Category: documenting

I’m getting so close to finishing this project, over halfway through! I’ve been getting through a day each weekend lately so I should be done by Thanksgiving for sure. :)

I like my albums to be cohesive so I pick a formula and stick with it. You’ll see the same things here as the other days.

The “today” stamp above is from last year’s week in the life kit. Again you’ll notice that I put some photos back to back outside the page protectors. The pair on top is centered around daycare dropoff, and the pair on the bottom is about my work day.

I’ve really liked including a lot of typed journaling on the photos, but I also like mixing it with handwriting. It works well, I think!

And that’s the last page of Thursday!

Supplies used:
Week in the Life kit with black/white album
Avery Index Tabs

Tools used:
StazOn Inkpad
Crop-A-Dile
Tiny Attacher
Pentel Energel
Date stamp
Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Glue

Fonts used:
Gill Sans (on photos)
Aleo (on cards)

This album is still slowly but surely coming together! It’s taking me longer than expected (story of my life) because I’ve barely had any spare time these days, but finishing a single day at this point only takes about half an hour.

Here’s the rest of what Wednesday looks like:

Once again with this 3×8 insert I listed out a brief outline of our morning and afternoon, but today I had a photo of dinner to include.

This is what happens when I take photos with the kids in the house. :)

I liked this method of numbering the photos with stickers to match up with the “observations” journal card.

This is probably my favorite spread of the album so far! I just really like the calm colors.

And it ends on a simple story of swimming with friends after dinner.

Such a great project. Love it so much!

Supplies used:
Week in the Life kit with black/white album
Avery Index Tabs

Tools used:
StazOn Inkpad
Crop-A-Dile
Tiny Attacher
Pentel Energel
Date stamp
Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Glue

Fonts used:
Gill Sans (on photos)
Aleo (on cards)

My Week in the Life album is coming together one day at a time. Here is what Tuesday looked like:

For this day I used the 3×8 insert to include more photos, mostly of what I ate and then of the kids at my in-laws’ house in the evening.

Just simple. I had fun coordinating colors.

The left side of this page was all about taking the kids to daycare and dropping them off.

The right side was about me getting settled in at home for my day off.

I thought the “there is no place like home” card was perfect because I absolutely LOVE being home. It’s my happy place. And this day I got to be there all alone which rarely happens, and was so refreshing to my spirit.

On the “top ten” card I wrote down my favorite things about the day. :)

Another back-to-back photo insert outside the page protectors.

All I added to this page was the cardboard heart. So glad I caught Liam’s face as he ran toward me that day. So much love!

And this last page had a wrap-up of the day plus another one of my favorite pictures, carrying a sleeping Meredith inside from the car.

Supplies used:
Week in the Life kit with black/white album
Avery Index Tabs

Tools used:
StazOn Inkpad
Crop-A-Dile
Tiny Attacher
Pentel Energel
Date stamp
Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Glue

Fonts used:
Gill Sans (on photos)
Aleo (on cards)

I’m excited to start sharing with you my completed Week in the Life album. I’ve made a lot of progress and hopefully I’ll be finished with the whole thing within a month!

For my album, I used mostly Ali’s kit. Here you see the title page, on which I decided to just play with paper. I think it’s cute. :)

Before we got into the details of the week, I wanted to briefly give some info about each of us. I basically just wrote our ages and what we’re into right now off the top of my head.

I love the transparent dividers that came with the kit since I preordered. For the beginning of each day I decided to follow a plan: divider, then a 3×8 page with the day number and wood veneer day of the week. And I love adding the tabs to the side of smaller pages.

On the back of the 3×8 I used this insert. On some future days I’m using it for more photos, but otherwise I just list an overview of our day.

This is my second year completing this project, and there are two main things that I love about this album compared to last year’s. First of all, I printed my photos in color for the most part. Last year I did all black and white, which I thought would be cool but ended up being boring.

Secondly, I typed up journaling on many of the photos before printing. This took more time at the beginning because I really had to plan the entire album before printing, but it’s making things so much easier now. Not only do I have to do less handwriting, but it’s also saving a lot of space. All of the journaling I did was taken directly from each day’s blog post.

Since I had more photos than page protectors, I punched holes in some and put them right in the album. This was Ali’s idea and I thought it was awesome.

For these daily cards I typed my journaling. To do so, I have a template set up in PSE, then I just lightly tape the card down to my paper template, and print. Here is how I learned to do it.

I just used simple embellishments throughout. I like the mix of handwritten and typed journaling.

Most of my nighttime photos I converted to black and white because the lighting was bad. The lamp on the wall in the kids’ room gives a greenish tint. But I loved how this one turned out!

That’s it for my Monday in the album. Thanks for letting me share!

Supplies used:
Week in the Life kit with black/white album
Avery Index Tabs

Tools used:
StazOn Inkpad
Crop-A-Dile
Tiny Attacher
Pentel Energel
Date stamp
Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Glue

Fonts used:
Gill Sans (on photos)
Aleo (on cards)

This week I am documenting a week in our lives along with the Ali Edwards community. Here are some photos and words about yesterday, if you’d like to see…

Sunday, again, I did not want to wake up. Liam forced me to get out of bed around 7, but Meredith kept sleeping. Obviously my camera does not do well in low light, but I wanted to show her all cuddled up in my bed.

