Hi everyone,
This post is part of a Blog Hop that has been organised by Jill Conyers. After reading my post please take the time to check out the other participants. This Blog Hop goes ‘live’ at 8.00am EST (US) Monday 5 March – I have posted early due to time zone differences.
Project Life is not a place for me to place the best photos I take, it is a place for me to place the photos of day-to-day life, the not so perfect shots that do tell the story perfectly. The best photos can go into frames and be displayed, into albums, made into cards, calendars, and slide shows.
I think of my PL as a Scrapbook/Journal/Diary for my family. Recently I have also started to consider it to be a type of time capsule. I would love to be able to look back at the ‘everyday life’ of my parents, and my grandparents from years ago.
It would be wonderful to be able to look back through their albums now and get a snapshot of what life was like then. I would love to know the cute stories about what my parents did when they were children. Anyone with kids knows how quickly the time flies and how quickly the little stories get forgotten – I would love to know those stories from my family’s past.
With that in mind I am trying to capture some of the things that my child (and future grandchildren) might like to know about the life that we are living now.
On weeks where I don’t have a lot happening I am going to do whole ‘Themed Weeks’ or include a few pictures like these (NB: most of these photos come from Google Images, a few are my own):
Appliances, technology, vehicles – these pictures all show how much things can change. I can remember when laptops, mobile phones, video players and microwaves were new. My mother remembers when colour TV was new. New innovations are always coming – I am going to include those. I will make a point of taking pictures of our fridge, freezer, car, washing machine, mobile phone, computer – they will all look different in the future.
The places we go – work, daycare, shops, beach, park, movies, cafes, restaurants, doctors – the list goes on and it does change as your family does. Photograph your family’s favourite restaurant, where you go to watch your team play, where you watch the latest blockbuster. Your kids will change schools, you might change jobs, you go on holidays – there will always be ‘new’ places to capture.
Craft projects – painting, play-doh, quilting, knitting, crochet, scrapbooking or whatever it is that your family members do in their leisure time. These will also change as people and interests change. I do a lot of craft and it will be good to look back in years to come and remember when I made a particular quilt, knitted a shawl, or saw Paige paint me a picture. I will also include snippets of the fabric/yarn or the pattern into the week.
A week of meals – I am going to capture all of the meals and drinks we cook, buy or eat out over the course of a week. This week could include recipes, menus from restaurants, photos of family eating together, wrappers off food, serviettes and maybe an interview with my daughter about her favourite types of food.
What we are reading/watching – books, magazines, TV programs, movies. There are a lot of photos to be found for movies and books that are great to include into PL.
It would be fascinating to know the current events that affected them years ago. I have already included Current Events and news items in my PL and will continue to do more – just the things that affect me in some way.
Political turmoil in Australian Federal Politics
I think it sits well in the layout.
Our preparations for a huge Cyclone/Hurricane that hit last year. I included photos of the newspaper and also got one from the a Meteorological site that tracked the path of the storm.
A tip I have is – Everything ends up on Wikipedia, eventually. I went back and cut and paste the relevant bits about the cyclone and saved it in a Word document for an insert.
I like to document the good – wedding of our future King:
And I document the bad – terrible disaster in Japan – at the time this was on my mind a lot and I found this lovely piece of art that memorialised the event without being too graphic for my PL:
Some of the other themes that I am considering doing in the future are:
- Games/toys played, sports, dancing
- People we see – teachers, colleagues, grandparents, friends, shop-keepers, team-mates, bus driver, doctor
- Favourite Outfits – clothes, shoes – this would be fun to do in a collage for each member of the family for each outfit they wore in a week.
- Things we buy – groceries, petrol, takeaway, magazines
Another type of theme is about the ‘style’ of the layout. So far the idea that I am definitely going to do is a week of Black and white photos only:
Thanks for looking at my post, I hope you found something interesting or useful in it that you might be able to use in your Project Life. Let me know if you can think of any other themes that might work.
Please now take the time to visit Jennifer who is next on the Blog Hop:
Jennifer http://vogtstories.blogspot.com
The other BlogHop participants: