Stating that Project Life can save the world … maybe that’s a little dramatic. But humor me for just a moment.

There was an article in the New York Times that was published about a month ago. One of our readers/customers brought it to our attention, and for that I am very grateful. It’s called The Stories That Bind Us. I invite you to read it. Really.

I’m not going to pull a bunch of quotes, review the article, or repeat what the author shared. That’s why you need to read it. But I can’t help but feel a strong sense of community among those of us who have this love for documenting life. There’s just something about it, know what I mean? But have you taken the time to really think about WHY it means so much to you and your family?

Many of you have. Many of you have identified exactly what it means to your family – and specifically what Project Life means to you, because of the back-to-basics approach of putting pictures and stories together in a simple, do-able format. We receive testimonials every day from Project Lifers. Some are traditional families living traditional lives. Some are empty-nesters and others are single adults. We even hear from teenagers once in a while! We also hear from cancer survivors. We hear from those who are helping someone with a terminal illness record their life, using Project Life. We hear from those who have struggled in various ways, and they have found that recording the little moments of their life reminds them of how blessed they are.

In context of this New York Times article, I also had a very interesting experience over the weekend. If you follow my picture-sharing on instagram, facebook, or twitter, you may have noticed that we received our 2012 Higgins Family Yearbooks, which I create using the Project Life designs on Shutterfly. It’s something I’ll blog about in more detail soon. I know you have questions – which is great, and I’m excited to share more about this with you.

But here’s what I experienced: I sat the kids down and was totally a dork mom “presenting” the new Family Yearbooks to them (we print a copy for each child). In that moment, and based on their reaction, I realized that they hadn’t really been very familiar with our Family Yearbooks. Their individual scrapbooks that are all about them? Yes. But these Family Yearbooks that show more of them in the context of our family unit – and so many pictures of friends and extended family and the world around us? Nope. They really hadn’t seen them much at all lately and in fact, kind of forgot we had them.

Shame on me. I have been keeping these books on a shelf that has cupboard doors – you know, to keep them nice. To keep them in good shape. We have little friends over all the time so perhaps I didn’t want too many little hands messing up the pages. Who knows. It doesn’t matter. What I learned was what I read in their faces for the next 20 minutes or so, as their noses were practically pressed in the pages of these books. They were glued. They were entertained. They were incredibly reminiscent.

What they – as young children – don’t necessarily understand right now, is something that we as adults should understand. By having these memories and these stories recorded, children are truly building up their sense of belonging. Their self worth increases. Having journals, photos books, scrapbooks … I don’t care what method you use … can absolutely strengthen the family, which is undeniably the most important unit in society. And with stronger families, we have fewer problems. And that’s how we can save the world.  : )

But seriously – do you feel what I’m feeling? It’s remarkable. Most of you reading this are documenting life in some way. That is awesome. The key for all of us, is to be sure that our families can enjoy this documentation. And this is precisely why Project Life is creating such a movement. We’re all busy. Most of us don’t have time to spent 3 hours a day creating elaborate layouts. Project Life takes so much confusion and guesswork out of the equation and we are honored to be the memory-keeping system of choice for so many.

I have to point out something. I know without a doubt that some of you might have that feeling of guilt. I hate guilt. It’s not cool. Please do not feel guilty if you have not been recording your story or writing in journals or taking lots of pictures or putting pictures and stories together in books. That’s not the point of this post. Please join me in feeling MOTIVATED – not guilty.

I felt incredible motivation after watching my kids pick up their Family Yearbooks over and over and over this weekend. So much that I finished up another year (2009) that was still unfinished. Now 4 copies of that book are on their way too! I feel motivated to get to David’s childhood and my childhood books. And our family history books. And other projects that are all story-telling and life-documenting related projects. Of course it’s not all going to happen at once.

But it’s not going to happen at all – unless you choose to feel motivated. I want to help strengthen the family. I want to ease your burdens. I want to continue hearing your success stories of how you’re cultivating a good life and recording it. Anyone is welcome – at any time – to share how Project Life is helping them.

