project life: the beginning

I've seen lots of people on the internet using project life to save memories from the year and I thought this would be a great way to record our first year of married life.  Joshua and I will be moving to Oslo, Norway shortly after our wedding.  Not only we will be married, but we will be living a crazy adventure in a foreign country so it will be a year worthy of recording.  Josh will be studying, but as of now I don't have anything to do in Oslo.  Enter: project life- the perfect week by week memory keeping project and something fun for me to do on a consistent basis!  I just couldn't wait until after our wedding to start this project, so I started this summer. However, since it's the summer and the main purpose of this project is to record our married life, I've done a lot of lumping weeks together onto one page.  Two of my closest friends are getting married this summer, so each wedding will have it's own page. Basically, before the wedding each page will be different-a jumble of weeks or an entire wedding.  But after the wedding and once we get settled in   I love that this project is flexible because, of course, since I'm making it I can do whatever I want with it. The binder, page inserts and cardstock kit were a graduation gift from my soon to be in-laws!

Cover Page:

I used some of our engagement photos for this page, a bicycle greeting card Josh sent me last summer and some patterned paper from the PL Cobalt Paper Pack.  The heart button is from ormolu.

 

Graduation and the first few weeks of summer:

I included lots of journaling on the graduation page about the events of the weekend and my feelings about graduation.

The first few weeks of summer were pretty busy for me and I didn't have much much time to spend on this project, so it made sense to just lump them together into one page.  In the top two 4x6 slots I described what Josh and I will each be doing for the first part of the summer.  My photo is of my work desk with lesson planning stuff sprawled about, while Josh's photo features him working in the garden.  He has a few different part time jobs this summer, which allows him to be flexible and work when he wants.  Also, the garden has grown so much since that photo was taken.  It's like a jungle out there now. My friends and I went to see Othello in St. Louis at Shakespeare in the Park.  A different work of Shakespeare is performed every summer in Forest Park.  I love it.

 

  

I'm planning to do the date card the same way each week during the summer. Mostly likely I will have a different "theme" for my date cards during the different seasons.  I printed off the dates of each week using bebas font and will attach it to some sort of chevron patterned paper.  The "summer 2012" button came with my order from ormolu! 

 

So far I am loving this project.  The main obstacle I'm encountering is not having a good way to print off photos.  I have a good printer at home, but don't want to pay for the ink since I will only be here for 3 more weeks.  It is pretty cheap for me to print off photos at the local drugstore or CVS, but I can't seem to figure out how to print 3x4 photos.  Any suggestions?

 Supplies: Black Signature Binder, Project Life Cardstock- Cobalt Collection, Photo Pocket Pages Designs A and B (I have this variety pack),  buttons and paper tabs from Ormolu, colorful Sharpies, American Crafts Slick Writers. Since I'm pretty thrifty, I plan on mostly using supplies I already have.  However, I have discovered the wonderful world of free project life printable journaling cards.  I suggest searching for project life on pinterest to find lots of freebies.