's a busy mom to now almost 3 children.
She's a military wife. But now after Jaime's new desire to breathe new life into her scrapbooking
this is her time, she's ready to go..
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