Crazy?

So I know that some of my friends and/or family think that I am slightly crazy when it comes to the projects I take on with my pictures.

I started scrapbooking when we moved to camp, because that is what ladies do here on Monday nights, and I’ve always kind of enjoyed that kind of thing. So I decided to make a scrapbook of our first year here at camp.

It has over 100 pages in it. I won’t be doing that again with the pictures from any of our other years here, because… that would be crazy.

Then I started blogging, at first on the camp blog, and I wrote “365 Things I Love About Camp” and took a ton of pictures all year for that. Won’t do that again, either. It was fun while it lasted, but it was a pretty time-consuming commitment.

My project for this year was something called “Project Life“.

It’s this big kit that I bought, and the idea is that you take a picture every day for a year, and write down something about that picture on a little card, and put everything all together in one big book. And I have loved it. I can’t keep a journal worth anything, but I can write little cards. And I can take pictures!

People think it sounds hard to take one picture a day, but really, I’ve got small children in the house. I’m taking pictures all the time, anyway. If I happen to miss a day, I take pictures of my favorite food, or the shoes I’m wearing all the time, or the books I’m reading, or a room in our house and what it looks like right now, or anything that would work for any day.

And when this year is over, I will have all of my pictures, plus my journaling, in one (honkin’ huge) book. I already love looking back to the beginning of the year, because Kaylia has changed so much, and it’s just interesting to remember life stuff, even from a few months ago. (That makes it sound like I just lounge around on my couch all day, looking at pictures of our family, but I don’t. Really. I’m too busy taking more pictures…)

Anyway. I’ve started a new project. It’s called “A Week in the Life.” It could possibly drive my family nuts by the end of the week. We’ll see. The idea is that you take a picture of everything you do all day, for a week straight.

I took 140 pictures yesterday. Which sounds like an insane amount, but it isn’t my fault. Think about it – I’m taking pictures of a very active and unpredictable toddler, a girl with a mind of her own who has decided she doesn’t want her picture taken anymore (wonder why??? 🙂 ) and a husband who loves to make really dumb faces in pictures to wreck them. And then I have to keep taking pictures until I get a good one.

See? Not my fault. So out of those 140 pictures, I deleted at least half of them.

And today, I only took 50! And deleted a bunch of those, too.

So, why would I do something like this? There are a number of reasons:

1) The life we live right now is not a normal one. Someday, when we’re living somewhere else and have a totally different kind of lifestyle, I want our girls to remember this time, and the unique schedule that we have right now.

2) I love the challenge of capturing pictures of things I don’t normally take pictures of. And I want to remember this stuff forever.

3) It’s all going to go into a pretty little book, and the whole project just brings joy to my life, for whatever weird reason. (My sister says, “Why would I want to remember, 20 years from now, what I ate today??” I don’t know! Maybe it will be interesting by then!)

So, for anyone who’s curious what kind of pictures I’ve taken so far, here’s a peek:

MONDAY

Reading “A Little Princess” to Anika:

Afternoon yoga:

Hanging pictures in Kaylia’s room:

Stew for supper:

Supper dishes:

TUESDAY

Driving to the city:

Physiotherapy appointment:

Grocery shopping:

Filling up gas before the drive home:

Sitting in the van:

Bags of groceries to clean up: