Project Life Starts Now

The Project Life Planner - What Drew Me To Project Life

 

So I've been seeing all of these digiscrap people doing this whole "Project Life" thing and wondered a little bit here and there about what was going on, but not really paying too much attention to it.  Well then one of my favorite digital designers, Traci Reed (swoon) created a calendar for planning your year to help you document project life.  I don't know what it was about that calendar, but it gave me the gumption I needed to test out the Project Life waters.  As I looked more into her calendar, I loved the journaling aspect possibilities with it, and ultimately, I think that's what drew me to project life.

 

See her amazing calendar and all of its possibilities here:

http://tracireed.com/news/2013/12/my-2014-life-planner-for-project-life/

 

Maybe it will start you on your project life journey as well!

 

Where Do I Start? - Finding a Style That Feels GREAT (and picking up a few freebies along the way)!

 

First things first.  DO YOUR RESEARCH!  I had done lots of research on digital layouts, digital "plastic" pocket covers, stitched grids and more.  I visited Pinterest, some of my scrapping blogs, my favorite digiscrap galleries, ScrapStacks and others but none of the project life layouts really jumped out at me screaming, "PICK ME!!  PICK ME!!"  You need to find layouts that catch your eye, and you fall in love with!  During my research, I did find some awesome freebies worth sharing.  Who knows??  One of them may be just what YOU'RE looking for!

 

 

I really liked this freebie that you can get when you sign up for Traci's newsletter at www.tracireed.com.  The plastic pockets are fabulous!!  However, it is only the one 12x12 design and I wanted some variety.  Here are my 'test' pages using Traci's Document Life Sampler.

 

 

Okay, I'm kind of liking this..  I had come across a fellow scrapper who did their whole year with just this template.  But I don't like that you can't really see my background paper and I still need some layout variety!  I knew I could resize the template to give me the margins I wanted at he edges, but I still needed to see if I could find some more of these plastic pocket templates.  I checked out her shop at www.sweetshoppedesigns.com to see if there were any more of these in a different layout, but alas there were none in this identical style.  If there were more pocket pages like this, I think I would have very easily ran with this one.  But, I didn't want to be limited to just one layout for the WHOLE year.  No way!  I think I would get bored if I only had one option to choose from and would end up not finishing for sure!  She does however, have these plastic slip ins that are pretty nice and available in lots of layouts for a good price.

http://www.sweetshoppedesigns.com/sweetshoppe/product.php?productid=26472&cat=640&page=1

 She had lots of different templates, but I just was still not feeling the love!  Silly, perhaps, but if this is a year long project, by darned I better LOVE it before I start.

 

Along the way, I also stopped at Becky Higgins' www.digitalprojectlife.com to see what she had available for pocket page templates.  Becky has some great freebie templates to start you off if you're interested.  She also has lots of digital card freebies as well.

 

 

They can be found here: http://www.digitalprojectlife.com/collections/freebies.  I still wasn't loving this style either because I wanted more of my paper to show in the background and this had such a tiny margin that I still wasn't sold here either.  It was great of her to offer two templates, but it's the same template just rotated 90 degrees and I still wanted more variety to test out the waters.  I just didn't want to spend a bunch of money on templates if I came to find that Project Life wasn't for me.  (Med student wife, remember??  We have to be CHEAP!!)

 

I was getting a little discouraged and was wondering if I had purchased that planner prematurely.  I really did want to try this out, but I just wasn't happy with what was out there.  I decided to try my hand at making my own templates.  Might have taken me a little bit of time to make the first template, but I didn't mind the challenge and after the first, the rest flew!  The result I came up with works great for me and I ended up loving what I had and really started to develop my very own style for Project Life.

 

Keep an eye out for my next post where I'll walk you through creating your own templates for Project Life using Photoshop!

 

 

Clean House? Say Whaaaaaaat?

If any of you can find a way to keep a house clean for more than 5 minutes during the day, I'm all ears!  Cleaning is one of those necessary evils.  You hate to do it, but it has to be done.  Blah!  I feel like I just get everything cleaned up and then turn around a few minutes later only to find my little Ricky (aka The Tornado w/ Legs) has come through and completely obliterated everything!

