Back in May as part of my 29th birthday celebration, I wrote a list of 5 personal goals I wanted to achieve before I turn 30 this year.

Number 5 on the list is to document my 29th birthday year because as I wrote in this guest post over at Sweet Shoppe Designs, turning 29 feels like a pretty big milestone. A rite of passage. The last official year of my twenties.

And as any good scrapbooker will tell you, milestones are made to be documented.

So in July, after a mulling it over for a little bit, I decided jump into the Project Life pool and choose it as my method for documenting this year. I even wrote a post about my plan and shared my first spread.

With the start of the new year and the ensuing Project Life overload that’s going on right now, I’ve gotten a few requests to share an update on how my Project Life album is coming along. And so I’m back today with a little update…which you may or may not like.

You see…that one lonely little spread up there? That’s all I’ve completed of my Project Life album.

I know, sad.

But before you go assuming this is just another case of #ProjectLifeFail, here’s the deal.

I posted about my plans for Project Life on July 20th. And only five short days later, on July 25th, I embarked on another not-so-little project called A Week In the Life.

Having never completed A Week In the Life before, I didn’t really know what to expect. But I went into it with a plan and came out of it with an amazingly AWESOME Blurb photo book.

And what I realized once I had this book in my hot little hands is that this AWITL album achieves my goal of documenting my 29th birthday year.

Sure it doesn’t include each and every moment of every day the way Project Life might have, but it does exactly what I wanted to do with my 29th birthday year album:

It captures a snapshot of what our life is like as two child-free married twenty-somethings.

The places we go, the things we do, the technology, fashion, food and so much more we love.

And I LOVE it. I love it in a it-still-makes-me-want-to-do-happy-dances-everytime-I-look-at-it kind of way.

And that’s good enough for me.

So in keeping with my 2012 scrapbooking resolution to trade the busy for the meaningful, I’ve decided to call this goal done and let it go.

I may feel inspired to pick up my Project Life album again, I may not, but either way, I’m happy with my decision.

And with that I leave you with two little reminders:

1) It is OK to change your plans (and not feel any guilt about it).

2) Just because everyone else is doing something, doesn’t mean you have to stick with it too.

So what about you? Anyone else ever start something only to change your plans mid-way? Were you happy with the end result?

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Back on May 24th when I turned the big Two-Nine, I wrote out five personal goals to complete over the next year, one of which included documenting my 29th year.

At the time I wasn’t quite sure what type of album I wanted to create so in order to help me get a better idea about what type of album would be best, I made a list of exactly what I hoped to get out of my 29th year album. You can read more about my reasoning behind the list in this post but here is the short version of the list I wrote:

• Daily Life – Document what our everyday life looks like – similar to P365 but less structured
• Memorabilia – Create a home for all the little bits and pieces of paper/things I love to pick up
• Adaptable – Ability to adapt to the story – with more or less photos/story
• Easy upkeep – Needs to be manageable to maintain throughout the year

At the time I was leaning heavily toward Becky Higgins’ Project Life since it seemed exactly what I wanted but since it was SO trendy and I try to avoid anything too trendy, I decided to wait.

Flash-forward to July 1st rolling around and me realizing that if I was serious about making an album to document my 29th year, I needed to get this party started. So over the 4th of July holiday I took the plunge and ordered this:

An American Crafts 12×12 Faux Leather album in Graphite, Project Life Divided Photo Pocket Pages Design A and Project Life 100 Pack of Journaling Cards. I debated about ordering a larger variety of pocket pages but ultimately decided to keep things simple until I was sure I actually liked Project Life.

As is often the case with projects around here, my Project Life stuff sat sad and unused for another week or two before I decided to finally get down to business earlier this week…

And have since turned those pages above into this…

A completed two-page Project Life spread documenting Week 8 of my 29th year – July 12-18. Woohoo go me!

One of the mistakes I made when I did my Deployment:365 project back in 2009 was trying to get caught up on my layouts by starting at week 1 and working forward. Which meant no matter how many layouts I did, I was always several weeks behind. I do not recommend this plan. At all. It is a BAD idea.

So this time around I decided that although I’m now eights weeks after my birthday, I would start with the most recent week, July 12-18 and scrap that first and then while I’m keeping my book current going forward, I’ll work on filling in the weeks going back to May 24th. This way I can stay focused on the current stories rather than forever being lost in the past.

Here’s a closer look at the left side of the page:

Yes, that is Adam and I holding goblets of beer (at hopdoddy’s), haha. For anyone lucky enough to be in the Austin area, you should check out hopdoddy. It’s awesome. Delicious burgers made with local ingredients and tasty local brews.

Since the Project Life kits aren’t available anymore, I made my own title card to label each two-page week spread. Here’s a close-up of the title card:

For all my fellow font lovers out there, the tall font is Bebas and the smaller font is Museo Sans, both of which are available for free. For the patterned paper top, I used a digital paper from Zoe Pearn’s awesome Zoom Zoom kit and printed the whole card on Epson Premium Presentation Matte paper using my Epson printer.

Here’s a closer look at the right side of the page:

Since one of our big activities this week was the start of our quest for a new dining table and chairs to replace our sad dining table and folding chairs we’ve had since college, I included some photos of our trip to Crate & Barrel as well as a clipping from the front of a catalog we picked up at West Elm.

We also attended the midnight showing of the final Harry Potter movie this week so I dedicated several pockets and a journaling card for Harry Potter. Here’s a close-up of the Harry Potter part of the page:

I included a photo I took with my iPhone of the sign at the theater as well as our ticket stubs. In the bottom pocket I included the front of our Harry Potter-style 3D glasses as well as the top of the wrapper they came in since they included the name of the movie.

In order to make the glasses less bulky, I unscrewed and removed the sides of the glasses so they’d sit flatter in the pocket. It’s still a little bulky but once I complete next week’s page (the back of the Harry Potter card) I’m going to staple the corners of the pockets to hold the glasses inside and I think they’ll stay just fine..

Here’s another detail shot of the right side page:

For the two journaling cards, I wrote my journaling on the computer using my custom handwriting font by Darcy, added some Ali Edwards’ brushes (This One Brushes) and then printed them directly on the Project Life journaling card using my printer.

I didn’t realize you could do this until this week but because my Epson printer feeds papers through the printer without folding or bending them, you can pretty much print any custom size you want. Had I known this back in December, it sure would have made my December Daily album a whole lot easier, lol!

My thoughts on my 29th year Project Life album so far?

I am in LOVE. As in this-album-makes-me-want-to-do-a-happy-dance kind of love. There’s something so cool about seeing daily events and memorabilia like this all in one place. I am definitely very very excited to see where this album goes as the year progresses. I’m so glad I decided to jump on the Project Life bandwagon, trendy as it may be, haha.

So that’s my story from my first week of Project Life. Anyone else doing Project Life? Anyone finished any happy-dance inducing projects lately? Feel free to share in the comments!

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