Project Life: Planning

FINALLY! I'm not sure why, but I have typed.and retyped. put off. and procrastinated writing this post. I knew what I wanted to accomplish...share my project life journey in a series of posts with a background in how I plan and organize for this new adventure. So FINALLY. No more silly excuses. I AM GOING TO FOLLOW THROUGH THIS TIME.

*A special thanks to the IPAD app Blogsy for removing the validity in my excuses and making me face my fears* HA!

So...without further ado...

PROJECT LIFE POST #1: PLANNING

The end of last year I made the decision to take on the project life journey for 2012. (probably the best/easiest decision I've made HA!) After making this decision my next immediate thought? "This is going to take some serious planning..and detailed notes!" Off to Wal-Mart I went for a new planner.

Important things to consider: must be big enough to keep everything in one place. appointments and important dates. homework assignments for the new semester. day to day detailed notes for the album. yet it needed to be small enough to fit in my purse. (which if you saw the size of my purse...this isn't much of a stipulation. HA!) Here is what I came up with:

RULE #1 TO MAKING THIS WORK: keep a camera and your planner on you at ALL TIMES

The monthly calendar spread works perfectly for assignments, appointments, and important dates. The weekly layout with larger daily squares? You guessed it...new home for all the notes and happenings Project Life related. My planner uses a Monday to Sunday week, so my album will follow suit. (because let's face it..who wants to flip between two pages when working on a week's spread?!)

(I almost always have little notes attached to my planner..I'm a list maker..paper clips and I are well acquainted. HA!)

When I scrapbook, I love working with sketches! They give me a plan. A jump start to create. Do I always follow them in the end? Nope. But that's not my point for them. Project Life was no exception for me. I knew I would probably put each week together all in one sitting. My schedule wouldn't allow it any other way really. I do, though, have time throughout the week to fill in a sketch. Good ol' plain post-it notes work wonders. Each week, I stick 2 post-its somewhere on the week's pages. (they're moveable after all) I'm using Project Life design A protectors, so I doodled that layout on my post-its with a sharpie pen. I fill in the squares with a pencil (I move things around a lot. Erasing is essential) with the planned contents for that pocket. If I have an insert that week, additional post-its are added.

So far this has worked great for me. I feel like this takes the stress away when I sit down to put it all together. Having the sketch to go by speeds the process up so I can spend the extra time embellishing and making it pretty!

I love that Project Life is a place to include everyday moments and the "stuff" that makes up our lives. I needed a place to keep all of that stuff together, as I collect it. I stitched a little file folder together on 3 sides, making a pocket. Using glue dots, I attached it to the inside of my planner to store all the little bits I collect throughout the week.

 

When I put together my pages I also check both facebook and twitter for posts I might want to include.

My planner and method of keeping track of everyday events are nothing fancy, but they are working for me. I hope that after this post, you may have found something useful that will help make this journey easier for you. Check back tomorrow for a post about how I organize my supplies!