Be sure to check out the latest issue of Shades of the Departed magazine. Not only is the issue chock full of school days memories and vintage photos, but I was given the opportunity to tell the Friends Album story (see page 36). Enjoy!
I not going to be hard on myself, I decided. I’m simply not keeping up with my goal to journal each and every day — it’s been really difficult to fit that into my life. But I still go back and try to fill in the blanks when I do get the chance. I know that I’ll enjoy reading through this album years from now and that’s why I keep going.
Here is the completed March page. I never decorated it like I thought I might:
And here is the already started April page. I decided to format this one differently. Each day gets a line instead of a box:
Sorry it’s so fuzzy!
While I did manage to get something down on paper for every day in February, I didn’t actually journal each and every day. In fact, there were a couple strings of five days or more during which I completely forgot this project! Luckily, I had some tools (my calendar and Facebook timeline) to help me remember what the highlights of each day were so I could go back and add something in.
To help me remember to journal each night, I’ve packaged up the scrapbook and some tools in a shoulder bag and keep it next to my bed. This has been helping me remember to jot something down each night.
Below are before and after photos of the February page. I didn’t decorate the page very much (mostly because I was constantly playing catch up), but the page didn’t really cry out for much in the way of embellishment.
Before
After
Here is what the first two-page spread in the album looks like:
January and February
And here is the fresh March page:
March
I’m happy to report that I’m up-to-date on March posts (this photo was taken before today). I think this page will inspire me to decorate it a bit more than I did in February.
The Hill Featured on Eastern Shore Savvy
I provided some background for this article about a local school group that toured black history landmarks here in Easton, Md.
I did it! Not without some cheating, but I completely journaled the month of January for my 2013 scrapbook.
Here is what the page started out as on January 1:
And here is what it looks like now, January 31:
This was a lot of fun! The chance to reflect on my day was nice and I enjoyed finding little things to add to illustrate each day. I did have my lapses, including a five-day string in which I forgot to write down anything. I managed to remember enough tidbits to fill them out after the fact.
I’m looking forward to starting fresh tomorrow:
One of my missions during the holidays was to re-organize my office. After clearing off my crafting table, I was able to start a new scrapbooking project — a calendar for journaling. Basically, you write or draw a little something every day in the box that is typically devoted to a particular day on a monthly calendar. I got the idea off of Pinterest. Here’s the example that inspired me.
One of the advantages of being a Creative Memories consultant is that I always have plenty of scrapbooking materials to hand. I decided to make use of Picfolio album* and some coordinating paper packs to craft my calendar journal. I’ve created a calendar page for each month of 2013 and am previewing January here. I plan to share each month’s calendar page at the start and finish. It’s no small commitment when you say you are going to journal every single day, so I’m hoping that promising to post each month will motivate me to stick with it.
Here is what January’s page looked like after I laid down all of the days of the month and titled it:
And here is what it looked like after I did some more decorating and journaled on the first of the year:
In addition to journaling, I’m taking inspiration from some of the other journals I’ve seen and adding little mementos from each day. Yesterday, I added part of a wrapper from a yummy raspberry chocolate bar that I ate.
*BTW, we have an awesome album sale going on during the month of January!
I am happy to report that one of my clients has published Picnic for Twelve, a book about his parents and their growing family as they navigated The Great Depression and other events over the last century. If you are interested in the life of Irish-Americans during the 1900s, have Boston-area ancestors, or are just looking to read a cleverly written yarn, I highly recommend that you download the book for your Kindle or purchase a print copy.
I provided genealogical research support on the Driscoll and Sheehan families and read an early version of the manuscript. The author is a former editor of the Boston Globe and a great storyteller — I highly recommend this book!
