Laura Vegas

Hey everyone! So this past weekend, I finally managed to finish up all of January and February in my 2018 Project Life album. Feels so good to be caught up. I mean, I realize that it's just about the end of March, and I have all of March to do. But since I only order my photos once a month, at the end of the month, I won't have my March photos ready to work with for another week or so. 

I actually have debated printing my photos myself. Especially since I'm using some of the Pocket Maps templates each week, which means I'm printing those particular photos (with the journaling along the bottom) at home, even though I have prints from my photo order. But since the girls share photos with me, and I want to include those as well, it's just easier to do all of the photos once a month. I like getting one big order of prints, and being able to sort them out and shuffle them around – and then if needed, I can print/reprint anything else that I need.

So here's a look at week four in my 2018 album. I knew that I was going to do a layout with a ton of Alyssa's photos from the Color Factory (you can see that layout HERE if you missed it), so I picked out two photos to use in my PL album. While the colorful photos from that day are super fun, I kept to the simpler photos to include here, since I didn't want bright pops of color clashing with the rest of the photos for the week. 

I've got this system going for most of my weeks (not all, but most), where I have three of the template cards (with the photo and journaling together) and four digital journaling cards. That usually leaves one photo without a specific spot to journal about it. Often, I'll have a screenshot of a Snapchat photo, where it has a bit of text on it, which can serve as the journaling.

But sometimes I end up with a photo that I still want to add some journaling for, or even just a few facts. I like that I'm getting three filler cards in most weeks, and didn't want to lose that third card. So I picked out a filler card that had a bit of room on the bottom to add a quick little description of the photo. I ended up adding a strip of yellow patterned paper along the center, to tie in with the yellow card on the second page. 

Mental note to self – take more random photos around the house. I've been slacking on photo taking lately. I can be very intentional about taking photos, and I can also search things out to photograph, just so I have something to share. But I need to get better about capturing the everyday family moments, such as sneaking a photo of Sarah and her boyfriend from behind while they were making some food. 

So, I know I have sort of, kind of said that I wasn't going to add much to my album this year, embellishment wise. I was thinking my album would be photos, journaling cards, and a few filler cards. Left super simple and as-is. But by week four, I realized that's not really going to work for me. In fact, I even went back and added something to week three (and if you check out my blog post for that week, you'll see I swapped out a few photos of that spread). 

So my new plan is that, when needed, I may add simple embellishments to a filler card or two each week. I do not plan on adding embellishments or anything to photos this year. But I'm finding that some filler cards just need a little something to make them feel "finished". Or to tie in another color from somewhere else in the weekly spread. 

I don't often think to document things like TV shows, music, etc in our album. I'm not sure why not, but it just doesn't usually cross my mind. But I had to work This Is Us into my week four, and the whole crockpot story that had everyone talking at the end of that week's episode. Stupid crockpot. I found a photo of Jack, standing in the kitchen when he was cleaning up, and the crockpot was in the shot too. But since I needed a 3×4" photo, I had to crop out the crockpot. Lol.

For this journaling card, I added a digital stamp from Ali Edwards to the top of my card, and then stamped on a little red check mark. While I would think the meals I serve these kids are pretty delicious by kids standards, it's just seriously gross cleaning up after them and the messes they make eating. Lol.