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It has been years since I have done any scrapbooking on a regular basis. Once every few months or so I will try to motivate myself to make a layout or I will make a mini album for a gift but that is about where it ends. I used to love scrapbooking. It was a wonderful creative outlet for me and it makes me sad that I no longer keep up with my albums.

I stopped scrapboking for a variety of reasons. Initially I starting losing my motivation when I got divorced six years ago because I was depressed and struggling to figure out my life. Not long after that I moved to Japan, which was not conducive to scrapbooking with supplies not so readily available locally and shipping from the US very expensive. When I came home I struggled with adjusting to life back in the US and my living circumstances were different. In my scrapbooking heyday I was a small apartment dweller with no maintenance, but today I own a 1800s home that I have been working on remodeling. It is a ton of work which doesn't leave me with as much time as I once had when I used to scrapbook a few times a week.

So what to do? I want to do more scrapbooking but I need something that fits better into my life as it is today. I decided to look into trying to make a Project Life Album this year. It seems like a lot of people use the Design A Photo Pocket Pages (page protectors with 4 horizontal 4"x6" pockets and 4 vertical 3"x4" pockets) and make a spread for every week but this approach didn't seem ideal for me for two reasons.

First, my life is not scrapworthy on a weekly basis in an even way. Some weeks when I am on vacation I would probably want to have more than one spread. When I am not traveling, my life is pretty boring and routine since I work a lot and live alone. Somehow, repeat weekly spreads consisting of me working 60 hours and eating spaghetti for dinner don't seem so interesting.

Secondly, while I like the idea of just slipping my 4"x6" photos into the pockets I have always loved using photo enlargements for my scrapbooking so using only the Design A Photo Pocket Pages seems like it wouldn't be ideal for my personal scrapbooking style.

I thought about it for awhile and decided to order a pack of the Design A Photo Pocket Pages and a pack of 12 x 12 Page Protectors. My plan is to have each spread consist of a pocket page on one side and a plain protector on the other side. I think this will give me the best of both worlds allowing me the simplicity of just slipping my photos in on one side and while also having the ability to use an enlargement with some traditional scrapbooking techniques on the other side. I'm also going to make spreads over the year as things come, not limiting myself when fun things are going on and not forcing myself to scrap every week. I'm looking forward to trying to some scrapbooking this year and am hopefully that this approach will help me do it.

Do you have any scrapbooking goals this upcoming year? Have you ever used Project Life for scrapbooking? If so, how do you use it?