navigating project life

Since January, I've been capturing our world through photos + words using Project Life.

I love it.

When I posted the above photo on Instagram last week, a friend commented that she was so behind in documenting her family photos. And I wrote back, "Just start now." I wrote this because I have been in that place of waiting. How can I start printing out photos from this week if I still have so many of Ellie's baby photos trapped in the computer? But if I waited, I would never hold these photos in my hand. So finally, I just dove in.

My friend's words prompted me to write this post because I really want to share why Project Life is working for me. 

The big reason: There aren't any rules.
{For real.}

(If you are new to Project Life and don't really know what I'm talking about, head over here to Becky Higgins' site and watch this short video and then come back. I'll still be here.)

As I play with paper + photos + a few stamps + ink, I am letting go of ALL the rules that people might make up for themselves with Project Life. Here's what I mean:

a glimpse at my studio table in action

I didn't feel like I got into my groove with Project Life until late summer. Up until then, I was mostly using products from the original Amber Project Life kit I had purchased in early 2011, but I wasn't loving it. I like this kit, but I wanted more variety and simpler, plainer options. And as I started using Instagram more, a lot of the photos I wanted to use were square, but I didn't have a way to print them.

And then deeply inspired by the approaches both Ali and Elise use, I drilled down to a very simple look and added a few more pieces to my toolbox:

I bought the Clementine core kit when it became available because those colors are more me. (And I can't wait for the new Seafoam kit!)

I bought the grid cards in both sizes + the plain white cards. They are simple and easy to use and don't distract from the photos.

I started using Postal Pix to print 4x4 Instagram photos (then using these two types of 4x4 pocket protectors).

I started using stamps from Elise and Pam Garrison (these are the stamps you see throughout my layouts) and they are giving me a more unified look that I like. They are also great prompts for me (and you know I love prompts). Honestly, I am kind of obsessed with their stamps. Check them out if you journal, art journal, or use Smash books. Awesome women. Awesome products.

I started using mostly blue and black ink for stamps, my writing, and letter stickers to keep the look more consistent.

I moved everything into two black binders because I like how they look on the bookshelf.

I started using my typewriter because it just makes me happy.

And I let go of needing any kind of perfection. For example:

• I don't worry about how many days are in a week. Sometimes a layout is from Monday - Sunday, sometimes it is Sunday to Sunday. The me of one year from now and five years from now does not care about how many days are represented in a layout. I go with how many pictures I have and the stories I want to tell. 
• I don't love my handwriting, but I love reading my mom's writing, my grandmother's writing, so I am writing a lot because it is easy. I struggle with using digital elements and even though I love how they look so clean, the learning curve to figure it out is too much for me. When I want to include longer stories that are right from my blog, I'll just put them into a Word document at the right size and print on cardstock and trim to fit.
• I don't try to tell a story from each day. If I do, that's great. But this never crosses my mind.

• I tell the stories I want to tell. Sometimes there isn't a photo that goes with the story. I write it out anyway. 
• If I'm stuck for a story, I look to Facebook posts and Tweets and Instagram and my blog. 
• When I get behind, I sometimes just lump weeks together into one or several layouts without worrying about what order the photos are in and just put a general date at the beginning of that section of layouts. Crazy! I know! Here is what I mean: When we visited my mom and Steve in April, we were gone for three weeks and had quite a few photos from our adventures that I wanted to include. And I found myself about five weeks behind in Project Life. I didn't want to get into the details of what day we did what and instead just wanted to get those photos off of my computer and into the album. I just put one general date card for the entire month of April and put the photos in where they made sense. It was easy and totally okay with me. 

• I don't let holes in the layout stop me from moving forward. There are a few blank spots where things are missing but I've just put notes in so I can back at some point. 

• Sometimes it is all about me. There are a lot of photos of Ellie in this album, and a lot of photos of Ellie and Jon because I am usually behind the camera. I'm totally okay with this. But I'm including myself too. The week covering the Unearth Retreat is all about me. This will probably happen again as I continue using Project Life. And when looking at the big picture, it makes sense because I am the one putting the album together and thinking "in stories." 
• I let Ellie help me. She loves looking through Project Life.* And she often wants to "help" when we are in my studio. Helping might mean she sits on my lap and helps me stamp journal cards. Sometime it means I give her a blank white card and she draws on it (or decorates it with stickers) and I stamp it with the date and add it in.  

• I share the real stuff. This might mean a raw self-portrait or a photo of our kitchen in all its messy glory. This might mean I tuck some writing behind a photo to be found later. I want this album to capture what is real. It isn't gritty by any means and there are a lot of happy photos of Ellie, but I want to share the tough stuff too.