I made some coffee and we played for a little bit. Liam actually had worn PJ’s but I took them off after changing his diaper.

I needed to start working on some chores since I was still behind from yesterday, so I turned on the TV for him to watch. All morning he kept shoving his diaper down like this. I thought it was cute. :)

The second picture is Liam being my laundry “helper.” He loves to lie down on piles of clothes or blankets on the floor. What I did not take a picture of was him dumping my full cup of coffee out all over him and this clean pile of my clothes just a few minutes later. (Thankfully the coffee wasn’t super hot anymore.) After cleaning that up, Meredith woke up and came to inform me that she had peed all over herself. At least she had made it to the bathroom.

I recovered from the morning’s disaster and made breakfast. On Sundays we have pancakes with our eggs.

Here Meredith was pretending to be the teacher and was reading me books then showing me the pictures. She can’t read, but a few books she almost has memorized so she thinks that’s reading. And if you can’t tell, she doesn’t really like to wear clothes. (Daniel Tiger on the TV in the background. Exercise bike that is currently not in use other than for the kids to climb on it.)

At church we dropped the kids off at their classes. Liam is still in the nursery and we took him first. He was crying so I didn’t take a picture. Meredith recently moved up to the school-aged class. When we got there they were doing songs and she chose the adult she wanted to go stand by. The shoes she is wearing are a few sizes too big and she had me bring some extras in case she wanted to change.

Our church meets in an elementary school but I like the setup. I really enjoyed the songs and sermon, which was about discipleship. Liam was calm when we picked him up after. :)

At home I pulled out my bullet journal and worked on my grocery list after feeding the kids lunch and eating some leftovers myself.

Then I took the kids to the mall and David got a short break. I had a specific pair of shoes in mind that I wanted to get Liam, but I couldn’t find them. All the fall styles are in stores now, and the ones I want are probably more for summer. It’s still going to be hot for awhile here, though. I measured their feet in the shoe store and will order some shoes for them.

Meredith either wanted to push Liam’s stroller or be the “line leader.” When I got Liam out of the stroller for two seconds to measure his feet he ran out of the store into the mall while I was looking at shoes (it was super busy being the day before school starts). I realized it quickly but a store employee had run after him too. Crazy kid. Then we went home and I handed off Liam to David.

I took Meredith to pick up my friend Lauren and then we went shopping. We went to a specific Target that had an Old Navy next to it because I wanted to get a few summery dresses since those are on sale now. Sadly the entire block was without electricity! It was so weird. We ended up driving to another Target and I did get a few things but we were a little more rushed. I ended up buying some things online from Old Navy later, so hopefully something fits.

After dropping Lauren off at home, we met David at his parents’ house for dinner. His grandfather, we call him Pappy, usually comes over there for dinner every Sunday. He is 90 years old and lives in a nursing home close by. He has dementia and had a stroke that affected his language but he still loves playing with the kids and they love him too.

After dinner we just hung out there for awhile. Liam loves phones and David’s dad called me on his phone and I FaceTimed with Liam and he thought it was so cool. He just holds anything that looks like a phone up to his ear and repeats “hello?” over and over. The kids also discovered a rolling pin and that was a huge hit!

From there, David took Liam on his nighttime ride and I brought Meredith home. But Liam wasn’t tired at all, so David had planned to take him to the grocery store. He came home to get him a new shirt, and then his truck died. We couldn’t do anything about it at the time, so he moved Liam to my car and left.

At home we got ready for bed, tidied up, I moved the sheets to the dryer, fed the cats, and Meredith fed her fish. She just came home with it from school one day so we had to go buy food if we didn’t want to kill it. It’s lasted a few weeks now, though! Meredith named it Arianna after one of her friends who doesn’t go to her school anymore. We had to move the fish bowl to the mantel because otherwise the cats get to it. I feel sorry for that fish in that tiny bowl.

Bedtime with Meredith went okay. She stalled quite a bit. I read her four books (lost my temper once) then she asked me to tickle her back. So I turned out the light and did that for awhile. I hummed some lullabies and it was quite lovely. She fell asleep pretty easily.

Once Meredith was asleep I put the fresh sheets on the bed and came to type up this post. I wanted to get it done for sure because I am working in the medical center all next week which is an hour-plus commute and I will be leaving early. Plus, I might be having to take David to work if his truck won’t start. So you might not be hearing from me much this week as it is crazy busy! While I was writing, David brought Liam home and laid him on the bed.

Thoughts on today: not as restful as I usually like a Sunday to be, and I didn’t get to some of the chores I had meant to. But it was full of people I love and the necessities are taken care of. Since we had such a busy weekend, I am not going to plan anything for next weekend and make it a time to catch up, mostly on meal planning and cleaning.

I have so enjoyed documenting this week! I am really looking forward to putting the album together and seeing what others do as well. Hopefully I’ll have it done in a few months. :)