Project Life 2014: Title Page & January

Hi Project Lifers!  It's been awhile since I shared any of my pages and today I'm joining in with Jessica's monthly link up over at The Mom Creative.  While I am 95% done with 2013, I just haven't been feelin' actually posting the pages since it takes me so long to photograph and edit them for privacy, that it just seemed overwhelming to do all the months left in 2013.  Maybe I'll go back and post the rest but then again, if I never do...that's what's great about Project Life, the weeks just keep a comin' and there is always something new to share!  I'm much more excited about how 2014 is coming along so I decided to pick up from the New Year and begin with my album's title page & the weekly spreads through January.

The cover page uses the beautiful Maggie Holmes mini kit I got as my last auto ship from HSN.  It also came with a mini but I love the cards so much I decided to use them in the big annual albums instead.  I think this kit is now available as Micheal's exclusive full sized kit and it's so pretty & definitely worth it!

This first page is pretty straight forward.  I included a family photo, one of me and Brad, and one of each child with a thicker monogram placed a top a label that I wrote their age on.

On the antique type writer card I've been writing each month as I finish it in the book.  This way it will eventually have all the months contained within this volume written on it, sort of as a table of contents.  I used black thickers that match the kid's monogram to spell out our last name on this card as well.  I just photographed it I added them, for privacy.

This volume, I usually have at least 2 and sometimes 3 volumes per year, begins with January 1st and the spread covers New Years Day through the end of that week. The left side is all about New Year's Day itself and includes my daughter with the big television countdown in the back.  It's the first year she's made it all the way to midnight.  The cards on this side are all the reverse side of the cards you see on the title page.

I took entirely too many pictures of our little guy shoveling with Daddy on New Year's Day and although some are very similar I could not narrow down which ones to include.  I put the best one of the two of them on the main spread and then threw the rest into an insert and called it done :)  I the digital Winter kit to make the cards for the insert.

January 2-4 is on the second half of the spread, although most of the pictures are from the day I took photos of the kids with gifts their Great Aunt made them.

January 5-11 was eventful because we were supposed to go back to school but ended up having three snow days.  I mixed Simple Stories Homemade Holiday's with the Winter kit on this spread.  And yes, I did forget to finish the journaling!  Oops.  But it won't be an issue because this year I got a great planner from Target and each day I write a sentence or two so I always have an idea of what went on that day.

On Friday the kids were back for their second day of school, but we also had a joint Brownie meeting and went sledding with another troop.  They also set up a nice hot chocolate bar and it was a very fun time.  Not so fun was, was getting the news Archiver's was going out of business.  Even though the initial sale wasn't fabulous, it was on everything and as you can see from my haul photo I managed to find some stuff to buy.

After the insert is the rest of the week with more on how we spent our snow days, one day was so cold that even Brad stayed home!  By Saturday E and I were so excited to just leave the house...for any reason at all!  I was going stir crazy!

The week of January 12-18 was pretty straight forward.  The left side is about my parents coming over so my Dad could help Brad put up supports for the ceiling in the basement.  They also took the family pictures that on this page and the closer up one that made it's way onto the title page. The right side is mainly about B and life at home with him.  This layout uses the Slate core kit that was only available at Archiver's.

We ended up having our Valentine themed play date with friends in January because we both had the same Friday off of school and that made it super convenient.  They live about 45 minutes away so our school district calendars don't always match up.  

I made this cute little pocket to hold some extras and used the same heart XOXO paper as I did on the right side to tie both sides of the spread together.

Here is a closer look at the page about the play date.  You can read more about the simple ways we themed up the day, in this post, which also contains a link to the cute bumblebee printable I used for the treat pails.  I think this is my favorite page of 2014 so far.  I just love getting to use my scrappy goodies from one of my favorite companies of all time, Doodlebug Design Inc.!

January ended with yet more cold weather and more days off of school.  E was home both Monday & Tuesday.  This layout features mainly Sn@p supplies from Simple Stories, which is a great all purpose line of pocket scrapbooking supplies.  I think overall, Simple Stories is my favorite for pocket pages, although the original core kits from Becky Higgins do give you the most for your money...I do believe, in terms of numbers and variety of card designs.

If you have any questions about supplies or whatnot, please leave them in the comments.

This will be my third year doing a full 12X12 Project Life album.  I am also going back into my daughter's unfinished albums from pre-little brother days and filling in the gaps with pocket pages.  I'm still liking it a lot because it does help me stay on top of our memories and photos, but I am beginning to feel like I want to do more full pages for special memories and am working on how I want to include them.  I really miss the creativity I felt from doing traditional layouts and playing more with my photos.  Are any of you mixing your PL pages with more traditional layouts?