Documenting 2018

Sep 20, 2018 | Memory Keeping

I thought I would pop on with a quick post about all the ways I’m documenting my life in 2018. Even though we are only halfway  almost three quarters of the way through the year, I’m already starting to think about what next year will look like and how I’ll preserve my stories.

Project Life

Six years in and I still love memory keeping with pocket pages. I love the opportunity to be creative and change my process on a whim while still having the cohesive photo sizes. For the past couple years, I’ve done monthly layouts in 12×12 albums which has allowed me to use three albums for the six years.

This year, I tried mixing it up with this 6×12 cloth album from Hobby Lobby. This size felt much more comfortable to work with as far as flip through, but I just had a hard time keeping up because the one page spread didn’t feel substantial enough for a whole month but I’m just not at a place where a spread per week makes sense either. I ended up switching back to the 12×12 layouts in March and reworking what I had done for January and February.

Otherwise, my process remains the same – photos, words, and the fun stuff of life. Kevin is a pretty avid documenter of life through the Day One app so I’ll continue using both of our photos and experiences to keep the album from both perspectives.

Chatbooks

Chatbooks are photo books made with your photos on Instagram, Facebook or camera roll and only takes 30 seconds to set up. I keep my scrapbooks in my craft room, so I like to have something smaller and less precious to have on the coffee table in the living room. These have been a piece of cake to make and are always a talking point when we have guests over – everyone picks them up. We go with the softcover edition and print them on a yearly basis.

Price-wise, these are super reasonable at $10 (+ free shipping).

One Little Word

This is the first year in a while that I’m not taking Ali Edward’s One Little Word Class. At the beginning of the year, I was trying to pair down some of my projects and this really felt like one I could sustain on my own without the online content Ali provides. I think I’ve been able to keep up with the documenting as much as I’ve wanted to here and in project life, which is perfect for me right now.

As far as my goals go for this project, I could probably be doing a bit better.

Bible Journaling

I feel like Bible Journaling is getting a lot of unnecessary flak right now for being too curated or inauthentic, but I’m still over here loving it. I’ve slowed down a bit because of how my Bible reading looks right now. I am currently reading the same chapter over for multiple days in a row which is allowing me to dig in deeper than I have in the past. Some of my pages look really over the top with color and ephemera while some are literally just words and notes – I’m totally ok with that!

I just want to always keep in the forefront of my mind that this isn’t about being pretty (even though it sometimes is) but more about growth and what God’s word is teaching me. I think the inauthenticity comes when this important component isn’t happening. Hopefully you’ll be seeing more of this around here soon.

Planner

The planner (similar to this one) is a craft-free zone this year and it has been working wonders. Each day has three vertical boxes, one is dedicated to daily reoccurring tasks based on my monthly/weekly/daily goals, another is unique daily tasks, and then work tasks. Even though its not as pretty, there are no distractions and I’m actually happy when all my to-dos are completed and I can throw old pages away.

Traveler’s Notebooks

Prayer Binder