Happy New Year everyone! I hope your holiday season was filled with laughter and joy. We were quite busy here; hence the complete lack of posts for December.

Ack! Does that make me a terrible person?

Let me answer that for you: no. Was there really any question?

Any hoo….

I’ve been working on updating my Project Life album. It’s been hard to find the time to do it around the school lesson planning and kid carting and house cleaning and holiday preparations. This past week, once everyone had left, and all the presents were unwrapped, I was able to finally make some progress towards getting this fall’s photos in the album. I’ve got photos in pages, and blank cards in the empty spots, and even managed to add a few bits of memorabilia. I’ll be working on journaling and embellishing next.

Which brings me to my next thought about Project Life, and why it took so long for me to find a way for the project to work for me.

A friend who’s finalizing her Project Life album for 2015 posed a question in a private group: What should she do about a single week where she had no photos, no social media information, nothing to fill in for one week, half a year ago.

Before we get to the real meat of the matter, there are a few quick fixes:

• Use a general full page photo as a place holder. Things like a seasonal photo or a family photo would be a great thing to fill in that space. You could even add seasonal photos throughout the book to make it seem more intentional, and less random.
• Look up what was happening in the news that week, and do an overview of that week in history. That could be super interesting to come across when you or your family read your book in the future.
• Do a year so far summary page. A few photos of things that have changed since the beginning of the year would be fun. I keep thinking it would be interesting to keep a running tab of how many loads of laundry I’ve done, and how many times I’ve turned on the dishwasher, but I always manage to forget after the first week of the year. (Maybe I’ll put up a tally sheet next to each appliance. That could work!)
• Fudge it. Adjust the previous and following weeks’ photos to fill in the space.
• Create a piece of art to fill the space. An illustrated quote, photos that have been put through an app like Waterlogue (so much fun!), or a collage of patterned papers could all work as space fillers.

However, that’s not really what I’d recommend doing.

One of the things that initially gave me problems about Project Life was the daily or weekly nature of it. Each two page spread was supposed to cover a specific amount of time. That kind of consistency really doesn’t work for me. I’m more of a batch type of person. When I get involved in something, I like to immerse myself in it completely for awhile, and then take a break and do something else.

This is how I do everything in my life. I’m a serial binger.

Having to take a photo every day is simply not flexible enough for me. Having to sort my stories into specific lengths of time seemed artificial and forced.

It wasn’t until I decided to simply document whatever I managed to photograph or take notes about that Project Life clicked for me.

Project Life, and scrapbooking in general, should reflect your life as it is. Did you not manage to take photos for three weeks? Do you have 215 photos from a single event? It happens. Just don’t let the gap stop you from telling your stories. Don’t let chronology or self-imposed rules or other’s expectations limit how you tell your story.

Your scrapbooks should reflect your life. All of it. Even the parts when you were so busy living you forgot to document them. It’s okay to miss a few moments here and there. That’s what life is like.