For so many of us it’s that time again: Back-to-school. This means back to a more consistent schedule, an earlier bedtime, and usually a quieter house for some chunk of time during the day. It also means that order, routine, and organization are totally on the brain. They’re my little magic words right now. Focus words.

For the love of all things orderly, here are a few projects going on around here:

[ LABEL-HAPPY ] You know I was all giddy labeling every single thing that we packed in Porter’s backpack. Love my label maker.

[ MEAL-PLANNING ] I asked you guys last week to share your meal-planning systems and boy, did you ever. Thank you! Tons of great input, and plenty of you relating to this desire to be better organized about planning and carrying out meals. I haven’t even made it through all the detailed comments but something that popped up over and over was e-mealz. Many of you are using this online service and the Higgins are giving it a try! Thanks for the recommendation. We’ll let you know how it goes. All I know is I was so happy to do my grocery shopping over the weekend based on a list that I didn’t come up with for once. We’re looking forward to some new recipes too.

[ PROJECT LIFE ] For those of you who are in a similar boat, I’ve fallen a bit behind on our Project Life this summer. No worries. Try to schedule a block of time each day for the next week or two (or whatever you need) to do catching up. For example, my method of doing Project Life is the POTD-way — taking a picture every single day of the year. That part is easy for me. Check. Done. Got it. As for the journaling, I’m scheduling 30 minutes in my daily routine until I’m back on track with that. Another option is to just go back over the months you still would like to do, and just do a two-page layout for each month. As in – choose 7 favorite pictures from each month, add a journaling note to go with each one – and you’re done!

[ PERSONAL YEARBOOK ] You may remember that little project I’ve been doing in Porter’s classroom at school the past couple of years. Click here for a re-cap if you missed that. The end result of this project is a personal yearbook for each child. I am officially set to go with this again for the new school year – in both Porter’s 2nd grade class and Claire’s preschool class. I know a lot of you are interested in doing something similar.

Good News: I will be sharing downloads (free, of course) that will be the templates for these pages that will work for an entire school year. No more waiting for me to post the next month’s stuff. No more figuring out how to create your own pages. I’m going to simplify the entire process for you so that you can confidently volunteer to do this in your child’s class. So stay tuned. I’ll be sharing more information about how to get started, what supplies are needed, and of course the free downloadable page templates.