On printing those memories

I have talked here before about my love or memory keeping - (this post sums it up best I think), I love everything about it - taking the photos, keeping the notes, sorting through them and printing photos and then completing the pages in my Project Lie albums. Years ago I used to make photo books - they are lovely but I have found that the regular pockets of time Project Life requires suits me better than the big once off effort of making an end of year book does.

I love turning this (my notes every week on the let with photo numbers added and my planned layout on the right:

And this: (prints)

Into this: (Project life pages or the same week as the notes above)

To me it's therapeutic, it's creative and it's fast compared to traditional scrapbooking. I do think what a lot of moms forget is that photos on a computer or phone is just that  - never really looked at or shared. And certainly not by our children who make up most of those memories in any event. I can not begin to tell you how often they sit and page through either there albums or our older photo books and talk about things we did and places we went to . And with the celebrating the everyday that Project Life offers - the remembering of those everyday bits and pieces too.

It's true that this all costs a bit of money and takes time but its worth every cent and minute. I have been printing my photos at Qphoto for a long time as the quality is always great.  With this in mind I have to tell you of something quite wonderful I have found:

You can thank me later. And it's the honest truth - I ordered my first 60 (I only paid or 10) and collected it - in a little box with a contact sheet as in the photo above. They do deliver at a fee - that is still less that 50 prints in any event. So for a year you can order 50 free jumbo prints a month if you register now!( I was in no way asked to do this by Qphoto - I am sharing it or my readers to use) You are welcome. Please tell me if you use this and how you will be sharing your prints - frames, albums, for grandparents - it's 600 free jumbo prints over a year.

So lets print some photos and share the memories.

Whatever makes you happy

Possibly 2 years ago I read "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin. Now I am not a non fiction reader by choice - my usual poison is fiction but this came highly recommended by more than one person. I have to say that I flew through it taking into account that it is non fiction and that my habit of reading about 3 books at a time fuels my fiction reading. I enjoyed the book a lot and would recommend it for all. And while possibly most of her items on her happiness list can be added to mine if I ever had the time and chance (and money) to do a full year of happiness project - I may change say 2 of them, the one that I most associated with was her item as "Memory keeper of the family"

I have always since childhood been into photography on whatever level I could practise it at the time. I am not sure if my fascination stems only from the actual technicalities of a good photo or from purely the memory it captures. 

While all three are possibly nice enough photos it's the memories that they capture that makes them so very special. For instance the last one brings the holiday it represents immediately to mind - the boogie board, the sarong and the tiara - all so much part of that holiday (our first in Mtunzini).

In the past I made photo books of every year. Over the last year and a half I have tried to keep up with Project Life - for a long long time it went really well and easy. But ever so often I would get behind and most recently the shoulder op really caused me to fall way behind.

I am so enjoying catching up on it though - using before work, lunch times and whatever I get at home to go through this years photos and notes (at least I kept taking photos which makes it a lot easier). It just made me realize once again that for me this is an essential part of my happiness - not only making but keeping those memories - be it here in the personal blog, on Facebook (mostly shared for the sake of the grandparents) or then in Project Life which in it's very real touchable format brings not only joy to me but hugely to the kids as they page through and recall.

Are you a memory keeper and in which formats? I am interested if this is mainly a female thing - anybody knows a passionate male memory keeper?

So in the next 2 weeks....

it's silly season. No really. Get this list:

• Two separate revue rehearsals for two separate kids on two seperate evenings (A & C). It's revue year at school - only once every 4 years, but still.
• 4 days of ballet course (A), one day followed by the school's  big yearly festive event, one by a hockey match or two and one by her drama Eisteddfod with only 30 minutes in between the two events.
• Said festive school event for the whole family where I am busy designing posters for the grade 2 stall.
• English speech festival (For A)
• A school outing (For C)
• Spring picnic (For C) 
• Early mornings at school on 3 occasions for team photos (all 3 kids) and one late afternoon (A)
• One Granny day at school as seeing that we only have one granny in Pretoria I have to help and attend to make sure both my boys have someone at their little event, followed by a picnic with granny where I will have to help out.

And..... what? That's it? Somehow I feel totally out of breath just thinking about it all.

But yes, work is busy, I am totally loving family time and I am reading whenever I can. I am also loving Masterchef SA. But life is busy and somehow blogging is taking a backseat. At the same time, I am still loving Project Life and although I am even behind on that at the moment, it is taking a lot of the urgency to blog out of my life. Recording such lovely details of day to day stuff is so enjoyable and in the Project Life format we can all enjoy it as it develops every week. I am still surprised at how much I love the format and that I am not far behind. Also sad I have not done this years ago

In the meantime - the biggest "event" in the last week was Mr C loosing his first baby tooth.

Busy, busy and more busy

Things are rather busy at work but much calmer at home. We are hoping for a relatively relaxed weekend - we have the usual horse riding for the boys and then the Princess and I will be attending a kitchen tea. I have been helping with some of the decorations (my thing really) but will show you more next week.

So not much content here today but I did put up my Project Life post of the last 3 weeks up at my other blog if you want to take a look. I have a post coming up about doing Project Life on the run - really if you ever had any doubt in your mind that you could do it - you can. Really, you need about 20 minutes a week. I will tell you how.

Hope you enjoy your weekend. It is all of a sudden slightly chilly here - Autumn is definitely here and winter is showing it's teeth. Oh dear, how I wish for an endless summer.