"A Little Bit of Life" Blog

(I'm going to be making my "A Little Bit of Life" blog private...if you read that one and would like an invitation will you leave me a comment with the email address that you'd like the invitation sent to?  I won't post the comments, so no worries about your email being shared).

One of the things I've been trying to figure out is how to efficiently record our family memories.  Do I print out the 3,079,354 photos I take a year?  I've been a little overwhelmed by it, and the result is that the photos keep piling up on my hard drive and nothing is done with them.

I was introduced to the concept of "Project Life" by a friend (you can read about it here) and thought it was a great solution.  A photo a day..and a short caption, and the year is done. 

Right now I'm in the process of putting my 2011 scrapbook together. Putting the photos in an album and writing my corresponding journal entries.  I love this album, the memories, and it's been fun to compile.

Here's what I don't like about it.
1.  I have a LOT more photos on my hard drive because I took more photos last year trying to get my "picture of the day."
2.  The scrapbook binder is BIG.  I can't store one of these for each year until the kids are grown.
3.  Sometimes I want more than one picture of an event.

So, I've decided to do things a little differently this year.  First, I'm going to do the digital version on Shutterfly.  I've done a lot of photo books with them and am happy with the quality.  It'll give me a much smaller book that I can order for each of the kids at the end of the year.  It gives me flexibility with the number and size of photos I use on a page, so I can use more photos of things that are important to me like birthdays and holidays. 

I also plan to have more of a weekly focus rather than daily.  I still might have a week with one photo of the day, or there might be a week where it's mostly just birthday photos.  I don't want to be as rigid with it, but just have the memories captured that I want.

I've started the book and plan to try to make it as I go ~  hopefully adding the photos and captions weekly so it'll just be done at the end of the year.  But if I fall behind it's on the "A Little Bit of Life" blog waiting until I can get caught up.  

We'll see how it works out.  I wanted to share this because I've discussed this with friends and I know others have the same dilemma as to how to manage photos/scrapbooking/documenting life for the kids.

If I don't like it, I'll just try something new next year.  By the time the kids graduate from High School I should have it figured out!