Preparing for Project Life 2012

As we head into 2012, I've been doing a LOT of thinking about how I want to approach documenting our life this year. At first I wasn't going to go for Project Life since I couldn't get past the obstacle of printing my photos at home. Since I figured that out, I made the decision to give PL another go for 2012.

The thing that I really love about Project Life is the ability to include the bits and pieces from every day life. Having a toddler in preschool, I have a lot of art projects that I want to save!

If you've read my blog long, you probably already know that I'm a planner. I need a plan for everything, or I feel overwhelmed. So I've begun my planning and I'm gathering my supplies.

I'm still waiting for this binder to become available:

Please Becky- all I want for Christmas is my 2012 Project Life Binder! ;-)

As of right now, I'm sticking to Design A  for my planner pages. This makes it easier on my planning, but I can see how I might get bored with the same layout for each week, so we'll see how it goes.

I will begin each month with a little 6x12 divider page.

Next I went to Joann's and stocked up on some Smash products, including almost all the Smash Pads they had, paper tape (a MUST- and I want more to choose from), a date stamp, and some other random goodies.

 

At this point you might be wondering which kit I am using- Clementine? Cobalt? Turquoise? Well....IF I was going to buy a kit I would definitely go for Clementine- it's yummy!  However, I know myself, and I will be bored with just using one kit for an entire year. I won't make it past January without being bored! 

So I have settled on this- I will incorporate my own kits (yes, you can expect journaling cards from me in the coming year!), and I will use one kit per month (to reduce a crazy amount of design time, and also to give each month a little cohesion). For January, I am definitely using my new "Fresh Start" kit! It's perfect for documenting the start of the new year. 

Now for the execution of my album...

This year I found that once I started getting behind, it was really hard to remember what happened each week, and getting caught up was becoming impossible. So a few months ago I started using Oh Life, and have found it to be EXTREMELY helpful in remembering what happened when I get behind. I also love it that half my journaling is already done by the time I got to put my layout together. 

However, I also needed help in mapping out what happened each week, and how I was going to get it all in my album, so I created a weekly planner:

 

click image to download

And a weekly map, so I can sketch it all out before I go to put it in my album:

 

click image to download

I have been using these two pages for my December layouts, and for ONCE in this process, I do not feel overwhelmed because my weeks are already planned out, and thanks to Oh Life, my journaling is half done. I keep my planner pages in 8.5x11 page protectors in my album as a place holder for that week. I made these planner pages a free printable. Just click on the image to download these PDFs.

So that's my plan for 2012! Are you ready? What materials are you using?