Thankful Thursday

Earlier this year I came across a post on Cathy Zielske's blog about a gratitude album that she had started. As some of my readers may know, I made and kept a gratitude album for all of 2008, with an entry for each week of the year. You can see my post about it here. I went ahead and bookmarked Cathy's post because I knew I would want to come back to it eventually.

I decided to revisit my gratitude album because I honestly think it's a great way to keep yourself aware of all the blessings in your life. Instead of doing it for a calendar year this time, I decided that I would keep it for the entire year that I was 33. While I made my entries every Monday last time, I decided that I would observe Thankful Thursdays for this one. Also, instead of doing the album with all the different sized pages, this time every page would be 5" x 7" and based on the same design that Cathy used in her book.

I went through all of my patterned paper and pulled everything that I no longer liked or knew I would never get around to using. I was able to pull out enough paper to pack two priority mailing boxes FULL to bursting! As I pulled out the "junk" paper, I set aside anything that was cute or interesting. I know it seems weird, since I just called it junk, but if you look at some of the patterns in the above photo, you'll know what I mean. Where on Earth am I going to use something like that paisley?

After I had 52 sheets of paper in my "keep" pile, I trimmed them down to 5" x 7" rectangles. These will be the bases for my pages.

The next thing I did was make the journaling boxes for the pages. Now, Cathy sells a digital template (there's a link on the post to which I refer in the first paragraph) but I have Photoshop and since this is just black and white lines for the most part, I made my own. Making my own also means that I could adjust for the size album I'm making and get four boxes on a page to save cardstock. I also changed the header a bit.

I printed out a few, trimmed them, and rounded the top corners.

Like the last gratitude album, I'm not planning on putting my pages into page protectors. Instead I will bind them together along one edge. For this reason, I stuck my boxes on each page slightly offset. You'll notice that one is set to a different side than the others. This is because I plan to glue my pages back to back and then round the outside corners when they're done. This will ensure that whatever binding I use doesn't cut into my page.

I placed two coordinating strips of paper under the journaling box, and one off to the side inside it. This gives me room to place a 2" x 2 3/4" photo on each week's entry. I know that seems small, but the pages are small! Also, that means I can use photos I take with my phone if need be in a pinch.

I plan on doing all of my journaling by hand this time around, because I want to preserve my handwriting and this is a good place to do it. I could have just as easily left my template on the computer and journaled and printed each week. Both ways could work. I need to make the title page and covers still. Also, I need to finish printing the journaling blocks and get the pages stuck back to back. This is nowhere near finished!

See, New Year's isn't the only time you can make goals and resolutions! :)

Finally, I leave you with my title page: