Project Life - My process

Despite the lack of time, my PL is up and running... I figure that I might as well keep the same process in place than last year (with a little bit of tweaking here and there) since it worked for me. As I mentioned before, I let go the idea of having a "Design Team-worth" result and focus on getting the story told on a regular basis. 

So here is my process:

1. Take pictures: I have my big camera that usually stays home or come with us on special occasions and a small one that stays in my handbag. I do not take pictures everyday. Since I am working full time and evenings are a bit hectic, it happened that I only had pictures during the week-end, or even one day. But it still works great since it is all about our time together as a family.
2. Edit the pictures: this is for me the most time consuming part. I download both cameras on a weekly basis, usually on Sunday evening (seeing all the fun we had helps me fight the Sunday evening blues!). Editing includes cropping, resizing (I put a lot of pictures in the 3X4 pockets), improving and adding digital elements.
3. Once I have all my pictures for the week ready in the "for print" folder, I go through them again and write down stories either directly on the 3X4 cards or on a post-it (which will be added as a small tab to the picture when printed).
4. I order my pictures every 5 to 6 weeks, then I spend a full evening putting things together. 

Quite straight forward.  From time to time, I might spend time creating something a bit more fancy with paint and stamps, just for fun, but this is more an exception than the rule.

I am making some changes this year though:

• I do not round the corners anymore. When working 5 to 6 weeks worth of pictures, this is far too time consuming to bother. And I actually like the result.
• I still need to figure out how I will write the dates on each page. Still not sure about how I want to go (week number, hand written, stamped ???).
• The step 3 of the process described above is new this year. Last year I though I would remember what I wanted to say based on the pictures when they would be printed, but I found out this was not the case, so I try to have all my notes gathered every single week.

I notice that the last weeks of 2012 and this year, I am much more relaxed about the full thing. I am so positively surprised by the result of last year that I am finally able to say to myself: "It's OK (enough) like that".