It’s not called Project Kids or Project Mama or Project I’m-a-Parent or Project These-are-my-Offspring.
It’s called Project LIFE because it’s about YOUR LIFE. Whatever your life is. Whatever your stage of life. Whatever your family circumstances. Whatever your lifestyle. Project Life is designed to help anyone + everyone get their pictures into a book.
There are many of you without kids. Maybe you’re a single adult, or married without kids, or empty-nesters, or maybe you’re still a kid yourself!
Project Life is for you too.
Here is a little inspiration to get your wheels turning.
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Amanda + her husband Landen live in Ohio, have been married for 4 years, and are expecting their first child. Amanda made a video of her Project Life album here. Amanda said, When I decided to take the plunge in November of last year and order your kit I had no idea what changes my life would bring about to document. In June we sold our house, in July we found out we are expecting our first child, and in August I lost my grandma and my cousin within two weeks of each other. It is all documented in my album and I am so grateful that I took the time and the energy to start and continue this album. Some parts of it has been challenging, and some parts have been hysterical, but is is ALL our life and I love it. I love that we started the album as just a normal couple without kids, and now the album is becoming a “family” album as I include ultrasound pictures, belly pics, etc.
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Wendy Copley of Northern California is a wife + mother and does plenty of family documentation. But this year she is embarking on a new project that isn’t about the kids. It’s about … (gasp!) … HER! That’s right. Wendy is turning 40 next year and has decided to devote an entire album to who she is and what she’s about. You can see more about her project here.
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Taunia in Estevan, SK Canada said, I started Project Life the first year you released it and have been doing it ever since I got engaged and married in my first Project Life, which makes for a very special book. This year I have focused on taking pictures of everyday things:
What we made for supper
Books I was reading
Crafts and seasonal decor I did around the house
Online clothing purchases
My desk at work
Oprah’s Finale Show!
I did a whole layout about the TV shows we watch from week to week. It will be nice for our kids to look back on and see what we watched back in 2011! I also did a layout on blogs I read.
Project Life has changed the way I take pictures. I have hooked several of my friends on Project Life and we never miss taking a POTD. Thank you Becky for this wonderful way to document life.
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Janet White + her husband live in the Pikes Peak Region, Colorado. She says, I might write, blog or sketch. I may wander outside and record the life I find in my field journal. I might spend time documenting this amazing life I lead. I might wander back through the geysers of Yellowstone through research and the photos I’ve taken – they are ever on my mind and in my heart. I might cook or bake or nurture our home life. I believe life is savored more deeply when creating. Creating leaves little room for drama, whining or complaining, but opens the door to deep gratitude for a life lived fully.
Check out Janet’s Snow Moon Photography blog for stunning photography inspiration.
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Molly Doolan in Smithville, Missouri says, I am single in the sense that I’m not married and don’t have any children, but I do have a boyfriend of 5 years who lives 4 hours away and a pretty cute dog that is featured heavily in my album. Also, my mom has been battling melanoma for awhile now, so without meaning to, I’ve been tracking her progress via my album for the past 10 months. It’s amazing to see the difference in her appearance in January (when she was just beginning to regrow her hair) and now (she looks perfectly healthy, and is on her way to being completely in remission)! I’m so glad I decided to buy an album to record what I thought were mundane things in life, because I’m beginning to realize it’s the little things that matter the most.
A typical week for me includes photographing something for school (I started a 1 year accelerated nursing program in May), a picture of my dog Bella, something that captures the season, a craft project I’m working on, a picture of someone in my family, some sort of meal we’ve made, and then pictures of whatever my boyfriend and I find to do together on the weekends. I also stick in current events within the week. The invitation I received to an Oscar Party and my ballot for the night, an article from CNN about some big event – Prince William & Catherine’s wedding, the death of Osama bin Laden, the Casey Anthony trial, etc. That’s one of my favorite aspects of Project Life!
Thank you so much for creating a product that is so easy to use! With my hectic school schedule I thought for sure I wouldn’t be able to keep it up, but just a few minutes a day means that I’ll be able to remember those “little” details for years to come!
