Tanya Mills Photography

Many of you have been interested in my Project Life album, so I’ve decided to post regular updates. Here is the week of July 25-31, 2011.

I got to see my nieces and nephew this week. I thought it was so cute that my nieces decided to dress up like princesses just because, and my nephew is adorable no matter what he wears.

Pat was away on business this week, and I asked him to take a picture either of something that’s part of his regular routine or of something unusual. Well, he ran into the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt at the airport, and asked for his autograph, just so I could put it in the album! That made me smile.

We received a baby gift in the mail this week. The message in the card was so special that I wanted to include the card in the album, but the card wouldn’t fit in any of the page protector slots. So I used an idea from Ali Edwards: make custom-sized page protectors by sewing along the edge of a regular page protector and then trimming to fit. Ali Edwards has a video demonstrating how she does it. It was super easy, especially since I didn’t have to do the sewing. My friend Gaby was sewing up some sheet protectors for herself, and I asked her to do one for me. Thanks, Gaby!

I finally gave up on the impatiens this week. You can see in the before picture how sad they looked–this little corner of our patio turned out to be too hot and sunny for them. In the spirit of thinking ahead to when I will have much less time to take care of the garden, I opted to replace the impatiens with succulents, which require very little maintenance and very little water. I love the mix of texture and colors. Thanks to the folks at the Marina del Rey Garden Center for all their assistance in selecting the new plants.

I really love photo albums — both making them and looking through them. I’ve been scrapbooking since high school, but as I’ve gotten older (and busier), it’s become harder and harder to find (and justify) the time to make scrapbook layouts. What’s more, ever since I got a digital camera, my personal photos rarely ever make it off my hard drive.

Over the years I’ve been looking for a simpler approach to memory keeping–I wanted a creative system that I could keep up with and maintain. I tried slip-in albums, but I ended up with pages of pictures without words or any sense of story. I tried making photobooks, but I missed the lack of any tangible output during the process — the prospect of a completed book once I finished was not enough to keep me motivated. In addition, there was just too much that you could tinker and customize — I spent more time fiddling with pages and layouts than actually progressing.

Then I stumbled upon Project Life, a product created by Becky Higgins to “simplify how you document life.” At its most basic, Project Life is a set of 12×12 divided photo pages and journaling cards that fit in a 3-ring binder. You can put the album together without any adhesives or embellishments, but it’s flexible enough to allow you to add your own personal touches. What is magical about Project Life is that you can make it anything you want it to be. Really.

I’m using Project Life to create spreads of each week. I received the kit in late spring, and that’s where my album starts. So far, I’ve been able to document twelve weeks worth of 2011, from May 2 to July 31. I’m quite pleased and a little surprised at how much I’ve done with relatively little effort. One thing that’s helped me keep up  is not allowing myself to order any more pictures until I finish the journaling for the pictures I’ve already put in the album. The weekly spread comes together so quickly and is so satisfying that I’m motivated to finish the previous week’s spread before the end of the current week. For example, this week (August 1-7), I’ve already put last week’s pictures (July 25-31) in the album and just need to add the journaling.

Enough explanation! Let me share the most recent finished spread. This is the week of July 18, 2011. I made my own title card with the dates for the week and added journaling either by writing directly on a photo or stapling a tag with a caption à la Ali Edwards.

One of the fun things we’ve been doing this summer is making ice cream. So far, we’ve had mocha sherbet, strawberry frozen yogurt, peach ice cream, and plum ice cream. Our favorite is the peach. I really can’t believe how good it tastes, especially straight from the ice cream maker into my mouth.

Something that Project Life has really encouraged me to do is make sure I get more pictures of myself. I laugh when I look at pictures of trips that my husband and I have taken together because the sets of pictures could just be titled “Pat in Hawaii” or “Pat in Germany” with no evidence that I was even there with him! At any rate, since I’ve started working on my Project Life album, I’ve been handing my camera or iPhone off to other people or even setting up cheesy self-timer shots, just so I can be part of the album.

I love photo albums, and I especially love my Project Life album.