Hi there! Donna here with you today, and I’m really excited about today’s project! I don’t keep a Life Documented album, but something that I’ve always wanted to do is to find the best way to include all the “extra” photos I take each year into our family scrapbooks. You know, the ones that never make it onto layouts. Today I want to share with you the photos and stories that fill in gaps of 2013 using Pocket Pages and Sn@p! Collections:

Even though the idea behind this project was to include my extra photos, I knew that I needed to set limits in order to make it manageable. To start, I decided to use only two Design 3 pocket pages which altogether make 32 slots for photos or journaling/title spots. I knew that to keep the project doable, I wouldn’t be able to include all of our extra photos. When choosing photos from the year I aimed to pick somewhere between 25 and 28.

Part of why I’ve put off this endeavor before was because it seemed too overwhelming. So, I also limited my product choices deciding not to use any embellishments other than stickers, and keeping mainly to using SN@P! Sets already in my stash. I relied most on the Him and Everyday SN@P! Sets, but also used Baby Boy, Family, Christmas, and Summer.

As you’ll see below, I also included two cut-out elements cards from Sea to Shining Sea. I really wanted to include one photo of each of my sons creating our Fourth of July flag cake. They had so much fun doing this, but I never made a scrapbook page to document it.

It feels good to finally have that story recorded!

I don’t take tons and tons of photographs, but I take enough that they can’t all make it onto layouts. Plus, some of them, while cute, aren’t all that great. Perhaps they are too dark, or maybe out of focus. Sometimes, there really isn’t enough story there to warrant an entire page. This third page includes a few photos that fit into those categories.

Also, while I don’t create my layouts in chronological order, I do store them in my albums in chronological order. So when I created this fill-in-the-gaps project, I decided to put the photos in order as the year progressed. So you’ll see on this last page photos from fall, Halloween, and Christmas.

These two pocket pages will be placed behind the year-in review spread I make each year (which is more a highlights layout of photos already scrapbooked) and together they will give a more complete picture of our year.

Some more close-ups of the pages, here is a birthday photo of Sam:

As it says in the journaling, we had a very simple celebration at home. And because Sam did not like the cupcakes, I really didn’t have all that many photos of him, well, celebrating. But again, it is good to finally have at least one photo in our albums documenting that special day.

The photo below is from our first day of school last year.

In this case, I actually do have more photos from the day and have meant to scrapbook them, but have just never got around to doing it. I may go back and to do that, but if I don’t, I’ll at least have some record of that day.

Finally, in some cases there really isn’t much to say about a photo. I do get bored sometimes scrapbooking the same types of stories over-and-over again each year. So for instance, while I love our annual trip to the pumpkin patch, carving the pumpkins isn’t really my thing. But I did take a photo of the boys cleaning their pumpkins last year:

The photo is pretty self-explanatory, but I decided to embellish it simply with some stickers from the new Frankie and Friends collection.

With all the product choices available to scrapbookers today it is so easy to get overwhelmed with options. Add to that feeling the multitude of photos that we take in the course of the year. As I worked on this project I kept repeating to myself, keep it simple! In the end, my project fulfills my goals, and it is in keeping with my style.

The best part of completing this project is that my boys saw the pages on our kitchen table as I was photographing them, and they were so happy to see all our memories from the previous year in one place. This project was easy, fun, doable, and honestly, fast too. Thanks for stopping by and letting me share it with you!