Week In The Life | Thoughts On The Process & Daily Sheet PDF

Next week I'll be documenting a week in our lives.

Seven days of photos and words, chronicling the little things and the big things that happen from Monday through Sunday.

There's so many different ways to approach this project. There's no right or wrong.

• Maybe you'll follow along with me and focus on the theme of time this year. Check out my design plan and supply list here.

• Maybe for you this project will be an attempt to catch just one story per day with words or photos.

• Maybe for you this project will be all on your blog and you won't be creating an album.

• Maybe you'll go all-out and jot down things as they happen on an hourly basis (even doing this for one day during the week is really cool).

If this is your first time participating in this project I highly recommend you read this post: The Basics Of Documenting A Week In Your Life. I've also got completed examples from a couple years available here: 2008 and 2010.

For me this project is about capturing the rhythms of our days over a period of one week. What time are we waking? What time are we falling into bed? What's special about our family right now? How can I pay close attention to (and honor and celebrate) the things that are happening now which likely won't be the same next year?

This project is simply an opportunity to capture the real, the basic, the rush, the slowness, the crazy, the simple, the ups and the downs of a single week. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Next week my focus is ONLY on documenting. I won't be putting the album together at all. I'll be using my camera and writing things down and just letting the week evolve. The actual bringing it all together will happen the following week.

Week In The Life Schedule

Here's what's happening next week:

MONDAY | The week begins with a special Week In The Life giveaway from the 2011 sponsors. The comments on the giveaway will be open through Friday with the winners posted on the following Monday.

TUESDAY THROUH SUNDAY | Each day I'll share my photos and words for the day. At the bottom of each post I'll include a link widget for you to link to your own blog or site sharing your photos and words. Seeing others photos and reading their words are such a great way to get inspired and to think about other things you'd like to include in your own project.

WEEK OF AUGUST 1 | I'll be sharing my completed album.

Free Daily Sheets PDF To Help Document Your Week

As I was thinking about how I want to approach my content I remembered that when I first taught this class back in 2005 I included Daily Sheets for people to use to document pieces of their day. I created a new PDF that's geared towards what I'd like to include in my album and am making it available for you to download here.

The simple idea is to print out this PDF and keep it with you throughout the week for a very easy way to write things down. It's possible that not everything you write on here will make it into your album and it's also possible (and likely for me) that I'll be writing even more stories on the back on these sheets.

My hope is that this will give you a starting place.

The PDF includes 14 pages - 2 for each day of the week. The first page features time by hours (all 24 hours are listed) and the second page includes a spots for food (breakfast, lunch and dinner), observations, gratitude, favorite memory, and overheard.

Download the Week In The Life Daily Sheets here (3.1 MB).

I hope you're getting excited! Charge up those camera batteries -