Category: week in the life

week in the life 2014 : wednesday in the album

Here is another installment of my slowly-coming-together week in the life album from last October. I really hope to wrap up this project in the next month, two months tops. I’ve learned a lot from it and am SO glad to have done it, but I’m ready to move on (and definitely make some changes for next time).

Wednesday’s enlarged photo came from the morning when Meredith put her Gyffy toy in “time-out.” The rest of the page and the next are morning photos.

I am still using the front of the 3×8 pocket to document meals. On the back this day I wrote down a few random things: a quote, a gratitude, and a favorite moment.

Notice that I stamped my “3” backwards? Am I the only one who legitimately struggles with which way a 3 faces when I’m not writing?? Anyway, I just kept the mistake in there.

I took a couple of pages to document a little more about my work day. I know I can’t write many details about my patient work, but there are other stories about work that are important to me and make my job and my everyday special, so I tried to include a little of that.

Now onto the coming home from work part of the day. Chatting with our yard guy, Meredith’s phonics work she brought home from preschool, and then taking a breather with her outside to stop a tantrum.

The last page of the day is simple, with a detail photo of the diaper-changing area and then the day’s full journaling.

So currently I’ve completed through Thursday (will post it next week) and I’m kind of losing momentum. I’m very tired of the black and white photos for one thing! I’m glad I tried it, but as much as I love black and white I think this album would have benefited from some color. Oh well!

Happy Wednesday! ;)

March 4, 2015
week in the life 2014 : tuesday in the album

Hi there! Just want to quickly share my layouts for Tuesday of the week in the life album I have in progress. This one came together faster than Monday since I knew what I was going for.

I’m starting every day with a full page photo with date stamped on the gold foil labels. I also plan to do a rundown of my meals on this narrow 3×8 page for each day.

On the back of this one I wrote out a few Meredith quotes. The right side is some morning photos.

The below layout encompasses the bulk of my day. Work (with pumping) and running on the treadmill after. It’s funny because I really can’t document much of what I spend most of my time on – work – because of patient privacy reasons. My job is super important to me and very fulfilling, but almost all of my memory keeping is family-focused and that’s okay.

I loved this little photo of me picking up Liam from daycare. He always clings to me as we walk out to the car and I usually spend a few extra moments hugging him before putting him in the car seat (which he hates).

On the last page of the spread I wrote my gratitude list and included a couple of evening photos. The one of our family dinner is a favorite. Then again I wrote out all the happenings of the day.

Slowly this album is coming together and I am really enjoying the process!

January 28, 2015
week in the life 2014 : monday in the album

Well two and a half months later and I’m finally putting together this album! Before I share more I have a few thoughts:

>I love this project and definitely want to participate each year. I bought and used the kit, but had to put together my own album since they had sold out. This year I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy all of Ali’s kits and albums because I don’t have a huge stash of my own, I love her style, and having it on hand really helps me get it done.

>I do hope that the official week in 2015 will be earlier in the year, because this was right before the holidays and there was just no way I could devote the time I needed to put the album together.

>My three biggest sources of inspiration for the album are Ali herself, Jodie, and Andrea. If you felt like it you would be able to see where I’ve copied some of their ideas. :)

On to the album! Above you can see my title page. The front little card tells my “reason why.”

On the back of the card I used alpha stickers for our initials and typed out some info about each of us, plus what we’re into. I liked adding type to the album like this, but I didn’t have the time to keep it up so everything from here on out is pretty much hand written.

For the main title page I used a family photo from the week and stamped the dates on a label.

Now we get into Monday! I decided to use ALL black and white photos for this project. I thought that it would be easier to edit and keep it from feeling too busy. I planned to use more embellishments than usual to add color, but as it turns out I am who I am and the “extras” were kept to a minimum. In the future I think I’ll do color photos, but this was a fun experiment.

For the first photo of each day I printed a 6×8 (using Persnickety Prints) and added a label with the date. I think it’s fitting that the first photo of anything turned out to be coffee.

On the right side of the page are some morning photos.

On the left are more morning photos. I didn’t try to add too much journaling because I wrote everything out at the end (you’ll see).

On the right is a 3×8 insert where I put pics of two of my meals and wrote what we ate.

Behind the insert are photos of the kids at daycare dropoff, a filler card I created, and I stapled the chipboard 1 right onto the page protector.

On the left: my work station at the time, getting pulled over (yikes), to do list.

On the right: daily gratitude list (want to include this for each day), Liam at a checkup, the weather, and a Monday filler card.

On the left: David being funny with Meredith after work, favorite moments card + filler, David nebulizing Liam (thank goodness we don’t have to do that every day anymore!).

On the right: David giving Meredith a bath, Meredith doing puzzles, a 4×6 filler card I created using VersaMark stamping.

This is the last spread for Monday. I wrote out two of Meredith’s quotes for the day and put a picture of us right before bed. Then I wrote out ALL of my notes for the day and they fit perfectly on a 6×8 blank sheet of cardstock. I did this for each day. I tried underlining it for Monday but the rest of the days I left plain because I liked that look better.

I will post each day as I get it done!

January 14, 2015
week in the life 2014 : some thoughts on the process

Last week I decided to take part in the intense documentation project called week in the life that was started by one of my favorite memory keeping bloggers, Ali Edwards. Here are some thoughts on my first time taking part, along with some of my favorite photos from the week.

Early morning list-making and coffee-drinking.

She had just woken up. She is attached to this dog and blanket right now. / Liam at the doctor.

Nebulizing.

Bible study and nursing.

A sticker Meredith gave me that I had forgotten was there. / Punching the code at daycare to pick up the kids.

My current desk at work.

Computer time while David was on kid duty. It was a gorgeous day so I kept the back door open.

Walking outside to take a breather during a toddler meltdown.

Dressed up for picture day. Liam thinks it’s hilarious when Meredith jumps on the bed. / Just hanging out.

Unmade bed.

Family portrait after church.

***

This is a project that had been on my radar for a couple of years but it always seemed too difficult. This year, even the day before the challenge begun, I almost decided not to do it. I was very intimidated.

I had some perfectionist tendencies within me that I had to let go of. The fact that I don’t have a nice camera. That I might not be able to keep up. That I might forget to write anything down for an entire morning or an entire day. That my house wasn’t decorated how I want it to be. But in the end, I decided to go for it. I reminded myself that anything documented was better than nothing.

I didn’t do much to prepare ahead of time. I printed out Ali’s daily sheets to take notes. I jotted down a few reminders of pictures I wanted to take and stories I wanted to capture. And then I just did it. During the week, I only focused on documentation. After a couple of days it was already a habit, so much so that the Monday after the project ended I had the urge to continue.

I wrote down what we did each day in a detailed manner, and I also wrote a lot of reflective observations to put everything in context. I don’t have a great memory so I knew if I didn’t write stuff down I wouldn’t remember what happened or why I took the photo.

(My mother-in-law asked me why I wanted the family pictures after church and I told her I was doing a project where I intensely documented a week in our lives. Then I had to add “…even more than I usually do” because to them I’m already extreme. :))

My only camera is my iPhone so that’s what I used, and I didn’t stress about it. I tried to do some self-timer shots using the TimerCam app, and they turned out okay. I would really like to get an iPhone tripod.

Halfway through the week I decided to order Ali’s week in the life album kit (without the album). The stuff inside is more colorful than I usually go for, but I thought this would be a fun opportunity to do something different than what I do with Project Life. Right now I am even thinking of doing completely black and white photos and letting the journal cards and embellishments provide the color. This approach also appeals to me because candid, iPhone photos aren’t the greatest quality and black and white can really make a difference in minimizing that.

The week that I documented was, overall, a pretty normal one. Coffee. Bible study. Work. I had easy days in the clinic and busy ones. I pumped. We nebulized. We did a hundred puzzles (or, rather, one puzzle a hundred times). There were some meltdowns. Some very sweet moments. Family dinner at home almost every night. Arguments over bedtime almost every night. Chores on Saturday. Rest on Sunday.

Then there were a few things out of the ordinary. A doctor’s visit for Liam (although, that’s kind of normal lately). Halloween. No Friday night dinner with my parents, but my mom accompanied us trick-or-treating. We saw a play for date night. And Liam crawled for the first time.

I am so glad that I did this. It was much easier to keep up with than I expected. After only a couple of days it was pretty much habit, so much so that the Monday after the project was done, I had the urge to continue. Using my phone camera made it easy to capture little things.

In the coming weeks, I plan to put together a mini album for this project. If I do this yearly, I think it will be the perfect companion to Project Life, which gives more of a general overview of our lives and hits the high points. This has the nitty gritty, the routines, the little things that don’t normally get documented. I love it.

I’ll be sharing my album with you for sure – my goal is to finish it before Thanksgiving because at that point I want to move on to my holiday minibook. I haven’t been this excited about something in awhile.

I do encourage you to consider doing this challenge yourself. I chose to take the plunge during the “official” week because I thought I needed the encouragement, but it can obviously be done at any time. What you do with the photos and stories is up to you, but I can already tell it’s going to be something I treasure.

November 6, 2014