I’m still working on my big 40th year album and it’s time to give you update #4! I’ve been having a ton of fun doing this project. I know I say that every time I give an update, but it’s true! I find memories are triggered by tiny little things — conversations with my kids, photos I find in boxes, random links on the internet. And approaching it one story at a time makes it feel manageable.
Here’s what I’ve been working on the past few weeks:
This page tells these stories:
- A photo of me from a few months ago
- A print-out of a Miss Piggy poster that I had hanging on the wall of my bedroom through most of elementary school (triggered, of course, by the new Muppet movie)
- A bit about my fairly unusual name
- A photo of my friends and me when we were on the high school track team
- A photo of me with my lovely cousin, Jessica
- My mom and dad
- The story of my love for Amelia Peabody books
The other side of the layout was filled with this stuff:
- A photo of me in front of one of the Great Pyramids. I accidentally wrote the journaling card that explains this photo in a vertical format when the photo slot was horizontal, but it was no biggie — I just slipped it in sideways. No stress.
- Next to that there’s a photo of me in the only suit I’ve ever owned.
- A postcard of my all time favorite kind of candy, only available in England
- A picture of my with my aunt and uncle
- A photo of me in LA taken the year after Zach and I got married.
This spread is a little different because I made a special 6×12 inch layout and stuck it in the middle. The left side shows:
- A photo of me from the years where I died my hair red all the time.
- One of me with my prom date
- A truly fantastic photo of my brother, cousin and me sledding. I’m making a horrible face and our winter clothes are of a beautiful early 80’s vintage.
- A photo I took with Cookie Monster and Elmo at BlogHer this year.
I had a few 5×7’s portraits from my bigger roles in high school plays that wouldn’t fit in the slots in the page protectors I’m using
The other side of this page includes:
- A photo of me with memorable college friend — this was a little tag I made for a mini album that I never finished a few years ago.
- A list of things I’m thankful for. On Thanksgiving day I posted a sentence or two about things I was thankful for on Facebook every few hours. Afterwards I copied them all into photoshop and added in a few more to include in this book.
- A photo of me with a couple of friends I hung out with the summer between high school and college.
- A cute 10 year old photo of me and Zach
- A little bit about how I’m nosy and enjoy watching my neighbors. Judge me if you must, but I find people interesting!
This last layout is another one where I inserted a bigger item in a page protector.
The left side holds:
- A valentine Zach made me a few years ago
- My student ID from college
- A photo I found of the bulletin board in my bedroom that I took some time during my junior year of high school.
- A picture of the cook book bookshelf in our living room. I have a bit of a problem.
- A story about how I slept on a waterbed for my entire childhood.
- An Incredibooth photo I took last month.
I made the bulletin board and cook book journaling cards using Project Life Cobalt collection digital journaling cards. I bought the cards from the Clementine collection too, and I like those so much that I think I’m going to buy the paper version of the collection
The insert is some paperwork from my pregnancy with Augie. Early on, a test result came back showing that he had a chromosomal trisomy. After many more tests, it was determined to be a false alarm — thank goodness — but it was a time of my life that was totally and completely horrible. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me to look at this, but I have to include some of these things in order to paint a full picture of what my life has been like. The back side of this shows more of the paperwork.
The final page has this stuff:
- A photo with my brother when I was 3 and he was 6
- My favorite way to eat mac and cheese — with tuna and peas
- Princess Leia as Rosie the Riveter which is awesome in so very many ways
- A bit about my love for Christmas socks
- A few scraps of paper I found in a box — ticket stubs for Weezer and Beck concerts and a poem my aunt included with a Christmas gift many years ago.
- And finally, the neon sign for the bar my friends and I went to pretty much every weekend when we were in our mid-20’s.
Interested in seeing more of this project? Check out these other posts:
- My 40th Year Project
- Update: 40th Year Project
- 40th Year Project: Part 3
- 40th Year Project: Part 4
- 40th Year Project: Part 5
