Project Life: Documenting Tradition

This week's Project Life covers the week of November 19-25: Thanksgiving week!

One of the things I love most about Project Life is that you can have photos from the most treasured traditions right next to the "every day" photos... and it all makes perfect sense.

The Holiday Season is full of tradition.  And it's also full of every day moments.  As I approach this month in my album, I aim to balance the two in a well-rounded way.   I want to allow my album to TRULY reflect what life is like in our household--- the holidays, the traditions, the pick up soccer games, the ripped jeans, and the cracked ornaments and broken iPad moments.  All of it is life.

The left side of the page focuses mostly on Thanksgiving.   Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pictures on Thanksgiving Day-- I decided to put the camera down and enjoy the family time!  However, the few photos I did got, I made them work for my album.

There was a picture I took of my grandmother on Thanksgiving Day (above).  I decided to journal a bit about how my grandma is ALWAYS the one to pick out the turkey for Thanksgiving.  She has shopped the same meat market in Indianapolis for decades.  Not only that, I have noticed that every year, in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, she ALWAYS comments on the weight of the turkey she buys for our extended family.  This year it was a 26 pounder!

On the right side I included an insert about our Thanksgiving weekend tradition-- finding our Christmas tree.  This is a tradition that began four years ago.  We have been going to the same tree farm with close friends of ours to choose a live Christmas tree.  We always start the adventure by meeting at Starbucks for hot chocolate, and we end the day by eating dinner at a BBQ restaurant afterwards.

I used a Project Life pocket page trimmed in half and made an insert specific to our tree-hunting expedition.

A few things I saved to help tell the story of this tradition (aside from photos:) included the sleeve of my Starbucks cup, some rope that tied the christmas tree to our car, and the receipt from our BBQ dinner afterwards.  These are just bits and pieces that remind me of this cherished tradition.

Of course Thanksgiving week provides sweet artwork that comes home in my children's backpacks-- I had to include that too.

Finally, on the right page I included some everyday moments-- like the fact that my son ALWAYS gets a hole in right knee of every pair of pants he owns.  And also the day we decorated our tree, we had one broken ornament (a favorite) and a cracked iPad.  Ouch.  But they are real life moments.

I hope this gives you a few ideas on how to document your Holiday traditions and combine them with the everyday moments!

Congrats to Tarrah McLean  the winner of last week's Prize Pack.   Please email michelle@shopellesstudio.com the following info to claim your prize:

Name/Address:

Contest: PL Nov 27

Prize: prize pack

Project Life was created by Becky Higgins as a way to simplify how you document life and preserve memories. Photo pockets used in my Project Life album are created by Becky and can be found here.  You can read of all the Elle's Studio Project Life posts here.

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