Hello Week in the Life™ 2017!

Excited to be joining in with Ali Edwards in documenting a regular week in our life again this year.

The "official" week is April 17-23, 2017. But you can do this project whenever works best for you. 

I thought it would be fun to share a peek at what I'm doing to prepare this year, so I put together a video. The kit is from Ali Edwards, and I'm using the grey striped album. You can find that here.

I'm excited to get documenting and creating this year. And no, I haven't finished 2016 yet. It's in process and I have a video to share soon walking through where I am with that project too. 

A few thoughts about this year:

• For me, it's okay if I haven't finished last year's project. Memory keeping for me is about living in the moment and embracing that I rarely finish when "everyone else" does helps me continue to find joy in my hobby and goal to notice the goodness in my everyday life. 
• I really like that Ali has these kits. It makes it so much easier as my life just seems to get busier. I also like that Ali's designs are simple enough they can be used in different years and it all works out beautifully. Again, check out the 2017 Week in the Life™ supplies from Ali Edwards here.
• I really want a new camera lens. And a new camera. But it's likely not going to happen. I may try to rent a wide angle again. For me, playing with the photography is a joy. But it can also get overwhelming as I play with a new lens and take way more photos than I need for this project. So, I think I'm just going to use what I have. Currently I have my very old Canon Rebel T1i and primarily I use a Canon 24mm 2.8 "pancake" lens. It's super light and small so I can take this with me just about anywhere. I will also be using my iPhone 6plus and my Instax camera. 
• I really love Ali's preparation post here. I particularly like her ideas of focusing on something each day. I may go back and do something similar. One year I focused each main photo on a particular time of day, so my goal for capturing at least one "big photo" was made easier because I had a time to focus on it. Instead of feeling like I needed my big camera out taking photos of everything all the time. Feeling that something like this makes sense to me again this year. 
• I really hope I can get my office cleaned up a bit before this project. It's a hot hot mess right now! 
• I won't be sharing on Instagram or Facebook this year as I'm doing "100 Days of Living Hands Free" for my 100 Day Project. But my goal is that by doing this I might actually keep feeling inspired to blog and might actually finish? who knows! But so far I'm really liking this project and the fact that I wiped the dust off the blog and posted today. Find our more about the 100 Day Project here.
• I'm excited to explore what life looks like in our new home and city this year. I think capturing that will be a focus of mine. And maybe inspire us to get out and explore our town too.
• In the video I share that the white numbers are from the "Numbers" Story Kit™, which was a theme for a monthly kit of story-crafting supplies from Ali Edwards. You can find information about Ali's Story Kits™ here. 
• In the video I also share what I'm hoping to use for tracking my Week in the Life™ by using the Pocket Page Notebook. You can find information about this innovative new notebook here. I'll share more about it as I get using it. Very excited about this tool.
• Excited to get capturing and crafting our everyday life! Enjoy your WITL!

**edited to update this important thought about my WITL plans: I am definitely making plans to use Persnickety Prints for all my printing. Planning to do a post about this soon. Suffice to say, looking back at my past projects has helped me gain some clarity regarding the print at home versus sending out to print dilemma. And yes, so far Persnickety Prints is the clear winner. Find out more about them here.

**edited to also add I am pretty sure I'm going to focus on "A Week in the Life of Me" after reading Ali's post and having a change in our family's plans. Instead of skipping it, I'm going to embrace having a few days to myself and see what my life looks like right now. I'm excited!

To find out more about Week in the Life™ please check out Ali Edwards here.

Currently I do not have any affiliate links in this post. Just sharing things I love and what I'm currently using / wanting right now. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about the products I'm using.

Week in the Life™ 2015 | Preparation + Organization + Video

Hello again! 

Thanks for the feedback about the blog. It's definitely a work in progress so I'd love to hear your feedback!

I wanted to share some of my album preparations and organization this year for my Week in the Life™ project.

For those not familiar with it, Week in the Life™ is an annual everyday life documentary project created by Ali Edwards. The goal is to document a week of our lives. Usually the medium of choice is photos + words + optional papers / embellishments. One could also complete it minimally with a photo book or even with video. Lots of options. 

The biggest triumph I think comes from participating as much as you can, regardless of how you choose to put it together in the end. I personally enjoy the albums and creating pages, etc. But do what works for you. The main thing is to see your life with fresh eyes and heart. To capture and celebrate our wonderfully ordinary lives.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Paul Coehlo:

“When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.”

— Paul Coehlo in "The Alchemist"

Which pretty much sums up why I do this. It gives me a chance to really recognize the good.

Even when the good is standing by the sink, doing the dishes and remembering the time you and your mom made apple butter from scratch by the kitchen sink. Sinks hold some wonderfully good memories when you think about it. And possibly not so good. But again, I hope I am learning to recognize the good.

That's kind of how I approached this week. To see and feel the little things. To appreciate goodness.

I have yet to go through all my images. But I know that already, this project has changed me. I will go so far as to say, even if I never get to the album and all the photos and goodies that you'll see in the video. Even if all those photos do is live on my hard drive or shared in a grid on Facebook. I will tell you it was worth it. I have learned so much about myself and seen things I want to change. Things I am grateful for. And once again, learned to respect the ebb and flow. I'll share more about these thoughts soon, but I wanted to share a few thoughts today. 

