A simple year-in-review minibook

I love the idea of Project Life and being able to flip through a year in your life. But I don't have the time or the inclination to do quite that level of documentation. So at the end of 2014 (yep, this post is a year overdue), I wanted to capture the past year on a much smaller, but still representative scale. And I happened to have a letterpressed Paper Source calendar that was the perfect size for a small book.

And so this minibook was born. I chose my very favorite photos for the year, picking just a few for each month, and organized them loosely chronologically. I cropped my photos to 4x5, glued everything together, and wrote a a bit of text capturing the highlights of every month of the year. I loved the way Kelsey's journaling looks in her projects, so I went with something similar. Just a page for each month, single-sided or double-sided depending on how much I had to say. There are no embellishments - I wanted to keep the focus on the words and the photos. It could not have been simpler.

By way of example, here is what August looked like:

Inspired by Kelly's old project life and by an old photobook of Elise's, I included a picture of myself (most of just me) opposite the calendar page every month (except for November where, as much as I wanted to keep it consistent, my solo photo clashed a little too much with the calendar page). I was happy to discover that I have a great collection of photos of myself from 2014 and only a few of them are selfies. The trick is to get over the awkwardness of asking someone else to take a picture of you. They're almost always happy to do it.

This would be a fun project to capture the past year, especially if you have a desk calendar you can repurpose. The best part is, it requires no special scrapbooking skills or supplies - just cardstock, adhesive, a hole punch, and book rings - and you end up with a record of your year that's off the computer and in your hands.

This would also be an idea to keep in mind when you're buying calendars for 2016 - which should either be on sale now or will be very soon. Paper Source unfortunately doesn't make these anymore - they still have a letterpress/gold foil desk calendar but I don't like the size or the design as much, so I am still looking for an alternative for 2016, plus thinking of a way to document 2015 at a glance. I would love to hear any suggestions!