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Jocelyn in Calgary, Alberta, Canada is a mother but is using Project Life go back and get the “good ol’ days into a book. She says, I originally started Project Life-ing as a way to capture the first year of my son’s life without the hassle of scrapbooking layouts. I enjoyed the ease and simplicity of what I was creating so much that I decided to back-track in our lives to when my husband and I first met. I realised there were so many moments in our lives before our son was born that were sitting on the backup hard drive in our safe in the basement. They weren’t in albums, or my scrapbooks, or even on our current computer. I had to do some serious digging, but now have created our Family Book – straight from the beginning of our family – when my husband and I met!
This is one of my favourite layouts. Our lives pre-baby included a lot of camping and hiking trips in the mountains, engagements, weddings, and buying our first home together. So many memories which would’ve gotten lost if I didn’t back-track with Project Life. I am now into my second album and celebrating our little moments together – not just remembering the big ones. We are due with our second bebe in 12 weeks, and will have many more moments together – all to be documented in our Family’s LifeBook.
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Casey von Stein in Minneapolis, Minnesota has been documenting her life this year and loves every bit of it. She chose the digital version of Project Life (shown above) and kept it very simple – just adding her pictures and journaling to the already-designed photo book. ***As a reminder, this simple digital photobook format will continue, but now we have partnered up with Shutterfly, which will be available by the end of this year. What you see above was created in the Ziblio format, which is no longer available for new projects.
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Shannon Troester in Connecticut is devoted to documenting her life and all the little bits + pieces that come with life. She shares her perspective: I want my kids to be able to look back and see what life was like for mommy and daddy before they even got here. I would love to be able to look into my mom’s life before she had kids!
This, my friends, is a perspective I know many of us have. Think about what you would love to see from your parents’ younger years (or your grandparents, etc.). That’s the kind of stuff you want to be sure you document.
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You can find oodles of inspiration from Christine Newman in San Diego, California. She says, I started Project Life in April this year and I absolutely love it! I’ve been telling all my friends how much I love this process of documenting life. I’ve been married to my super-awesome husband for 17 years and we don’t have children. We live a very full life and I love documenting it in my Project Life album. Thanks for creating this wonderful product for such a reasonable price. Everyone who has seen my album love that the photos are printed out and life is documented. They all love looking through it.
Check out all of Christine’s Project Life layouts on her blog – List Girl.
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Leanne Butler in Canada has such a neat story: My husband and I do not have children. He, like your husband, is very supportive of me and my career. He shows up quite often in the pages of my Project Life and usually is quick to say when we go somewhere “Better get your photo now!”
I always knew growing up that I wanted to be a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer and I achieved that goal at 19 and have so far served 23 years as a Police Officer. I use my Project Life to document the various things I have gotten to do in my community. I have an awesome career and what a way to remember it forever. I am one of 4 women on a 80 person riot team so shots of our last training are in my pages. Boy I wish I had Project Life for the last 19 years! I keep my Project Life up to date all the time and share it with all my friends and family who are tickled pink when they find themselves in the pages!
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I so love that my mom is a devoted Project Lifer. My parents are in their sixties and “doing their thing” in this retired stage of life – serving a second mission right now, grandchildren, travels, community service, etc. They are so good about taking pictures and my mom has become an excellent daily journaler. I am super proud of them, and thankful for the stories they are recording. This was taken while they were serving a mission in Finland, where my mom faithfully kept up with their Project Life book. There are remarkable things recorded in this album. And yes, she is still keeping up with it.
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Okay, I’ll stop here for now. I hope this is super inspirational for anyone reading this that may have doubts about the worth of documenting life … or who are unsure about what to document.
On a personal note, I was 17 years old and single when I started scrapbooking. I was young and single and had plenty to document. I went on to college, married David, and continued to scrapbook. A lot. My work, college, our friends, our newlywed life and extended family and travels and cars and bills and everyday life. In fact, we were married for more than 7 years before Porter joined our family. All those years I had a lot to photograph, a lot to write about, a lot to document. I have tons of scrapbooks from those years and I am so grateful.
Documenting life is not for just one group of people or one generation or one lifestyle.
Everyone has a story.
Tags: childless, empty nester, Project Life, single
Just beautiful:)
Oh wow that so beautiful! Thanks so mutch!
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!
Gosh, I can’t say that enough. I firmly believe that there is so much to document in a person’s life, even if they are single, without children, without pets, whatever…life is life and it’s so worth recording. That being said…there’s not a lot out there in the way of inspiration for people like me. I’m married, I have a couple of really cute dogs, and even some farm animals to take pictures of, but it is SO inspiring to see what other kinds of things people include in their Project Life albums. Don’t get me wrong – I love seeing pictures of families and children too, but it’s great that you’ve done this post today. SO helpful!!
Thanks again Becky – you’re the best!
SOOOO inspiring and wonderful. I ♥ seeing how other people use Project Life, b/c it helps give me ideas.
Thank you so much for doing a whole post on this. Being married w/ no kids I have a hard time sometimes envisioning what I would document daily. I’ve done a week in the life and it was so awesome – just wasn’t sure I could pull off a whole year. I am going to look at these other books tonight when I get home (lunch hour just isn’t long enough!) and hopefully I’ll get enough courage to take the plunge.
It was so refreshing to see so many pages without kids!! I do have kids and I love them dearly, but I definitely want to document being a person who has several interests other than my children *gasp* oh the horror! ha ha Thanks!!
I would like to thank you SO MUCH for this post!!!
I just recently purchased my FIRST Project Life kit and am so incredibly excited to start it in January!! I, too, have been a scrapbooker since high school (now in my early twenties) and think I was mostly inspired by keepsakes from my grandparents after they had passed. I had no idea what an avid scrapbooker my grandmother was until I found myself completely lost in learning more about what life was like for them long before I was around through things like receipts, church bulletins, newspaper clippings, postcards, journaling/notes and of course, photographs. Now, I have books to document my family life, high school years, college years, early adulthood (first job, first apartment of my own, etc) and various trips (study abroad, volunteer trips, vacations). It has gotten to the point that when I am out with my boyfriend or friends and family, they are actually helping me look for items to include in my layouts! (pamphlets, tickets, maps, etc)
Someday, I hope to have a family of my own and know that when that time comes, my scrapbooks may take on a different look, but for now, I am so grateful for this stage of my life, because I know every stage makes us who we are and helps to create the life we live.
THANK YOU for a product that recognizes that and for following it up with inspiration for everyone!
I am a married, empty nester who began PL last week – to track a new beginning in my life – weight loss surgery – sooo excited to use this format to help me attain my new healthy life – of course I imagine my 5 grankids will show up in the book occassionally!!!! hehe Thank you for your wonderful talent and the ability to share!!!
awesome inspiration post for non-kid PL-ers (like me)!! All these inspirational posts are really great as I wind up my first year doing PL and really thinking about how I want to make it work for year 2!!
<3
Awesome awesome post! You have completely inspired me. I have done PL 2 years in a row. Both albums mostly revolve around the kids, which I love. Next year, I’m going to be a little selfish and it is going to be all about ME. Love it!!!
I love this post. Thanks Becky. I have 2 kids at home and a lot of our project book revolves around them, but after reading this post I think next year I will try to include more of the hubby, myself, and other friends and family. What a great idea. I hope next year that you will include YOUR project life photos. I know you do the digital format, but I would love to see your pictures and journaling. Will you think about it please???? Perhaps you could post them on a weekly basis
Huge fan of project life. You have literally changed and saved my scrapbooking life!
thanks for the wonderful reminder and inspiration to many – what a great variety of Project Lifers!
I absolutely LOVE this post. VERY inspirational !!!
Thanks so much for all your work !!!
You know there is so much reality (non-reality) tv and the hype of fame and celebrity, one could get caught up in the importance of that status…but that is not reality by any means. Reality is the little daily note that says “I love you” in my husband’s lunch, the FB picture of Avery hugging her little stuffed monster, the marque at the theater that declares “TWILIGHT…NEW DAWN”, the 5 pounds of tomatoes that my friend, Zana, harvested from her garden. We record our history because we know we are reality. all of it. Thanks, Becky & crew, for a vehicle for any one to do that…
Amen. Great post.
So many wonderful ideas in this post. I can’t wait to dig in! Thanks!
(And thanks for including me!)
What a wonderful and inspiring post!
My teenage daughter used Project Life for her last two years of high school. I can’t imagine how incredibly cool this will be for her to look back on as well as any future generations.
Thank you for creating a product that can work for everyone, for documenting anything.
That settles it. I was thinking of doing PL as a book for just myself. I love Wendy Copley’s approach and am totally inspired to capture my real self. I love that I can fill this one in over time.
Then my 11 year old daughter wants to do one of her own. Then I think I’ll do a family one, which will be more POTD style.
I hope I’m not biting off more than I can chew, but I now feel the freedom of doing a weekly approach to this as a family AND go at my own pace for myself.
Thanks for the inspiration! Totally excited and the PL posts of the last month have completely changed my perspective on how to approach PL in a more do-able way. This is fantastic.
“Project These are My Offspring” = my favorite giggle of the day!
Thank you so much for this , makes me feel better about doing mine for only 2 people
My life in little details…yeah, why not? There is no better person to tell it but ME! Thanks for the inspiration!
These stories are so inspirational. I too have been using project life to go back in time and document the adventures from my childhood, teen, college and early married days. I am sure my children will enjoy reading about what mom and dad got into back in the “olden days”
I am so inspired that my next PL (in addition to the family album of course) will be PROJECT JUST ME! LOL
Thanks Becky, you read my mind! The first thing I did was go through your creative team to see if there were any ‘single’ people…. I love these suggetions about tv shows and routines. I can remember my grandparents routines (the parts I was party to), but would love something like this to look at. I also like the idea of backtracking and documenting the past as well as the present.
Things change so fast, we forget the details.
I am so thrilled that I have been using Project Life even though I don’t have kids! I also love these ideas! I think next year I would like to record more memories of our home, it may be the last year that we live here.
Its funny how people comment about their everyday life as ‘mundane, boring, not exciting’. That describes life most of the time! Like another poster said, we are not rich celebrities living a fancy life. Life is full of the ‘everyday’ with bursts of excitement mixed in. I have a photocopy of a diary my grandpa kept that is absolutely fascinating. It is not paragraphs of thoughts and feeling. It is: May 1st, big storm knocked the shed over. May 4th, bought new tires for $72. June 17, Celebrated Jill’s 6th birthday. There are pages and pages and it is incredibly interesting. My grandparents didn’t have a lot of money to go on trips, etc but there was plenty to document. BTW, I am single with no kids and find plenty to photograph. And if I don’t have a POTD, no biggie. Project Life is what I make it.
where have you been all my scrapping life?! I so wish i would have scrapped like this sooner! I am starting with the digital version and I am getting my 16 year old daughter the paper version for Christmas!
Thank you so much for this post. We have no children but I still do Project Life. I sometimes feel like why bother, my dogs can’t look at my albums! LOL. But then I think about how much I enjoy them, and when other family members visit how much they enjoy flipping through them. And also how much I wish I had Project Life 15 years ago at the start of our marriage. I would love to have pictures of the apartments we lived at, the neighborhoods we lived in, our favorite places to eat, our favorite foods etc.
Thank you for this. Often times single people have a tendency to feel that life doesnt begin until there are children. Wrong! There is so much I want ton remember from this time in my life and now I’m kicking myself for not having started sooner. Now is the time!
Awesome post! I love project life and have documented so many things not anticipated in my life. I am 53 years old and an empty nester. Retired from nursing due to a stroke at 48. I have done project life for the past 2 years and LOVE it! My first year my mother in law died, My fathers alscheimers became more pronounced, my son got married, and we downsized to a condo. Big events which are simply documented. THANK YOU for this awesome way to help us record our lives. It has also been an instrument for healing.
I’d love to do Project Life next year but I think it will have to wait a year – I have holidays to save up for! Although I will try to get more everyday photographs to scrapbook and I plan on making a few mini albums…. my own take on Project Life.
Thanks for the great inspiration today!! Even though I do have a son and love him dearly, I do still have a husband, dog, bills, and hobbies.
Its great to see what others are including and be able to “oh yeah I could…”.
Wow so excited to be a part of your blog today – thanks for making my day! …and my own PL today’s shot of course is a screen shot of your blog! I love seeing all the different styles was a great idea to share all these-thanks!
Leanne Butler
I love love this post, it’s my new favorite now. So much fun to read all these different families using PL and how they make it work. I totally agree that you don’t have to be married or have kids, it’s for anyone. My biggest wish would be to go back in time so my mom could have done this for my childhood and for hers. She loves my PL and what it represents and wishes she had known to do this back then. My second wish is that I could have done this about my husband and I before the kids. We did so much back then and I only have a few pictures to show the kids. They would have loved to have seen more.
So anyone who is still in doubt please please know that PL works for everybody and at whatever age. It’s never to early or late to start on this wonderful project. I love mine more and more each year I do it.
My favorite here was the lady doing this all about HER!! I would love to do that. So now I will have one for me, one for my high schooler, one for the family. Looking forward to doing them all.
Thank you Becky and partners for bringing this into our lives!!
Hi Becky-
I noticed above on the post about Digital PL no longer being offered thru Ziblio. I have a digital PL I am stillworking on (and may be for a while). Will I still be able to purchase / print it?
Yes, customers who already were working on a book or pre purchased a book through Ziblio will still be able to finish!
Hi Becky!
This is a really great post and seems very timely since I just received my PL page protectors in the mail yesterday. I am pretty excited to begin Project Life…even though I’m pretty late to the party:) Documenting my childless family has always been wonderful for me but perplexing to others…I am happy to see so many different types of people coming together and embracing the Project Life philosophy…especially since so many of us felt sort of left out when it came to traditional scrapbooking. I LOVE the simple inclusive spirit of Project Life…now I just need to get my husband doing it;)
hi becky! i wanted to quickly share a project life story as well – in addition to using PL myself, i also gave a kit to my au pair (fanny) on the first day she arrived at our house last year. fanny loved using it to record her activities and thoughts on a a daily basis – and it was a fun way for her to incorporate journaling, pictures and memorabilia all in one place. she had to return to france in september after being in the US for a little over a year, and i know that her PL album was one of her most treasured keepsakes she had from her year spent in the US … i think it was the PERFECT thing to get as a gift for her, and i plan on doing the same for anyone embarking on a new adventure (college, year abroad, new marriage, etc)
thanks becky!
Finally so ready to take the plunge…..can not find the album!…:(
Thank you for the inspiration for those of us who are just a couple with a pup. This is a great reminder that we have stories to preserve too…
Well Becky,you have done it to me again! As I am reading these my eyes have tears. I am disabled from a stroke and severe health issues that force me to stay at home many times and miss family activities at the last moment that I was really looking forward to. before this unexpected event (still to retype so if there are spell issues here I am sorry) at the aga of 39 I was a single mother to a delighted daughter and clinical social worker who traveled and lived Disney. Now there are so many times when I instead have to say, “be sure to take some pictures for me while yu are there” as I hand my camera to my daughter when she walks out the door. There are good days and now and then I get to work up to the good things in life. (One of them was a dream bucket list when I got to meet a favorite author, fav star, and my tv guru all when I went to see Oprah last year when Julia Roberts and Liz Gilbert was there for Eat, Pray, and Love and even got a few moments with Liz after the show to talk!).