Other things that work for me:

• I have several baskets on my studio table that hold my Project Life journal cards and the other elements I use. Having them out in the open and ready to use helps me to just get the stories onto paper.
• When I have less than 10 photos to print at a time, I'm using my Cannon Selphy. More than 10 though, I'm uploading them to Walgreens and Jon picks them up on his way home from work. 

*This piece of Ellie loving to look through Project Life, this is what keeps me going with this project. She likes to look through it over and over again telling me the stories she sees in the pages. She points out the things that she used when she was "Baby Ellie" and names her Grandparents and her Uncle Matt and Kelly and talks about the time we played with the blue ball with her aunt and uncle in Wisconsin. It is awesome.

And I do this because I remember when I was a little one and how I used to look through the albums my mom had filled with photos from days when I was "Baby Elizabeth" and then suddenly "Big Sister Elizabeth" and I know that I will look through these albums in that same way and gather the stories to me again.

a conversation over at chickadee road

Over on Chickadee Road this week, Kelly and I are sharing another video conversation. This time it's about my new studio. I love (LOVE!) these honest, sometimes silly, often vulnerable conversations we recorded when Kelly was here for the Unearth Retreat. Looking forward to sharing more like this one.

Check it out here.

If you want some peeks into how we went from garage to new calm, happy studio, check out this Flickr set.

the gift of this (real) moment

When Jen Lee and I brainstormed the idea to offer The Gift of This Moment as a three-month subscription, I had this vision of making a video sharing my favorite pieces of this home retreat kit and explaining why working through it as a three-month journey would be such a powerful experience. But we are living in real time over here, and as Jen and I talk about in her podcast, things don't always unfold the way we think they will when we release an idea into the world.

So today, I feel really moved to instead tell you a story about how I turned to these practices in the midst of a recent moment of overwhelm.

One evening last week found me holding my daughter as she sat in my lap in the middle of the kitchen floor. She was sobbing about her sparkle shoes. I was at a total loss as to why she was suddenly sobbing about these used to be favorite shoes. Over the previous few days, she'd been getting angry at them and me whenever she tried to put them on, and I'd decided to handle it by giving her space as she wanted to "do it myself!" On this evening though, she's given up and come into the kitchen with one shoe off and one shoe in her hand and her face showing an honest despair.

I got down at her level and she pointed for me to sit, then she turned around and backed up until she plopped into my lap. I held her as she cried and tried to make a few suggestions to help or even distract her, but nothing worked. After a few minutes, I started to cry myself because I didn't know how to fix it and I just felt so tired. The sparkle shoes began to represent a lot more than just shoes. I began to feel like I was gripping the piece of me that is "just Liz" by my fingernails before I slipped over the edge of a cliff of sorts.

As Ellie kept crying, I started to breathe deeply, letting my breath really slow. Then, suddenly she took a deep breath and handed me her shoe and asked me to put it on and asked to eat some apple. And off we were back into the rhythm. When I needed to walk down the hall to get something while she was comfortably munching away, I paused in front of the hallway mirror and spent about 45 seconds looking at my exhausted face and whispered aloud, "You are not disappearing."

Minutes later Jon came through the door and we were all in an uproar again in the way that happens sometimes when everyone's feelings are on the surface. We were basically circling around the beginnings of an argument as I was trying to make dinner while a dog, two year old, and husband circled around me in the kitchen.

Eventually I got them settled in with more apple and a show and put dinner in the oven. I poured myself a drink and blocked the dog out of the kitchen and sat on the kitchen floor, leaning against the dishwasher and took five deep breaths. Then I felt really moved to use my iphone camera to take a photo. This act of seeing myself reflected in the camera often feels like being in front of the mirror and is another way of saying to myself, "I'm not disappearing." 

Even though this photo isn't really flattering or from "my best angle," it is beautiful to me. I don't want to only tell the pretty stories; I want to tell the stories found in the in between...

 

Within about thirty seconds of taking this photo, a little girl was climbing into my lap and smiling and wanting to chat. And life kept going the way it always does. But I had my footing again because I had found myself in the momentary stillness.

If we were having tea today and you began to describe your version of a moment like this, a moment where you began to feel like you were losing a piece of yourself and not sure how to find it again, and you said, "How do I stay myself in the midst of it all sometimes? How do I not disappear? How do I just hold onto me with my fingertips?" I would say something like this:

Start with the mirror meditation. Stand in front of yourself and let yourself gently fall into the truth of knowing you are right here. Begin to trust that you can breathe through this moment and the one after it. Do this everyday for a while. 

