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
I recently threw away a lot of my journals that didn’t have sentimental value or stories in them, so I’m now trying to figure out how future journals fit into my life. That seems really dramatic, but in the past, I’ve used Traveler’s Notebooks for ALL THE THINGS. This year with that in mind, I’m reserving them for vacation mini books and collage projects. I tend to find that creating and the outlet is more important to me during the process than the actual result is for me. (Just talking about this format has me itching to go back to carrying my gorgeous Chic Sparrow TN.)
Prayer Binder
At the beginning of 2018, I made a good to put a priority on intentional prayer based on my One Little Word, connect. I read a few books and blogs, but I found The Reset Girl’s prayer binder to be really inspiring as far as how to get my prayer time organized and feel less overwhelming.
Before, I might not have considered this “memory keeping” however I am keeping track of all my prayers and the things that are going on, so I think it makes sense to include this in how I’m documenting my life.
I’m thinking about writing a whole post about what this looks like, but in the meantime, I would highly encourage you to check out this video by The Reset Girl.
The Blog
This has easily been my most successful year on the blog, not only in content, but in the number of viewers that have checked out this little spot on the internet as well. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been blogging for 8 years (read that post here) and I’ve been documenting my story and my photos for just as long.
Even though I’ve considered quitting more times than I can count, I’m thankful for the fact that the internet seems more concrete and “forever” than physical photos and paper. Even though I hate that, I really do think it’s the truth. I look back on posts from 2010 or even just last year, and can get such a clear picture on who I was at the time and what was going on in my life. It might not feel that way for other people, but that’s why I continually keep doing this for me.