Yesterday’s POTD.

Porter sincerely asks me yesterday, Mama, don’t you think I should make books when I grow up?

For the record, I hope he never stops calling me Mama.

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For those of you who have been doing a monthly book with little students, I apologize that Project Life pushed this on the back burner for January, but here it is … our January layout. The focus? Computer time. I took a picture like this of each child in Porter’s class during their time in the computer lab this month.

No finished sample layout because I’m going to be doing that with the kiddos at school today.

The files, in a few different formats. Take your pick.

january.page.1.doc
january.page.2.doc
january.labels.doc

january.page.1.pages
january.page.2.pages
january.labels.pages

january.page.1.pdf
january.page.2.pdf
january.labels.pdf

And … since I’m delighted to welcome so many newbies to my blog these days … Here’s the background on this monthly school book that I’m doing with my son and his 1st grade classmates.

The Aug. 31st post is here, titled “school scrapbook” (includes background info, purpose of the project, supplies needed, etc.)

The Oct. 29th post is here, titled “school project” (includes pictures of completed pages to that point and also has all the downloads to that point).

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***Added Friday afternoon: Just got back from school. Here’s a completed layout.

A comment from “momoftwo” yesterday: Hi Becky – thanks for answering all of the Project Life questions. As much as I like Project Life, I miss the old Becky’s Blog … about your family, decorating style, recipes and all the other fun stuff we used to see.

Me too! Love, love, loving Project Life and all the chatter about it. So much to discuss and address in these first few weeks of everyone getting up and going with Project Life so obviously, that’s why my blog content is heavily steered in that direction. I’m doing my best to keep you all informed so that everyone feels comfortable as they get the ball rolling with their projects.

Now that the kits are now available at Amazon (hooray!) and the digital Project Life is launched (hooray!) … you’re going to see that Project Life content will be just an occasional mention here on my blog. Most of my attention will be turned back to other topics that I love to talk about: parenting, home, photography, organization, design, writing, celebrating relationships, personal & family history, gift-giving, recipes, creativity, cool finds, and other random topics.

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PLEASE REMEMBER: If you have a question about digital Project Life, there is a whole list of FAQs here. For customer support, send emails to support@ziblio.com or call 877-209-1560. Most of the questions I’m seeing are questions that are either already answered in the FAQs or can easily be answered by the fine folks at Ziblio.

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As I sign off on this post for today, I leave you with a POTD from last week. Porter is obsessed with Avatar. He asks us questions about it all the time. He watches the trailer over and over on my phone. He even wrote a letter to James Cameron, asking him to please change the rating to PG-7. Not kidding. And lately, he’s expressing his fascination in the form of post-it art.

Naturally, a very telling POTD. This is SO a part of our family’s little world right now.

[ this made me smile ]

[ winners ]

Speaking of smiling … here are the 3 randomly-chosen winners who will receive a free digital Project Life book, printed & delivered to your home when you’re ready. If you are one of these 3 lovely ladies, send an email to customerservice@beckyhiggins.com and we’ll hook you up.

1. Jamie in Wichita, Kansas
2. Rosa in Fort Kent, Maine
3. Aprile in Pekin, Illinois

[ digital update ]

So glad that so many of you are creating a digital Project Life book! We understand that there are a few technical issues and we wanted to let you know that we’re working on those. Specifically …

1. UN-DO. I know, I know, I know. We really do need an un-do button. I could not agree more. I assure you that Ziblio is checking into adding this feature.

2. VERTICAL PHOTOS. If you have tried to upload a vertical image and it’s looking stretched or otherwise not right when you go to add it to your book … the fine folks at Ziblio have figured out what has happened and they are fixing that as I write this. So expect that to be straightened out soon.

3. PHOTOS GETTING CUT OFF. If you are dragging your portrait images into the square frames and some of the image area is off the frame, this is how you fix that: Click on the image, go to edit photo and pan (move) the image into the center viewing area. You can also zoom the image in this feature.

NOTE: If you haven’t played around with the “edit photo” button, you should. It’s kind of hidden in the toolbox, but once you know about it, it’s so simple to use and you’ll want to use it all the time.

4. CROP TOOL. Do you want to re-shape the image frame? This can be done by placing an image that is larger than the frame and using the crop tool to re-shape it.

5. ENLARGING YOUR VIEW. When working on your digital PL book, you’ll notice the “big screen” icon in the top right corner of the window. Looks like this.

Click on that. If it still happens to not work, there are a couple of things you can try: 1) Increase the resolution on your monitor (like 1440 x 900) and then choose the big screen option in the book or 2) Choose full screen in your browser (F11) to see if that helps.

[ ordering multiple copies of your digital book ]

Q: Is there a discount if I order multiple books?

