Capture the Season, Jen's fantastic holiday workshop, has concluded over at Simple Scrapper; I was lucky enough to join in and provide her with some journaling content throughout the 6-week period. Partnering with her on this project was a good thing for me, as it encouraged me to work on scrapping my holiday season in a manageable way and gave me incentives to stay caught up (for the most part) with my layouts, photos, and stories. I did get off course during the last two weeks of the project -- we were celebrating birthdays and holidays, as well as visiting family out-of-town for much of that time. Still, this is one of the first holiday seasons where I feel like I accurately captured what this time means for our family.
Here's a look back at the layouts I created.
Week 1
Week 1's layout came together quickly, and it gave me an opportunity to
use some random photos that didn't really have a home anywhere else.
List layouts are a great way to make use of "homeless" photos, and they
do a great job of capturing "slice of life" details.
Week 2
For week 2's prompt, I ended up doing two layouts because of the two templates. Even though my post talked about the plans I had for documenting our holiday decorations, I ended up waffling back and forth about doing that layout in the end, because I'd already completed one layout about our decorations this year and I didn't want to create anything that would duplicate what I'd already done. I mean, what's the point in that? However, in looking at the decorations layout I'd already completed, I realized that it was mostly about our ornaments, and that the layout I planned with week 2 was more about our decorations throughout the entire house. I also realized that having input from the rest of the family on the journaling made it a layout worth completing. I also ended up changing my mind and going with the template I used for the Christmas parade layout, because I just couldn't make the other one work for me. To change things up a bit, I flipped the template and made a few modifications. I quite like it.
Week 3
This week was one I was able to scrap quickly, during the week. More and more, I'm beginning to find that, if you just stay open to the experience, then life will provide you with what you need -- both in big and small things. For this week, it was a small thing -- the template and prompt worked beautifully for our family holiday reunion on the Cooper side of the family (Chris's paternal grandmother). At one point, I would've called this coincidence, but I've seen it happen often enough that I think it has to be more than just coincidence. Anyway, enough philosophizing -- on with the layouts!
Week 4
Week 4 found us at the beginning of our 2-week Christmas vacation -- the first time that all four of us have had a vacation like this together. The girls and I have always had this time off, but Chris usually has to work; now that he's at the university, he gets the two weeks off as well. As a result, we reserved a number of special activities and traditions for just this week and combined them into one big trip to Nashville. This week's template was the perfect place to capture all the details of that story.
Week 5
This is where my weekly updates on the project became non-existent. :) But that's okay -- one of the best parts of this project was the inherent flexibility in the entire thing. If you didn't get a layout made, that's fine. You've got a template and a prompt plus plenty of supporting resources to help you come back to it when you do have time. When I started this project, that flexibility was important to me, because I knew there would times when I wouldn't follow the prompts too closely, like last week's layout. This layout was another that strayed a bit from the prompt, but it was still somewhat related.
Week 6
For week 6, I decided not to use the journaling prompt, though I did like the template. At this point, I still wasn't finished scrapping the holiday photos I wanted to make sure I included in my album, and this template was a great way to scrap two of the best photos of my girls on Christmas morning. So that's what I opted to do. I'm sure I'll come back to Jenn's prompt about scrapping myself and how I've changed in 2009.
In looking back through my photo archives, there are still a number of layouts I'd like to do. These include:
Christmas lights at Mike Miller park
Christmas Eve with my mom and sister
a list of Christmas presents for the girls
a layout about Starry Nights with Bill and Deb, and all of Chris's funny comments
a two-page spread documenting the week we spent in Memphis w/ the cousins
Christmas baking
the nativity at Opryland and my thoughts on the meaning of Christmas (O Holy Night)
To make this process simpler, I will use the same kits I've used for these layouts (with the addition of one or two others from my stash); I'll also make sure to use templates, since that really speeds up the whole process. It will also help me to achieve a more unified look throughout these pages, since most of the templates are blocky, with a traditional paper-scrapped look.
I'm glad I opted to do this project with Jen, rather than the December Daily (although I do love the concept and how other people's albums have turned out). It's just that, for me, my December days aren't all that festive until about a week and a half before Christmas. That's just how our holidays work -- so I would find myself struggling to find things to scrap on those early days. With this project, I like that I am focusing on the people, places, and things that make my holidays memorable -- the organizing structure of the project has really worked for me.
