Week in the Life 2017

I'm really excited that tomorrow is the start of documenting our 2017 Week in the Life photo project.  It's a snapshot of your life for 7 days from routines to food to house decor to sitting in the car driving your kids everywhere.  I've done this project for many years and have spoken about it in this post and every year what seems "ordinary everyday life" changes before our very eyes.  I wish I had started a few years earlier however it's amazing when I look through these photo books at just what has been documented over the years.

I think about how wonderful it would be to see a photo book of when I was 7 from the breakfast cereals we were eating, the wallpaper that was trending, the types of cars that were driven.  There were no mobile phones, internet, google and I remember the milkman delivering milk each morning in glass bottles.   There were no CD's or DVD's it was cassette tapes, vinyl records and the family usually had a big piece of timber furniture in the lounge room that housed the record player. There was usually one TV and maybe a little portable B&W tv and with 7 people it was always a negotiation about which show was going to be watched on the B&W tv while my parents were watching the 7pm news which we, as kids found extremely boring and couldn't understand why they wanted to watch it.  There was no extra rooms for a study, 2nd lounge or media room.  A house with 3 bedrooms was typical of a family of 7 and bear in mind the parents had 1 of the 3 bedrooms..you figure out the math.  These days most kids have their own bedrooms, 2 lounge rooms and 2 bathrooms.  Oh how the time have changed.

We (all the neighbourhood kids) rode our bikes all over the suburb where we lived and went out in the morning and maybe came home for lunch and were home for dinner.  We explored the local creek with buckets and nets and caught tadpoles and on a Friday night we would catch all the cane toads in buckets and build a 3 brick high fort in our neighbours front yard and put all the toads in there and then release them in the morning if they hadn't jumped out during the night....ahhh life was fun.  Oh how I wished I had photos of some of those activities we did at the time.  My kids will appreciate these books when they are adults married with their own kids and they can use the age old phrase that starts like "when I was a kid" or as my kids refer to my stories always start with "back in the day"....a standard family joke which always makes us laugh.  

Kids grow up and move schools and have different interests and hobbies.  This is a chance for a sort of "time capsule" of what life is like for us in 2017.

Here is a short video by Ali Edwards who is the creator of this project explaining about how it came about.  Ali has been doing this project since 2005 and I started in 2008 and document the same week as Ali and thousands of people around the world do it at the same time.  This year Ali did the Week in the Life in May however I couldn't do it that week and chose to do it in October since 2016 was done in May I thought I would to document a different time of year.  At least all the beautiful Jacaranda's are out at this time so I want to take some pictures of these to include in the book this year.

I take all my own pictures and get in the frame as well using a tripod or just placing the camera on the table or bench top.  This year I've purchased a little Joby Gorilla 3K SLR kit so I can place it on a table or wrap it around a tree to get a photo.  Fun to have a new toy and my first photos will be of me having a coffee in bed and the tripod will sit on top of the bedside table.  I have a Canon camera and apart from using a $20 remote and self timer this has a WIFI function so you can use an app on your phone to control the camera and see what will be in your pic which makes life a bit easier.

It's an exhausting project but one that is well worth it so excited for the week ahead.