There are times there are gaps in Project Life, but the stories today remind me of other ways I can use my Project Life. Yes I use the stories of my daughter from events I miss, I document my feelings because of things I miss. I document my response to life events, big and small that happen in our worlds, and of the course the funny moments at home.
Thank you for the inspiration today. It reminds me of how I can use Project Life to get all those older potos out of the boxes and into these as a Diary of My Life. Maybe that would be good to remind me to appreciate the goodness that God gave me over my life. I think I am going to use another one (with those classy new albums you are designing) as the heritage album I have been putting off completing, since I am the family genealogist.
Thank you again Becky for the gift of “Cultivating a Good Life.”
Great to see all this ideas. I’ll start my own project life from january 2012. I’m lucky to have a 1yo son, but ofcourse you can do a project life also if you don’t have kids. Project life is about yóur life
Thanks for sharing this Becky!
This is a great post! I just had a baby four months ago (four months already???) and I have to admit that before now, I didn’t really think our lives were very… scrap-able. But now that I am looking at it, I wish that I had had something like Project Life when we got married five plus years ago. I wish I had documented the everyday things, because now I am sure my memory of them isn’t as immediate as it was then—graduating college, getting married, all the adventures we had just the two of us. I can’t wait until Clementine kit and the black binder get released, because I’ve only got the page protectors to go with right now… But this was a great post, thanks for showcasing all the great uses.
You know, this kit would also make a great end of school year gift from a class to a teacher.
I have wanted to do an “about me” scrapbook for the longest time. I have been gathering ideas and photos for a couple of years without knowing how i was going to pull it all together. I have pre-ordered (i am in Australia) project life to do an “about me”album. I think this is the perfect medium to get it all down. I don’t care about chronological order, i just want my 5 yr old daughter to be able to know me better. I have found myself in the “single mum” category and can’t wait to start documenting all the changes we have gone through. Good and bad it makes up our life and i am happy that i now have a way to document it.
Thankyou Becky
I am coming to the end of my second Project Life album, and it is so true that it is not until you look back at the pages you really realise how fantastic it is to capture all of those little moments. You see things looking at the album that at the time you did not. Thank you Becky, you are amazing.
Anyone know of a tutorial on how to write on just the journaling cards and print them in photoshop. they look great but I dont know how to get text on them etc.
I only can say: beautiful!!
Fabulous post for us empty nesters! This is so what I’m doing next year. Maybe not a day by day, but certainly a week by week. Again-awesome post! Thank you.
Hello there!
Have been reading your blog off and on for awhile and also have gotten inspired by Ali Edwards too for this Project Life. I appreciate your writing about this being Project Life…..not project kids or such. My hubby and I have recently become empty nesters. I have been really thinking about doing this but thought maybe there was not enough to say for this. So I went to take a look at the new designers……I am sure they are all wonderful……in fact I took a look at all there websites……very nice inspiration. But I must say I was a little disappointed to see that none of them are empty nesters or without children…….it would be nice to see for inspiration. Just a thought……
Thanks, Amy
Becky –
I’m single with no kids (except my nieces and nephews). I was thinking last night how I wanted to make next year more like a true journal rather than so much of the “what I did today” viewpoint because I get stuck with this feeling like a ritual of boring stuff. I also see so many album ideas that I’ll never get done. I thought it might be easier to try to do daily themes to help:
Spiritual Sunday – I can take gospel themes, things I learned at church or personal study and reflect.
Media Monday – Something going on in the world that I can comment about.
Grati-Tuesday – Focus on something I’m grateful for
Workin’ Wednesday – My job is a lot of my life so I can focus on this week’s project or big idea
This Week Thursday – This reduces the pressure of a picture a day to at least one in a week.
Favorites Friday – Pretty obvious, but I think it would be fun to see how my favorites change.
“Sense”-itive Saturday – I found an album idea to focus on things I’m watching, I’m listening to, I’m smelling and I thought that might be fun.
I may not do this every week, and the ideas are still a work in progress but it will help fill the gaps when I don’t quite know what to do.
Anyway – if others have ideas – I would LOVE to hear them!
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