Ready for karate.

Lucy has had a hard time transitioning into her naps lately. She really hates to think she's missing out on something that Claire is doing downstairs, so I have started taking both her and Claire upstairs after lunch to read together before putting her to bed. It has become one of my favorite parts of the day, even if neither one of them ever actually lets me read to them (they are far too busy "reading" to themselves).

All of my errands seem to revolve around the locations of my children's activities. Claire's ballet studio this year is right around the corner from Trader Joe's, thus Trader Joe's Tuesdays were born. Claire dances while Lucy and I go grocery shopping.

I joined a gym in January... how cliché is that? It wasn't because of some grand New Year's resolution though. Basically I just needed access to a treadmill. It finally got too cold (by my own admittedly weak standards) for me to run outside.

Except for a fresh coat of paint and a new rug, Lucy has had a mostly hand-me-down room her entire life. But after a trip to IKEA for a new picture frame, it’s finally clear who this room really belongs to.

It's amazing how inspiring a cardboard box can be to kids. This one, which was by the door waiting for me to drop it off at the post office, was hijacked by the girls to make an imaginary lemonade stand on a snowy Saturday morning.

Finally, it snowed!

On Friday night, when the snow was supposed to start falling, Ella got out of bed and called down the stairs for Matt. I impatiently asked her what she needed, thinking it was just one of the usual bedtime stall tactics. "Never mind" she quietly replied and turned to get back into bed. I softened a bit and asked again what it was that she needed. "I just wanted to ask Dad if I could help him shovel tomorrow," she said. It was the sweetest thing. Ella has been Matt's shoveling buddy since she was two years old.

Of course, Ella did help shovel in the morning, as did Claire. We even gave Lucy a little plastic beach shovel to carry around. I didn't think Lucy would last long in the snow but she was one tough cookie, taking determined little robot steps in the snow with her clunky boots. She even went sledding with me in the backyard and didn't start crying to go inside until it looked like her nose was about to freeze off.

I have always struggled to find a good way to keep track of small moments, like those funny things the girls say or other little memories that I don't want to forget. Sometimes I use Twitter and Facebook for this, but I tend to only share things on social media that I think other people will relate to or also find humorous, so a lot of stuff ends up not getting recorded that way. I have also purchased books which inevitably ended up collecting dust in the back of a closet, and when all else failed I resorted to just keeping an e-mail in my Drafts folder that I accessed when I wanted to write something down. It was better than nothing, but not ideal by any means.

Then at the beginning of the year a few friends told me about the Momento app for iPhone. This app is exactly what I have been searching for. I always have my phone with me so it is easily accessible and I love how it keeps everything so organized. Here is a screen shot of what it looks like when I open the app with all my "moments" nicely arranged by date:

I also love how you can connect the Momento app with your Facebook and Twitter feeds so your status updates and tweets automatically show up in your calendar. I now have easy access to all of those posts going back several years. And if you include an Instagram or other photo when you post to Facebook & Twitter, a little thumbnail of the photo shows up in your entry as well. You can add photos to any of your own private moments too. Here's an example of how Momento displays my New Year's Eve post from Twitter:

Another feature I love is the search option. So for example, I can search for "Claire" and pull up everything that includes her name, thus remembering that at one point in time she was actually a rascally one-year-old:

Momento has been a great resource for recording things to include in my Project Life layouts, but I really think this app would be great for anybody who is interested in journal keeping. I initially balked at the $2.99 price tag (which seems fairly expensive in the app world, but is not a lot of money when you really think about it) but I think it was worth the small investment. Check it out! I'd also love to know: how do you record the small moments in your own life?

Sisters on a Sunday morning. Claire saw this picture on my computer screen and declared, "Mom, I think you get the goodest pictures ever."

Lunch playdate with Claire's best preschool friend, Hope.

Artwork by Claire.

Lucy plays dress-up before bedtime. ("I want dess!")

Lucy was up first on this particular morning (usually she is the last one to wake up). I caught our reflection in the kitchen window as I was pouring her a cup of milk, just as the sun was starting to rise.