Then, begin to use your camera as a way to capture the beauty, the real, the truth of your everyday life. Keep looking in the mirror and use your lens to illustrate your story, your feelings, you real moments. 

And then, let poetry remind you that you are not alone as you let someone else's stories help to light your path.

Try these practice because you want to be present for all of it...for the days that feel like trudging through the mud and the days full of more sunshine and love than you thought possible. Being present to this moment, right here, this is how you stay yourself in the midst of all the life hands you.

I believe these practices will help you begin to feel deeply seen so that in those moments when you are making your way through the realness, the hard stuff, the confusion that sometimes punctuates this life, you will realize you are never alone.

I believe this because I do it every day. The mirror saves me from myself sometimes as it literally gives me back to myself. My camera helps me to sift through all the stuff around and inside me so that I can find the stillness, the beauty, the raw truth that makes up each day. And the poetry of others lights the way and encourages me to put my stories onto the page.

The Gift of This Moment invites you to create space for the stillness, the realness, and the wisdom that rests inside you as it guides you through these three practices. Working with these practices over three months, receiving a package of goodness each month, will provide you with even more space to lean into these practices that will help you stay rooted in this moment.

Please just email me if you have any questions about The Gift of This Moment. Thank you for being here beside me on this journey.

(The Gift of This Moment was produced and published by Jen Lee Productions. You can read more about it in this series of blog posts.)

unearth 2012

Kelly on the pier at Joemma Beach

Whenever I return from hosting one of my retreats, I have a hard time trying to capture it here in this space. I take very few photos because I'm experiencing more than documenting. And then the re-entry time after the retreat is intense as I go from this one contained experience where I play one role back to this other real-life experience where I play so many roles in a given day (just like you).

And then by the time I have some mental space to share, the weeks have passed and I feel silly going back in time. This happens to me often...this time moving on and me wanting to share here and then stopping myself from doing it.

Things don't happen on a real schedule when you have a two year old. I put things on a schedule and it just kind of laughs at me. I planned to share several other blog posts this week. A poem I wrote. That you can now get "The Gift of This Moment" in a three-month subscription. A story about how I went to an event last week where they sent a car for me. Crazy! And a story about how I found myself sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor holding a little girl in my lap as she cried and I couldn't fix it so I cried too.

Today, I want to share this handful of photos from the Unearth Retreat. It really was magic as we painted with Mindy and Kelly and shared stories and wrote poems that we read aloud and then walked along Puget Sound with the most gorgeous light I'd seen this year. Frog Creek Lodge just invites in laughter and healing. When I think about it all, I want to tell you this most of all:

There is so much beauty, magic, and truth found in those in-between spaces when someone shares her story and you breathe in and out as you listen and then sit in the quiet and then you give her the gift of saying, "Me too. Yes. Me too."

 

(Hoping to share more about the Spring 2013 Retreat next week.)

backyard autumn

today, the blue sky took ahold of my hand and guided me to this moment...this deep breath...this opening up to the beauty right in front of me.

you are loved

you are loved . a new beaded necklace in the shop

It's that time when the rain has arrived and we are settling in for days of grey punctuated with blue skies and glimpses of the mountain and walks in the green, damp woods.

It feels right, this cocooning that October brings. And it makes it easy to want to settle in for evenings of wire-wrapping beads and listening to words that are asking to be hammered into metal. 

Over the weekend, I added a few new beaded soul mantra locket necklaces to the shop. From now until early December, my plan is to add a few more every few weeks. You will see that custom options are available (a few with beads) as well. I am also able to customize a few of the beaded necklaces in the shop with your personal soul mantra phrase. 

I wear one of my "You Are Loved" lockets often around my neck. I suppose one might think it is egotistical, but I believe that trusting you are loved and loving yourself is one of the best gifts we give ourselves. A reminder I need often.

I hope your day brings with it moments to sit in the quiet and trust as you breathe in and out...

Blessings,
Liz 

in case you need to hear these words too...

a basket of poetry

As I work in my studio, I began to feel really moved to share a few words with you, so I just opened Garage Band and recorded these words plus a poem that I think you might need to hear today. And if not today, you can tuck these words inside your pocket to pull out when you might need them in the future.

The poem is "The View" by Mary Lou Sanelli from her collection Craving Water: Poems of Ordinary Life in a Northwest Village.

The audio is a little over three minutes long and you can listen by clicking "October 14" below (or by right-clicking and downloading/saving the file as you usually would and then listening).

October 14

these boots

There is so much I want to tell you, but the "want to do" list is calling me, so I will quickly share this:

Gosh I love these boots.*

(Discovered the timer on my camera+ app. Changing my life.)

*they even have them in wide calf for those of us who need them.