:: Let them Create | a little bit of rambling & a whole bunch of pictures ::

Ella says she hates "art" day at school and that makes me so sad because she LOVES to color and play at home. What the heck! Every kindergartener should LOVE art class! ;)
Therefore, one of my goals for 2016 is to instill a bit more creativity into my kids' lives and make it fun!

Yesterday I was finally putting the New Years Eve decorations away. Whatev.

I had printed around 150 wallet sized black & white photos; all of them telling our "2015 story". They were displayed in the living room & kitchen and the kids loved to look at all the little memories.

I had no idea what I was going to do with these little photos because I have already scrapbooked them. But no way was I going to throw them away!
So, I created a simple flip book using 5x7 pieces of white cardstock and attached the photos.

The photo book and a few supplies will be left out so the kids can add their own journaling and drawings as they'd like.

Ella is LOVING it (oh, and don't mind her messy hair and pjs. She's still home sick today).
Chase even did a little journaling last night. I love that this "book" is going to be created completely by them!

Speaking of scrapbooking. I've stepped back in a BIG way since last May. I called it quits on all of my design teams. While it was such an amazing experience to be a part of all of those & to "meet" so many people that way, I felt like I was scrapbooking for someone else not for our family.
So, in May I switched from the Project Life style scrapbooking to digital books that I have printed through Shutterfly. The top two books in the below photo are my 12x12 photo albums from Shutterfly and the bottom book that is open shows the traditional 12x12 album with the PL system.

DON'T get me wrong. Some days I really, really miss the creative side of the PL albums and all the supplies that go with it but this year just didn't allow the time to put into these type of pages.

The Shutterfly books allow me to upload the images and create the digital pages as time allows.

Then, once the book is full I send it to print!

I also love that fact that I get to create my pages and spreads focusing on my photos and our stories rather than on a companies product.

Another upside : they take up WAY less space! The two smaller black books towards the left are the shutterfly books and the traditional albums are the rest.

The downside is that if something gets spilled on the Shutterfly books or a page gets ripped, there's really not an easy fix like there would be with the page protected PL style albums.
With all that being said, record and document those memories! They are important!