Last week I mentioned that I was participating in the Start Fresh planning workshop over at Simple Scrapper. Well the workshop wrapped up last Sunday and I wanted to share what I learned and some of my crafty goals for 2014.
The workshop assignments focused on reviewing what I learned from my crafting activities and habits in 2013 and using that to articulate my goals for 2014. My core desire for this hobby is to document photos and stories about me and my family so they are there for them to easily find, look at and read, should anything ever happen to me. Although this desire may be enough to keep some people motivated, my left brain personality craves order and quantitative knowledge so this year I'll be keeping track of all the layouts and projects that I create so I have a record of all my big and little crafting victories to help me stay energized throughout the year.
Start Fresh provided a workbook with excellent planning worksheets that can be used for prioritizing and planning out the projects I want to tackle. Starting off with a list of EVERYTHING I wanted to do but then whittling down to the things that are most important AND that I'm most excited about gives me a reasonable number of things to work on over the course of the year (instead of an unrealistic page-long list). After I had that much smaller list I was able to add each project to a calendar showing when I'll be focusing on each of those projects throughout the year.
To finish off the workshop we were challenged to redo an older layout we had made or to use a template from Simple Scrapper. Jennifer provided a digital template and since I hadn't dabbled in digi scrapping in a while I tried it out. Here is my completed layout, made with the Memory Collector Kit from One Little Bird Designs:
A completed layout is a great way to end a workshop so that you leave with a feeling of accomplishment. I really enjoyed this planning process and am so ready to get lots of crafty things done this year. So without further ado here are the list of projects I'll be focusing on in 2014:
Daily Activities
- Complete Project Life 2014.
Weekly Activities
- Sort, rate, and tag my photos on a weekly basis. I go through waves with how on top of this I am. I'd like to stay pretty caught up this year. I like having photos already printed so that I can pull those to scrapbook when I need them.
- Make at least one traditional scrapbook layout per week. Often times this will overlap with a class I'm taking (or finishing up.)
Monthly Activities
- Complete One Little Word 2014. Ali posts the content on the 1st so I've built in multiple days each month to spend time with the writing prompts and to complete the layout aspect of each assignment.
- Make one simple home decor project per month. This could be as simple as painting and repurposing something we already have.
Album Projects and Classes
- Complete the 2013 Hello Story class by Ali Edwards from Big Picture Classes. I got a few amazing layouts done in 2013 with the help of this class. This year I want to finish the rest of the materials and layouts. (This class will be re-run later this year. If you are interested in new and innovative ways to document your stories Ali Edwards is the master.)
- Complete the Silhouette classes I've signed up for to learn as much as I can about this amazing electronic die-cutting machine.
- Complete the Before Your Story class at Big Picture Classes. This class is by Jennifer Wilson of Simple Scrapper and I'm really looking forward to it since it completely fits with my biggest motivation for being a memory-keeper.
- Complete a memorial photo book about my mom. I had originally planned a traditional scrapbook album but the time and emotions of completing a project like that can be huge. This will be a simple way to get the photos I have of my mom in one place so that my family and I will have them NOW. I can always go back and do more personal layouts of her later.
- Start Lola and Reya's baby albums. These will likely be a combo of pocket and traditional layout pages. I've calendared these to work on over the summer but if that doesn't happen and these don't get started this year I am fine with pushing them to next year.
- Complete a memorial photo book about my brother. Same thoughts as my mom's memorial album. I really want my children to have a visual knowledge of who my brother was and to see how the two of us grew up together as siblings.
- Prep and complete a Christmas Album. It may or may not fit into the December Daily format but I would like to do some sort of holiday album this year.
Though this seems like a long list I will be focusing on each of these at different times over the course of the year. I am a very left brained person so planning and setting goals like this are highlights of my life. Just kidding...kind of... I'll be giving updates on my progress here at Mindful Memory Keeping which will be another big motivator for me. I hope you'll stay tuned and cheer me on.
Update: I did not complete most of these goals. I did do an assessment for 2015 and have scaled way back so that I can actually accomplish more of my memory keeping goals. What goals have you set for yourself this year?