Project Life: 2013 Book One

Okay... here it is!  My book for the first half of 2013!!  I am really, truly in love with this book and love to look through it over and over.  There are some things I already know I want to do differently next year, and there are some typos I missed that kill me a little every time I see them (but now I know where they are and don't look at them any more... lol!)... but to say that I'm pleased with how my first book of my first year of Project Life turned out is a definite understatement!

I printed mine as a 12x12 book through Shutterfly...

I used a template by Emily Merritt from The Lilypad to make the cover.  I plan on using the exact same thing on book 2, just switching out the photos.  My one beef I have with my cover, is that I forgot to put book 1 on the spine!  It just says Project Life 2013.  I'm going to label book 2 on the spine, but it's going to bug me a little that they don't match completely.

Cover page...

I'll be honest, I didn't put much thought into this.  I had a Shutterfly coupon that was about to expire that night so I threw some things together (Cathy Z freebies) and made the cover page.  Haven't come up with a plan on the book 2 cover page yet.

 The inside pages...

Please ignore the glares and blown out areas.  That's not the printing, it's the lighting I had on my deck when I took these photos.  Everything printed beautifully!!  I really couldn't have been more pleased!  I use my phone a LOT for PL and I was a little leery about how those photos would print, but they printed great.  So did my phone screen shots and images I grabbed from the web.

I mentioned this summer how excited I was that my son's camp allowed free downloading of the photos they took everyday.  Those printed great as well...

 ... and I was so thrilled to be able to include him in our weekly pages even when he wasn't with us!

And lastly, my oh so exciting last page of the book...

I can't believe that I'll be starting to put together week 43 tomorrow!!  First I'm having a hard time accepting that the year is almost over already and second, I'm very surprised that I've managed to keep the momentum going on this!  In fact, there's so much momentum that next year's planning has begun (I just need to find a way to take a small break between the 2013 book and the 2014 one without getting too far behind).

Project Life: Weeks 41 and 42

Well... I knew I hadn't posted week 42 yet, but I was just sure I had posted week 41.  Then I came here today and realized that I had never posted it!  That shocked me, since I do think week 41 is one of my most favorite recent spreads.  It came together really well...

On the flip side of that... week 42 is one of my least favorite.  Taking a photo of Alex's swim ribbons seemed like a good idea at the time, but I think they overpower that page.  However, I was low on photos this week, so I left it in.

Oh... I took photos of my book for the first half of the year.  I'm that much closer to actually getting my post done!  :-)

Project Life: Week 40

 CAUGHT UP!!!

That is all :-)

Project Life: Week 39

Another week done...

Project Life: Week 38

I can't believe that I'm still pretty much caught up!  I think it's having my book for the first half of the year printed already that keeps me going.  I love looking at that thing and it just validates how much I love this project and want to see it through (and do it again next year!).  I do have low photo weeks which throw me off a little... but thank goodness for my iPhone!  I usually have something to include.