I make it a goal at night to clean up as much as possible, with the kids, before they go to bed.  Then they know that they are accountable for the mess and I'm not left to clean up after the kids are in bed.  After I put my kids in bed, it's MY time!  I need it!  Maybe I'm a little selfish, but I have to have it.  The last thing I want to do is walk out of their room into a mess they made and have to clean it up.  So, we all clean up together before they hit the sack, even if it means bedtime is a few minutes later.  Then when I walk out of their room, it truly is time for me.  I feel that there is so little time for me, that I cherish every moment that I can grasp in my greedy hands.  It's my time to read, scrapbook, play on the computer, catch up on missed TV episodes from my favorite shows... just do whatever I want to.

Let's back up for a minute.  Diary of a Med Wife... so what's that all about? My husband is currently enrolled in his second year of medical school.  He is so smart and so brilliant.  There is no way that I can do what he does, so I just support him in what he wants to do.  He goes to class, comes home for lunch, and then either stays home to study, or goes back to school for labs and such.  Now, remind you, we have two kids at home.  So now you're probably thinking, "How does he possibly study at home?"  The answer is... I have NO idea!!!

We live in a small two bedroom, two bath apartment.  No office, no space for a desk, heck we're lucky to fit our couch in the front room!  So when he studies, it's in our bedroom on our bed with the door closed.  Our two kids are running around, chasing each other, laughing and screaming, bounding from hallway to bedroom, to hallway to kitchen.  Good heavens, it makes me crazy... and I'm not working on anything that requires the kind of devotion needed to study for medical school.

I've decided that my husband just has this "amazing" (wink, wink) ability to tune us out.  He gets in his study zone, and there's no coming back.  I don't even know if he realizes we're home.  How did he acquire this "amazing" ability?  Well... I'm guessing it all goes back to when he first started school.  We moved out here to med school when I was 9 months pregnant with Ricky.  We were here for one week and got our apartment all set up.  Then, because I was so smart when I picked my insurance options through my job, we had to go back to where we had just moved from to have our little bundle of joy.  We stayed with family for a few weeks until the baby came.  My husband got to spend the first two weeks of my son's life carefree.  No studying, no reading, no working.  Just being daddy.  It was fantastic.  Then, daddy had to head out to start school.  I stayed behind with family so that I could have Ricky's one month check up under our belt before we headed to our new home.

During those first few weeks of school, my husband would come home after classes so he could eat, and then just stay at home in our empty apartment and study away.  When we finally arrived to be with him two weeks later, it was too late, the habit was formed.  He liked being home to study.  I tried to send him off to school after lunch to study but he would come home saying that the other students so easily distracted him.  He would want to talk to them or join in on nearby conversations, and studying would be put on the backburner.  He felt more comfortable being at home.  He could stop and snack, or visit with me, or play with the kids for a minute.  So he goes into the bedroom and studies... and studies and studies some more.  How we are any different than the 'distracting' students as the school I'll never know.  Maybe all he needs is that closed door.  Well, whatever it is, it works for him!  As hard as it is to have him be 10 feet away and try to not bother him, it's nice to have him home when he decides he needs a break.

So how this started out as a cleaning post and then turned into this... yeah... that's kind of my thought process.  Jumbled, scattered, random.  Call it what you want, but it's me!  I'll be back soon to fill you in on more later.  Until then!  Have a great one!

Welcome!

Hello there!  Welcome to Diary of a Med Wife.  Thanks for stopping by.  I'm Janelle.  I'm a 27 year old mother of 2 beautiful kiddos (Miss K - 4, and Little Ricky -1) who keep me hopping daily.  I'm the lucky wife to my gorgeous husband of 6 years who is currently attending medical school, hence the name of my blog: Diary of a Med Wife.  Here I'll tell you things that we go through, ways I try to keep my kids busy and learning, projects I work on, and anything else I feel like sharing.  I hope that you enjoy your stay here.  Please come back and visit often!