Waiting for the bus. This week Ella and I had a conversation about what she wants to be when she grows up. "I'm not sure, but I have a few ideas" she told me. Her current top career aspirations? Mechanic at the Costco tire center and elementary school teacher. Love this girl.

My dress and leggings loving girl has been asking for a pair of jeans for quite a while and this week I finally bought her a pair. She was so excited to wear them with her new purple top. She looks so different (and older) in pants, although of course she manages to be adorable in anything.

The last two years that I have done a "photo a day" (2009 & 2011), I have used a calendar template via my blog provider Typepad to keep track of my photos online. I love the visual organization the calendar offers, but most of all I love that I have journaling for all my photos in an easily accessible place.

This year I am trying to relax a bit and aiming for more of a weekly approach in my Project Life album. I will still do one two-page spread for each week, I just might not necessarily have a photo for every single day. I do still very much want to focus on capturing our daily lives (which is what I truly love about the photo a day concept), so I still plan to try to take a photo on most days, I just don't want to feel quite so pressured to feel like there has to be a photo for each and every day.

This means that the calendar format won't necessarily work as well for me this year. Yet I still want a place to post my pictures + journaling for each week. So instead I am going to try having a weekly post dedicated just to the photos I plan to use in my main Project Life spread for that particular week. Here's Week 1...

Week in Review: We rang in 2012 surrounded by extended family in New Jersey, and then as our holiday break drew to a close we spent the remainder of the week easing back into our regular school + work + everyday life routines.

The girls with Matt's parents (Grandma Kathy & Grandpa Beau) on New Year's Day.

Waiting for Claire outside the ballet studio.

Cold day, hot chocolate. I made a little after school treat for the girls on Wednesday, the coldest day of winter so far. By the end of the week though, temperatures were pushing 60 degrees... and we still haven't had any snow! But I can't complain after our overdose of the white stuff last winter.

We love these Swedish moccasins during the winter, although in our house we have always called them mukluks. Each of the girls has at least two pairs and they wear them to bed every night during the cold months.

My jewelry lover trying on my necklaces.

 Thursday morning. Lucy can be such a ham when she feels like it. If she sees the camera she will tilt her head just so, smile, and say "cheese!"

Happy 2012! Who's ready to get started with Project Life?

Just before Christmas I got my Clementine Core Kit in the mail, which is what I plan to use for my 2012 Project Life album (I absolutely love this design by the way!). Almost immediately, I started putting together my 2012 album. Of course, this is not something you have to do, but I really think that having my album put together and organized ahead of time was key to my success with Project Life in 2011. For those embarking on this project for the first time, I thought it might be helpful to share exactly how I put my album together. The whole thing took me a couple of hours. I basically did it in the space of one evening after the kids went to bed, with everything spread out on the living room floor and half of my attention on the TV in the background. Not a lot of effot, but totally worth it.

I was going to type up my process step by step but then I realized that Becky Higgins has basically already done that for me but in video form, so it's even better. You can watch her video here. Just note that she is using one of the older Project Life designs. Things are set up a little differently now, so you won't have the colorful monthly dividers in your kit, for example (although if you want something similar these Scrapbook Dividers will be back in stock this month). Once all the title and journaling cards are in the album, this is an example of what a layout will look like:

(Just to note, I alternated the Clementine journaling cards with the basic grid journaling cards).

Of course I can always change things later on, but it is so helpful to have the framework set up ahead of time.

One additional step that I take is to add the dates to my title cards in advance. Of course, you'd only want to do this if you're sure you are going to do one layout for each week of the year (or you could always just use sticky notes instead if you're still not sure exactly what your plans are). Having the dates already on the layouts was so helpful this past year as I was adding extra items to my album because I knew exactly where to put them even if I was behind on printing pictures or journaling. It was just one little thing that really helped keep me on track.

(The date stamp I used here was something included in a previous version of Project Life, but you can find something similar in almost any office supply store.)

My biggest piece of advice to anybody starting out on this project in 2012 is to keep it simple. There is a lot of amazing inspiration out there, which is wonderful, but sometimes it's easy to get overwhelmed with ideas (I speak from personal experience here). Just remember that the beauty of this project is its simplicity. Don't overthink it. Just do it.