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2012 Projects – The Savor Project – The Revised Plan

As promised, here I am to tell you my new setup for The Savor Project. The first thing I want to do is repost the paragraph that talks about the thinking behind this project:

The idea is to create something that’s sort of an amalgamation of Project Life and December Daily. I did Project Life a few years ago and really struggled to keep up with it. Because I already process and post photos here weekly, it felt uneventful and like a chore to have to print them all out and do it again each week for my book. However, I liked the idea of keeping the odds and ends of ephemera that come into our life. I wanted something more creative and the setup I use for December Daily seemed ideal to me. My plan is to create a minimum of four pages a week with photos, stories, ephemera from that week. If I do more, great. But there’s no pressure. For now I am using my Polaroid Printer for all the photos. It’s crappy but quick and convenient. And quality is not my number one concern for this book.

The reason this is called The Savor Project is because I choose to write longer stories about little moments in my day where I am filled with gratitude. I think savoring life is all about paying attention to those moments more and more. The greatest thing about this project is that I appreciate my daily life, my simple moments, the “ordinariness” of my life that much more. I cherish these moments more. I am more thankful and aware of everything I have. I get to appreciate my kids, our life, right now. It’s like getting to look back up on the “good old days” while they are still happening. It increases awareness, gratitude, and joy.

Since I process my photos daily, I get to savor the moments as they happen, once again as I process the photos and then a third time when I am putting them in my book. That’s a lot of gratitude!

All of the above is still true. However, the more I thought about how to scale this project to create one book to hold my year and the more I saw all the Project Life posts around the net, I thought maybe I could combine my two ideas and find a way to make it work. I struggled over this decision (obsessed even) for a few days. And then finally I decided to try it to see if it would work. (and it did! more on that next week.)

Four years ago, when Project Life was originally introduced as a Kit-of-the-Month club from Lisa Bearnson (it was called Project 365 then and was originated and designed by Becky Higgins, just sold through the KotM), I had bought two of them. I have no idea why I did that since I don’t tend to buy in multiples usually. Anyhow. I use the one back in 2009 and, as I explained above, I wasn’t super happy with the process. I then put the other one in a closet and there it stayed.

Until this week.

I told myself that if i was going to try this out, I wouldn’t buy anything new. I was using the kit I had even if it wasn’t as pretty or “nice” or flexible as some of the newer options. Often times we get carried away in all the possibilities and end up spending more time setting things up “just right” than just doing it. So I dug out my kit, put aside all the stuff that came with it, except for the page protectors. And came up with a system that would make my Savor Project work within the confines of the Project Life system.

And I love it. There are limits that the notebook didn’t have but in general, this system will scale and still allows me to create the concept I wanted. And if it doesn’t continue to work, I reserve the right to change things up yet again! (But I really do hope this will stick.)

So I will start sharing my pages next week but I wanted to show you what I did to my cover and intro page. The original project 365 came with a binder but it has some print on the cover that I didn’t like, so I covered mine with textured fabric paper, velvet, and some sequins. Here’s how it looks:

I covered the back with similar fabric, too, but it’s just plain. And then for the first page, I took all the photos we took as a family last year and made a big collage. That’s 64 photos. And then on the bottom, I added the word Savor since it’s the Savor project and the year. Here it is:

And there we go. So now this is truly an amalgamation of Project Life and December Daily because I will be telling longer stories of small moments throughout the year using the Project Life setup. More specifics next week.

I am more comfortable with this setup as I can see it scaling and working for the whole year. Let’s hope it does!!

January 11, 2012 | The Savor Project, Yearly Projects

31 comments to 2012 Projects – The Savor Project – The Revised Plan

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