<< projectlife@beckyhiggins.com >>

I’ll close by quoting the closing line of the New York Times article that seriously, I think you should read:

“The bottom line: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your family’s positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the odds that your family will thrive for many generations to come.”

The post before this one shows 15-year-old Ele’s Mini Album. This is her 13-year-old brother Thomas. His goal in life is to be famous, so today – I am making him famous. He is famous for being one of the coolest kids on the planet. He is kind-hearted, good-natured, hard-working, smart as a whip, athletic, musical, helpful … and he wants to be a summer intern for our business.  ; )

But you know what makes him especially cool right now? He just documented all about his life – his likes + dislikes, skills, interests, extracurricular activities, goals, grades, friends, even his weekend routine … and he used Aunt Becky’s Project Life Mini Album (the Midnight color) and a Childhood Mini Kit: Wellington Edition. So he has serious bonus points with me right now.

PLUS — He is setting a fantastic example to young men everywhere. Documenting life by jotting down some notes and putting them together with pictures? That’s just awesome sauce (says me – not him – because I am not current with what kids say these days).

We approached this little Spring Break project the same way we did with Ele (check out the steps in her post). This whole thing really took all of a couple of hours so it’s not even a “big” project. It’s fun. It’s easy. It’s self-esteem-boosting. And it spans across all ages.

NOTE 1: The prompts on the Childhood Mini Kits are designed and worded in a way that offers FLEXIBILITY. A parent can write on these cards about their child or a child can write on these cards about themselves or an adult can write on these cards about their childhood past.

NOTE 2: We currently have 3 editions of the Childhood Mini Kit – Mayfield, Bridgeport, Wellington. Same prompts. Same versatility. Even a lot of similar design. Just different colors.

NOTE 3: The Childhood Mini Kits come with 100 cards (80 are 3×4 and 20 are 4×6 and they’re all double-sided for even more versatility). But they do not “have” to be paired with a Project Life Mini Album. In fact, my main purpose in developing these Mini Kits is to be used in a child’s “regular” 12×12 albums – if that’s what you do. I’ll be sharing more inspiration for that in the coming weeks.

We’ve had family with us all week. Such a party. We love when they come. And … we’ve been in the midst of another party called the Mini Album Love Fest (*wink*) … so you can imagine that there was no way I could resist encouraging my teenage niece and nephew to whip up their own Mini Album.

Ele and Thomas couldn’t really escape my prodding – I mean, they came to Aunt Becky’s for Spring Break. What do you expect? But let’s be honest. They actually did enjoy this and, oh my stars, can you imagine how cool this time capsule of their life will be – and how much more meaningful it will become – in 5, 10, 30 years? There is so much awesomeness in documenting life and I so wish we saw more kids doing this.

In this post I’m sharing Ele’s Mini Album and I’ll share Thomas’ in the next post. Ele chose the Kiwi Mini Album and the Childhood Mini Kit: Mayfield Edition.

How we pulled it together:

STEP 1. Ele went through her cell phone pictures and chose a bunch of random shots that represent her life right now as a 15-year-old just “doing her thing”.

STEP 2. I helped her take a handful additional pictures of details that would really help illustrate the story of who she is and what’s going on in her life right now.

STEP 3. We uploaded and printed the photos locally (I would have chosen Persnickey Prints but we needed the one-hour pick-up time in this scenario).

STEP 4. Spreading all her photos out, Ele chose some of the Prompt Cards from the Mayfield Mini Kit and started writing.

STEP 5. Ele “matched” notes that she wrote on the cards with photos. Some were a great fit, but of course she wrote about some things that she didn’t have a picture for (yet) and she had a few pictures that didn’t have journaling yet (which she later was able to complete with the more “generic”, non-prompt cards that come in the Childhood Mini Kits).

