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 -

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171 thoughts

  1. Week In The Life | Ali Edwards says…
    07/20/2011

    [...] 2011 Supplies And Design Plan Thoughts On The Process & Daily Sheet PDF [...]

    Reply 0 Replies
  2. Jo says…
    07/20/2011

    Thank you Ali for the PDF, I'm sure that will help me keep up to date next week.

    Reply 1 Reply
    1. Christine says…
      07/20/2011

      Thanks for the pdf sheets! This should help so much

  3. JenR says…
    07/20/2011

    Thank you so much for this! This is my first time doing WITL, and I was beginning to feel just a tad overwhelmed. This makes it feel much less "Big" and more do-able. Thanks!

    Reply 0 Replies
  4. Brandy says…
    07/20/2011

    This is awesome! I am taking a small notebook to jot down times and things to remember, so it can have it with me even at work. I can see using these at the end of each day to get all the details in. Thanks for these and for this project, I love it!

    Reply 0 Replies
  5. Alejandra Blanco says…
    07/20/2011

    Hello Ali. This is my first time doing this project. I really hope I can do it right. Thank you!

    Reply 0 Replies
  6. sandi m says…
    07/20/2011

    SO excited!!! Getting things ready so I can stay on track.

    Reply 0 Replies
  7. Melanie says…
    07/20/2011

    Thank you so much Ali for the PDF file. This will be my first time doing this project and I'm so EXCITED!!! Thanks for all your inspiration.

    Reply 0 Replies
  8. o-girl says…
    07/20/2011

    Thank you for sharing your creative thought process on this project & for the .pdf's. They'll be quite helpful.

    Reply 0 Replies
  9. Cynthia says…
    07/20/2011

    Thanks for the PDF, it will be invaluable! I plan to get my supplies together this weekend so that I am ready for Monday! I am pretty excited as I will be a first timer as well.

    Reply 0 Replies
  10. Donnie says…
    07/20/2011

    Hey Ali,

    I will be participating in A Week in the Life for the first time this year and I am so excited. Like you I plan to do all of the documentation during the week and put together the album at the end of the week!

    Reply 0 Replies
  11. Christie says…
    07/20/2011

    I am another first timer, and know these PDFs will be very helpful - thank you!!

    Reply 0 Replies
  12. Cindy b says…
    07/20/2011

    Awesome! Thank u so much Ali! This really gets me jazzed up about this project... Really getting excited about next week!

    Reply 0 Replies
  13. DanaN says…
    07/20/2011

    Thank you for the pdf. I can't wait to get started!

    Reply 0 Replies
  14. cate says…
    07/20/2011

    thank you! this is the first year WITL has felt doable to me (but my days are busier now than a year ago!) This will help me keep on track even better!

    Reply 0 Replies
  15. Robyn says…
    07/20/2011

    Charge the camera...and buy extra ink for your printer! ;) Holy smokes!

    Reply 0 Replies
  16. Christine says…
    07/20/2011

    Thanks for the PDFs. They look extremely helpful as this will be my first time doing WITL.

    Reply 0 Replies
  17. Rebekah Pontow says…
    07/20/2011

    This PDF has got to be the best thing ever!!! I'm certain this will make documenting so much easier!! Thank you Ali!

    Reply 0 Replies
  18. Kathy says…
    07/20/2011

    I can't wait........... I am relived that the week is just the documenting and the following week is the album because it is a huge task to keep up with so I like this idea. Thanks for the downloads they will come in handy. Here we go again.... Regards Kathy A, Brisbane, Australia

    Reply 0 Replies
  19. Jenny Meyerson says…
    07/20/2011

    I took your Today You class in California in 2005 and the 3 albums (3 kids at the time) remain among my most treasured. Week in the Life reminds me of a similar focus and I'm going to do it for the first time this year. Thanks as always for the inspiration and all of the little helps, including this pdf.

    Reply 0 Replies
  20. madeline St onge says…
    07/20/2011

    WOW great idea for the PDF, printing it out now, thank you so much. Can't wait to start this

    Reply 0 Replies
  21. Nicole says…
    07/20/2011

    This is so awesome Ali, thank you! My daily sheets are printed and clipped into my clipboard - ready to go. My camera battery is charged too, I just need to dig out the tripod. :)

    Reply 0 Replies
  22. Myra says…
    07/20/2011

    This year, I'm taking Hipstamatic photos and using one of Cathy Zielske's digi Instagram templates. Simple, one page per day approach with a little daily ephemera thrown in.

    Reply 0 Replies
  23. Karyn says…
    07/20/2011

    Thanks so much Ali for providing this PDF. I was just thinking I needed to put something together along these lines so that I could more easily track my week. I didn't do this last week & really struggled (hence the unfinished 2010 WIL album - the photos are all there but not the documenting/journalling).

    Reply 1 Reply
    1. Johanna says…
      07/21/2011

      Your comment made me grin - as my album for 2010 is far from completed, too! Oh, and not even to speak of 2008 :) My goal is to get those pages from 2010 ready (only some digi paper and sentiment tabs missing) and have them printed with the ones from this year - that would be so, so cool. Good luck with tying yours together!

  24. Laurel says…
    07/20/2011

    Awesome! Thanks.

    Reply 0 Replies
  25. Megan Renfree says…
    07/20/2011

    Thanks Ali. I am a first timer too, and am drinking up everything you say at the moment in preparation. My supplies are slowly arriving in the mail and I am getting really excited about it. I have hardly been scrapping lately and I am looking forward to getting a week of our life documented to have a record of something for 2011. I just hope I can get enough photos taken.

    Reply 0 Replies

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