Wednesday 26 June 2013

June's Multilingual Blogging Carnival

Leanne over at All Done Monkey is hosting this month's raising multilingual children blogging carnival. The theme is all about multilingualism and travel and there are stacks of really interesting and informative posts.

Highly recommended reading!

Friday 7 June 2013

Project Life: Capturing the Everyday

I've just discivered Project Life and I'm hooked!

For those of you who have not yet heard of Project Life, it's an idea originally created by Becky Higgins as a way to record your memories (both big and small) without the commitment often required to keep detailed journals or scrapbooks. It encourages you to print off the millions of photos that otherwise stay hidden on your hard drive or in your iPhone and to slip them into a book where you can peak at them whenever the desire takes you.

I can hear some of you saying, well, isn't that what a photo album is for?

Well, yes and no. Project Life encourages you to add notes and ephemera to build more than just a photographic memory.

Take a look at these blogs where seasoned Project Lifers can tell you (better than me) how it's done.

A Vegas Girl At Heart

Ali Edwards

Elise Blaha

Cathy Zielske

Rukristin Papercrafts (this post has links to over 100 Project Life resources broken down into the following categories: manufacturers, bloggers, organisation, challenges, free printables, miscellany and digital)

Anyway, the relevance of this to you guys is that I think Project Life is a great way to record language development and sound bites. All of those cute little phrases that come out of your children's mouths day after day. If you're like me, you scribble lots of them down but, most of them don't end up anywhere useful and will get lost in time.

I've been trying for half an hour to upload a photo of some examples of what i've been putting in my album so far but let's just say, it ain't working and i've given up before I throw my computer out of the window!

Two weeks in and I know already that this is the perfect way for me to document our life and build our memories ... and, believe me, it's not like I have the time to take on anything else....my life is one long to do list right now but, I'm squeezing it in where I can. It has already spurred me on to take photos of the 'little stuff' and to be more proactive in printing them off and it has made me think more about the tiny things that I don't want to forget. The things that build a picture of who we are but often get overshadowed by the bigger bits of life.

If i'm totally honest it has also allowed me to indulge in two other of my great life passions : Internet surfing (looking for freebie printables) and shopping (afterall, who can live without a corner cutter and a date stamp?).

I'd love to know if any of you guys are already doing Project Life or something similar, or if you are thinking about it.

P.S. Here's a link to my Project Life Pinterest board where I have collected lots of great free printable journalling cards etc

P.P.S The only place in the UK I have found so far that you can source Project Life stuff from is the Scrapbookers Inner Circle website. Although there are several other companies selling similar products.