Week in the Life™ // The Album and Products

I have personally participated in the project since 2011 and choose to keep mine in smaller 6x8 albums. So each year has its own album. 

If you've been participating with Ali Edwards and her Week in the Life project, you will know that the week she completed hers was Aug 17-23. This year I followed along and also did my capturing + documenting this past week. In years past I have done it the same week as well as other weeks. It just depends on what worked best for my life at the time. Either way works!

I had planned to share this post and video before this week, but I think sharing it this week might work too. A lot of people focus on the capturing life phase during the actual week and save the album design and completion phase later. So hopefully this still might be applicable. 

I hope to share some more posts about things that worked well for me and things that didn't work so well. 

For now, I have a video to share. Similar to the one I did last year. You can find that here.

This year I did less preparation in terms of slipping cards in pockets and more focus on things I wanted to capture. But I just love this album + kit and I thought it would be fun to share how I have mine set up so far. The kit is from Ali Edwards. You can find it here.

I've been enjoying having this tray of scrapbooking goodness out on my bookshelf these past few weeks. It has really inspired me to get excited about the project and to keep going when the capturing phase got tiring. On Friday I played around a little with some of the full spread photos and I think I'm going to really like having those in the album.

I hope it helps you too! 

Let me know if you have any questions!

Week in the Life™ Preparations Video

Week in the Life™ Preparations // Organization

A closer peek at one of the trays I like to hold projects like this in. This one is from Target. As I mention in the video, the smaller box within the tray is a cut down Studio Calico Project Life kit box (they are changing to zippered bags soon.) As you can tell, I usually like to supplement kits with things from my stash to use up some of my favorite supplies.

The other little bowls are spice tins from Ikea and an antique butter pat dish. I keep sequins in a small circular container from Creative Options. You can find that here.

I really love having all of this together. It inspires me each time I see it. 

Week in the Life™ Preparations // Title Pages and Sample Pages

And a look at some of the pages I've created so far. When I have a few extra moments I have played around with some of the title pages and some same photos in the book. I'm trying a few different things this year which is fun.

Here's my cover page. I'm using a Teresa Collins transparency and one of the stickers from the kit that I punched out and adhered onto a metal rimmed circle tag. I wanted to add a transparency to act as a "page lifter" which I hope will keep the plastic page protectors from curling when the book is standing up on the shelf. 

Plus, I like it. And it's gold. So double win.

You can find that here.

Playing around with some big numbers for the year. These are from Studio Calico, the Pop Art Scrapbook kit. (Here is the link but it's only available in that month.) The gold star vellum is from Maggie Holmes with Crate Paper. You can find that here.

I think on the back of the vellum page I will add my "Reasons Why" journaling. And then another simple introduction page. I might add more dates, etc somewhere in these pages. The nice thing about pocket pages are that you can change them.

Was playing around with the 2x2 squares pocket page. I may skip that since I already have more than enough intro pages. 

One of my goals was to get a family picture. So the first night I rented the lens I set up the tripod outside and made it happen. This is just a sample that I have printed onto cardstock. I'll print onto photo paper when I go to finish up the album.

The measurement of a full page photo like this (outside of a page protector) is 6.75 inches x 8.25 inches. The double page photo below is just double that. So 13.5 inches across and 8.25 inches tall. 

In the video, I talked about wanting to try a full spread (double page) photo like the one below. So this past Friday I printed out a trial page. I'm still playing with how this might work, but I'm kind of digging the big white border so I might keep it.

Again, I printed onto cardstock for now. 

I really love the overlay used over a photo like this. And I really like the simplicity of the wood veneer on it. 

I think this is how I will go for my album. 

So each day will have this as the first intro page, followed by other pages and my daily sheet.

Here's a look at the daily sheet I printed out back to back onto cardstock. You can find this from Ali Edwards here.

I ended up using a different system for capturing life during the week, but I plan on going back and filling these in with some of the notes I took. 

I'll also be using some templates and word art from Ali Edwards. It will just make it easier and I love her products.

(Disclosure: I am on the Ali Edwards Digital Creative Team this year and received the templates and word art as part of that. Kit purchased on my own. And seriously debating a second kit to get that cute Stories album. You can find the templates here and the kit here.)

So there it is so far! Hope this might help! And if anything, it's helped me get more excited about the project which is a good thing.

If you are interested in a very simple approach, check out my fellow Creative Team member Carly Roberston. You can find her super cute minimal approach using a 4x4 album here on Instagram.

And my friend Julie has already finished by keeping it super simple and using digital products each day to get it captured, documented and finished. So inspiring! Check her out here.

And another friend Trisha Harrison has a great post about her Week in the Life™ preparations. Definitely check out her blog here if you want some creative ideas with the kit. Always love her projects!

I know there are lots of other inspiring ideas out there! Please share a link in the comments!

Take care and thank you for your support! 

I hope you had a great Week in the Life™!