A: Yes. If you would like to order 3 or more books, you receive 10% your total order. If you pay before March 31, 2010 this 10% discount is in addition to the current 20% off promotion. That’s 30% off your entire order with the purchase of 3 or more books. Contact Ziblio (support@ziblio.com or 877.209.1560) and they will help you with your order.

FYI: Digital printing is different than offset printing in that we do not receive quantity discounts with additional copies from the printer. All books are at the same cost, no matter how many copies are ordered per order. This is because with digital printing and on-demand book making, every order is treated as individual items.

So many of you have taken a minute or two or ten out of your busy schedules to send me an email, telling me how Project Life is helping you. So many of you have taken time to write a testimonial, some which are posted here on Amazon. A handful of beautiful testimonials are found here in the Testimonials tab. And so many of you sent your happy pictures that I’ll soon be sharing with everyone.

What a special, special community this is. A Project Life community. I’m not sure what else to say, but thank you.

I have more comments, messages, and emails than I am able to personally respond to. But please know how much I appreciate it. It really does mean so much that you have taken the time to tell me how Project Life is making even a tiny piece of your life a little better.

In the spirit of gratitude, we would like to choose 3 random winners to receive a FREE printed Project Life book!

As you know, anyone and everyone can create an account and build a book for free. And you can print that book today or next week or later this year. Whenever you’re ready. And you can do this even if you’re not in the U.S. (woo hoo!) Right now we are offering a 20% discount to everyone if you want to pay now to have your book printed at a later date. All of this is found on the digital Project Life site.

But if you’d like to pay nothing and have us print your digital book completely for free (whether you print sooner or later) … leave a quick note in the Comments of this post.

Leave your first name, city and state and that’s it. If you leave an actual comment, I probably won’t see it because of the sheer volume of comments. We’ll announce 3 winners tomorrow – Wednesday.

The digital Project Life is new and exciting and different. And so you’re going to have a few questions. And that’s great!

May I suggest … no … May I strongly recommend that you please take a few minutes to do 2 important things? If you watch the instructional video and read through the FAQs, you will get all sorts of information and answers. This goldmine of information is found right HERE.

PS – I do believe I need to do another give-away here on the old blog. Has it been a while? Have I really been that busy? Well then, we will just need to do something about that.

Stay tuned. That’s coming up! : )

Yay!

Go check it out HERE. You’ll see a reorganized Project Life section of my website with fun new content and more thorough information, FAQs, etc.

This is a great time to share Project Life with friends & family who may benefit from knowing about this, especially with two versions now available: kit & digital.

Enough of this blog post. Go check it out!

It’s coming. TODAY is the day! I love that so many of you seem to be just as excited as I am about this.

This is my 5th blog post in one day. Probably a personal record. Yowsers.

So … I’ll get right to it. Short & sweet. I am pleased to share good news with all of you Canadian and other international customers. We are in the process of making arrangements for you to be able to order Project Life from a Canadian distributer (who is now your new best friend, right?)

We still need to firm up some details and those available kits still need to make their way across the big ocean, so it will be another few weeks or so, but … BUT … you’ll have the option to order Project Life!

Please understand that we have been working crazy-hard to take care of all the existing orders and dealing with so many shipping issues (hence the immense love we have for Amazon right now) … that we are only now able to get this figured out. We hear you. We know you were disappointed with the news of Amazon not doing international shipping. We love our international customers. We are so grateful to see that there is now a solution for you.

More details to come. Of course.

So … Amazon called us. Our contact there had us get online and look at Amazon.com’s list of Bestsellers. See where this is going? I’m really not sure what to think … it’s crazy.

Project Life is the #1 Bestseller in the Home & Garden category of Amazon.com right now. Move over fancy cutting boards! There’s a Project Lifer in the house.

I’m quite certain this guy isn’t super familiar with the passionate side of us scrapbookers. So he was baffled at the sales today. And even though he couldn’t verify for sure, he said he wouldn’t be surprised if we were only outsold by the Kindletoday.

So that was only his guess. It’s not fact. But just for kicks — let’s pretend it’s true. : ) How fun is that!?

So thank you, guys. I’ve said it already, but I’ll say it again. Thank you for your support as we start up this little company of ours and pursue a little dream. Thank you for joining me as we all strive to tell our story and our family’s story. Thank you for catching the vision that Project Life truly can enrich our ability to recognize the blessings in our life.

Thank you for riding this ride with us.

Coming up next: FAQs about the digital Project Life.

The inventory showed up at the Amazon warehouse this morning. It’s the middle of the afternoon and Amazon has already fulfilled hundreds of Project Life orders. Fulfilled as in … they have shipped already!

That’s what I’m talking about, folks.

You’ll notice the black button to the right of my blog. That’s where you can click to buy Project Life any time now.