Nathalie's Notes

Goodbye Project 365 Sticky Notes

From a young age I thought that whole "quitters never win" thing was a bunch of b.s. made up by parents to force their kids to stick with piano, ballet and tennis lessons that they hated - ahem.

Instead, I think trying something for awhile to see if it works for you is way better than never starting anything at all. That, to me, is failing.

All that is to say I made a liberating decision this morning to quit participating in Project 182.5, which for me has turned more into Project 365 Sticky Notes anyway.

My intention is to catch up to early June and call it Project 180 or something. I figure it still shows a slice of our day-to-day life but really? How many pictures of strawberries and the bath routine do I really need to take for posterity? The one picture, however, of Sam's "buggy" stained shirt next to a bottle of Spray-N-Wash, that I'm glad I have.

I'm glad I've done the project to this point because it was nice to look at the ordinary as meaningful. I am also so relieved to let it go and move on to other things.

Pregnancy seems to suck the creative right out of me. I told Matt the other day I feel like I've done nothing creative in the last, oh, 13 weeks. He said: "Well, I don't know, making a whole person seems kinda creative."

Love him. Except when I'm ticked that he's suffering from none of my symptoms beyond cravings for Snickers Ice Cream.

Thanks to you who read my notes. :)

Project 365

I'm putting my perfectionist tendencies aside and posting the link to my Project 365 blog.

Those of you who tried to join me in Project 365 with the Creating Keepsakes kit know what a fiasco it turned out to be. Those who didn't, well, the fact that I haven't complained about it here is a testament to my resolution to complain less.

But just to explain ... I have never seen such an egregious customer service debacle. Creating Keepsakes hyped up a huge product launch scheduled for January 1st and then didn't staff the phone lines, in fact folks were on holiday while thousands of people called and called and called and waited on hold for hours.

I was lucky and only waited for about an hour, as did Amy. We were also online trying to order. She got through first and ordered the kit. I ordered as well but the computer kept wanting to give me six kits. No thank you. So Amy ordered a second kit for me. We got confirmation numbers for both orders. Excellent. Lucky us.

Until we found out, days later, that the system was generating false confirmation orders. Have you ever heard of such a thing? The story ends with only one kit being "real" - though it hasn't arrived.

Vultures are selling the kits on Ebay for up to $225. I'm still figuring out how I'm going to assemble the actual kit, but for now I'm focusing on the essence of the project: pictures + words.

As I was writing this, Amy called to say Becky Higgins, the creator of the fabulous kit gone crazy, posted a free download for the project.

I'm curious to hear how you guys are doing with this. Here's the link to my version of Project 365. Feel free to follow along and leave your comments.

Project 365

Somewhere between my rough draft and making dinner I started Project 365 today. If any of you guys are doing it, I'd love to hear about it. For many, it will look like a lot of work for not much result but I can't wait to see the pages start coming together. What is Project 365? It's a scrapbook project documenting a full calendar year of your day-to-day life. The kit, created by Becky Higgins, is seriously amazing and includes all the materials you need to complete the project. You add photos, journaling and the commitment to see it through. To learn more about the project, click here, and see the materials and get more ideas.

The hardest part today was figuring out what moment of the day to capture. I made breadcrumbs for the first time this morning, none of us eat bread heels so we have a bag of them on the verge of molding. Then I couldn't figure out the best way to store them, what with all the conflicting advice on Google. So I tossed them in the fridge for now and added "Bread crumbs" to the grocery list. I kept hearing that they will last in the pantry for a long time, but I don't believe it, bread molds, right?

As I'm getting ready for bed I saw my computer, tea, lavender oil (a surprise element in my column I'll explain later), my dictionary, AP Style Guide and notes and decided that was how I wanted to start the year, with a picture of me meeting my deadline. Hopefully I'll meet lots more of them in the new year.

Speaking of which, I'm working on building my web site, if you're a whiz with that kind of thing (or know someone who is), let me know.