STEP 6: She started slipping everything into pockets. Photos and cards. That’s it. No embellishing. No techniques. No fussing will a million products. She’s far too busy for that – you know, with all the instagramming and texting and laying by the pool this week.  : )

Those pens are the Project Life Pens that were sold on HSN, and coming to stores and online next month. Okay – here is her album! This is all about Ele right now. Not a full history of her life. Not the past couple of years. Right here, right now. BAM.

Ele is truly an impressive young woman. I love everything about her (except that she’s growing up too fast on me and she is already a couple inches taller than me! She was a baby yesterday.) But seriously, this girl is smart. She can sing. She has a heart made of gold. She has a passion for special needs kids. And – she has the best laugh on the planet.

PS – That’s her brother Thomas who also did his own Mini Album. And Crew, half-dressed, coloring on “Becky Cards” as he calls them. I have lots and lots of cards to add to Crew’s album.  ; )

I have this friend Allison. If you follow me on facebook or twitter, or instagram you may have noticed the big Texas sheet cake filled with my favorite chocolate mint brownies that she delivered to us this week? Yeah. Allison. As in Awesome Allison. But you know why else she’s awesome?

Allison and her family pulled off a wonderful surprise party for her parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. Lots of friends and family; they were totally surprised. Allison pulled together this Guest Book with dual purpose. Purpose #1: Have a place for everyone to write their memories and sentiments and notes of love to Clyde & Claudia. Purpose #2: Have a place to put pictures from the party.

Obviously the best idea ever is to blend these 2 elements so that in one pretty little album (the Midnight Mini Album, to be specific). And that’s what she did. Allison also used some cards from the Clementine Core Kit. Can you imagine what this means to Clyde & Claudia? So much love packed in one little book. I love this.

I absolutely love the recent assignment that Porter and his fellow 4th graders completed. They were studying the American Revolution and they had to create an ABC book, using their 4th grade knowledge but presenting the information so that 1st graders would understand what they’re reading. In fact, every 1st grader in the school received the actual finished product from a 4th grader. How cool is that?

As you might imagine, we just printed duplicates of everything so that we could keep a copy of this for our family. We used a Cherry Mini Album and found all the images online, thanks to google. Porter researched what to write about each person/place/battle/event and we typed it out. He drew each letter of the alphabet.

Everything in the Mini Album is 3×4 and 4×6 of course. My tip for getting all the text centered? Just set up a Word document (I use Pages on a Mac) and create text boxes that are just slightly larger than 3×4 and 4×6 so that when you trim those down, you have the exact sizes you need.

Also, I chose to center the text top/bottom as well as left/right for all the cards. Here’s how I set up the images and text box for what we slipped into the title page.

Yes, this was a family effort. No, we still don’t know what grade he got on the project.

…..

You can imagine our delight when we heard of 10-year-old Gavin taking the very same approach on a different topic! Check this out.

His ABC book is in a Kiwi Mini Album. This is what Gavin’s mom Jessica shared with us:

Each year at Gavin’s school they have an Arts & Academics Expo and each year I encourage my kids to choose a project to do. They have a lot of different categories to choose from and Gavin has entered a project every year since Kindergarten (he is now in 4th grade). He has done construction projects (building structures out of Legos), a science project (charting the accuracy of weather predictions), and photography (taking and submitting a photo).

This year he decided to do a historical project. He started reading the “Percy Jackson & the Olympians” series of books this winter and became interested in Greek mythology. So for his expo project, he decided to do a historical look at Poseidon, who is his favorite Greek god. He started doing his research and hadn’t yet decided the best way to display his information, until I happened to be on Facebook and saw your picture of your son’s ABC mini album.

Inspiration struck and I showed Gavin the post. He thought it was a really great idea and liked the idea of an ABC album to showcase his information about Poseidon. He thought it was something that no one else would do, so it would make his project unique. I quickly ordered the album from Amazon, had it 2 days later, and Gavin went to work on putting it all together. He wrote the ABC cards and Terms on 3×4 Journaling Cards, and then we worked together to type up the text and insert photos on the 4×6 cards.

The expo was on March 21st, and the judges were very impressed with his presentation.