kismet art: Week in the Life, 2010

A week in our life is over and the bits and pieces and photos and words that made that week what it was is are now all together in one album. That album is almost 2 1/2 inches thick. It weighs over 7 pounds. It holds 246 photos (chosen from the 622 photos taken), 21 layouts, ephemera, several notes, and countless words. It represents hours of taking photos, editing photos, uploading photos, choosing photos, printing photos, trimming and mounting photos. Time spent cutting paper to fit each pocket, to write things down, to gather items, to glue, and organize, and to reflect on all that happened during that one week.

And to me and my family this project is priceless.

Do I regret any of the time spent on this project? No. Everything was not perfect. There were days I forgot to take notes, or the camera battery died, or I forgot the camera altogether, or everyone got tired of having their photo taken. But after giving up by day two last year (I had stopped taking photos) this year despite those minor blips I kept going and I am really glad I didn't let my own self get in the way.

Do I have ideas of how I would do any of this differently? Yes, and they are written down on the last page. What I love about this project is that there is no right or wrong way to go about documenting it or putting it together. And I love that so many people are sharing how this process worked for them and how their finished projects look... I have so many ideas for how I will do this project differently, which leads me to my next question:

Will I do this project again next year? YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES.

Thanks Ali, I love this project and I am so glad for all that you shared and all that everyone else who played along and created their own Week in the Life has shared too.

So here is a look at Monday- Opening page is an 8x10 family portrait of the 4 of us taken with the self-timer on my camera in the "big bed":Each day begins with one of these divided page protectors, the name of the day, the date and some notes about what we did that day, there are extra photos, letters, notes, etc. on the back side: I used a variety of sizes of page protectors, 12x12, 8 1/2 by 11, baseball card sleeves, some multi-pocket with 4x6 or 5x7 openings. I wish I had watched Ali's tutorial on making ATC sized photos on a 5x7 photo so I wouldn't have had to print so many, and cut so many, photos (I was saved by the fact that I had 100 free prints at Costco plus a coupon for 9 cent prints). Instead I printed most of my photos as 4x6 and then trimmed them to 2x3- and a lot of them I cut in half and put the two halves together side by side in the baseball card sleeves- I ended up liking the look of this more than I imagined and used it often throughout the album. Here is an example of those cut in half photos with a page about our daily breakfast routine:Each day in the album has at least one 12x12 layout, I printed several 5x7 photos and used them on the layouts, the larger pages were nice for telling a longer story:The daily mess, pre-clean-up: Another 12x12 layout, this one about my van and my feelings about driving it: Here is one of the 4x6 pages, each one has a few photos and a little bit of detailed journaling: