The Working Life | In Progress

Happy June! JUNE. 

Today I wanted to give you some updates of what we've got going on in and around the office. As you might have noticed it's been quieter here on the blog recently. I've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes that doesn't always show up here on the blog until it's in it's finished form and I've been working hard to establish more consistent work/life boundaries. Story Subscription monthly content (a couple layouts per month + videos + handouts), Type workshop content (a couple layouts a week + videos + handouts - this workshop will run again next year for any of you who missed it this time around), new product design (for general upcoming releases as well as December Daily®, Week In The Life™, etc), and One Little Word® monthly content are all among the things happening around here at any given time. It's a full plate of memory keeping goodness. 

Here's a few other things from around the office:

Loving Elise's new Get To Work Book | Planners are all the rage - but this one is different. It's not really a planner in the traditional sense of a place to write down your dentist appointment on Tuesday or your dinner date on Friday - it's a more project-based approach which is perfect for tracking my working life. Rather than times of the day there are simply columns for each day of the week - that works the best for me as I use iCal for my regular calendar of kids stuff and appointments. For me those columns will be home to the tasks that need to be completed each day and there's plenty of room for holding ideas and such as they come up through the month. I love the idea that it will work as a central home for all my work-related notes, tasks, etc. I'll keep you posted on the reality of how it works once I begin using it regularly in July (it's a July through June calendar - she will also be releasing a January - December calendar later this year for those of you who prefer a calendar year set-up). Click on over to her site to see all about the insides and her intentions/reasons why for creating this work book. And a disclaimer for anyone wondering - I purchased this on my own and am genuinely excited to share it with you. 

Listening | To Top-40 (all Katie's fault) and The Grand Budapest Hotel Soundtrack which is awesome mainly instrumental background music great for working and writing.  

Speaking of Katie | Congratulations are in order because she is expecting her first child in the Fall. Recently people have been asking if she still works for me since you might not see her as publicly as in the past - she sure does. She's instrumental in helping me get the things done I need to get done by keeping track of all the projects and deadlines we have happening behind the scenes. We're experimenting with some flexible working situations for when she has her baby later this year. We're also working on getting back into something similar to the Block Schedule that we had previously implemented before some of my big business transitions to the new site and new design/content creation responsibilities. All those changes (many you didn't really see here on the surface necessarily) have resulted in some major schedule change-ups from the way we were working previously. In the past many of the things we did were weekly whereas now many of our deadlines are monthly - it's been quite a shift but one I welcomed in terms of shaking things up. 

Preparing to shift to a summer schedule | My kids have one and two weeks of school left respectively, which means a transition to a different set-up for all of us for the summer months. They each have a couple camps lined up plus the usual family camping adventures. I never really know exactly how the summer will play out. I'm hoping to do another summer manifesto just to keep my eye on what's most important over the next few months. Summers usually either end up being awesome or challenging from a childcare standpoint - my kids are getting older which I want to think gives us all more flexibility, but sometimes I over-estimate those things and end up going a little crazy on those summer days when I need to work and they are bored. I have no problem with them learning to be bored but I also want them to have "fun" - most likely this means an menu of choices for them during the days when they are here so they don't end up on the couch in front of the TV for most of the day - Simon would love that and Anna would like it for about 30 minutes. 

Working on Day In The Life™ | I've got all my photos printed (going with a 4x6 format this time) and I cut out a bunch of words with the Silhouette and now I just need to get my words added in before finishing it up. Hoping to share my completed project next week. 

Differentiating | We're getting the @aliedwardsdesign instagram account up and running and working on differentiating it from my personal @aliedwards account. We just started a new campaign called #WITLmemories (for Week In The Life™ memories) and have invited several guests to share images and thoughts and reflections from their past Week In The Life™ projects. We'd love to invite you to share some of your past albums and why they are important to you as well. Use the hashtag #WITLmemories and we may share some of those over there or here in the coming months leading up to Week In The Life™ in mid-to-late August. 2015 kits are available for pre-order here. 

Thinking about, but not totally acting on, Project Life® | It's here in my office on my shelf and it's collecting bits of life and photos but I haven't completed a spread in quite awhile. Right now I'm totally okay with it and I know I'll make time for it soon - my main focus has been on making more traditional layouts for the Type workshop and Story Subscription. It's all a balancing act as you guys know. I'm still going with the weekly format and have been sticking things in here and there as time slips by. I'm hoping that getting back to a Block Schedule will also help make time for this specifically - right now PL gets done in my free time and to be honest I don't always want to do memory keeping in my free time since it's all part of what I do in my working hours as well. 

Shipping Kits | Katie is packing up kits to ship to She Scrapbooks in Florida for my last in-person event of the year. We've added another Day In The Life™ workshop on Friday, June 26th from 1-4pm and we'd love to see you there. Click here for more information: http://bit.ly/1HHoUY3 and to sign up for the class, contact She Scrapbooks via phone at 352-259-6226. After we finish up we will be releasing some of those classes here over the next 6-months as self-paced workshops. 

Here's to being "in-progress"!