It is time, once again, for the December Daily memory keeping, inspired by Ali Edwards. This year, I am using the Studio Calico Kit, as well as things from my own stash. Above is the album cover. The album is a 6x8 handbook by SC that came with the kit. I'm not 100% satisfied with the cover design and am sort of sad that the cool embossed stars don't really show up much anymore. It may evolve a bit more as the month progresses. My current thought is that we'll be seeign a lot more keys and stars in the pages this year as well as gold, silver, white and chalkboard elements. That said, I'm remaining very flexible.
My book begins with this gold glitter embossed 25 as the floating title page. Strangely I didn't feel like the next page should be Day 1, so, following some of Ali's ideas I started with the calendar, some see through elements, and the manifesto (Technically, the manifesto is part of Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas prompt series too).
Here are the second page up close, with the intro manifesto on the adorable SC Elf card and that fun confetti pocket. I am trying to personally embrace fun more this Christmas as my kids do so I wanted to start with something that moves around and is a bit of fun. The back of this page is currently incomplete, but will include our Christmas family photo, I think and the see through pieces will show through both sides.
A few small foundation notes as we start the main entries: Last year I discovered that this photo + journaling card in pockets model worked really well for me. This year though, I plan to mix it up with both 3x4 and 4x6 journaling cards. I think it will give me more flexibility with photos, but does mean I haven't pre-decorated any of the cards. They are all printed and cut out, but as I don't know which size I'll use on each day I'll wait to do them as I go. They are very fast, typically, which is oh so necessary in December. The "1" is a little gold tab from the SC kit that will likely appear for the first 25 days. It fits perfectly over a little half circle on the Journaling cards (the cards are from Designer Digitals - I just printed them all at home using the multicolored pdf). The title on the photo is written with a white sharpie extra fine tip paint pen that I used for this last year as well.
Day 1, easy as can be. Today's story was about diving head first into December today with advent calendars, an already decorated house, and a trip to the farm for more Christmas decorating, cookie baking, and other adventures with the Korenaks. I picked this photo because it tells several pieces of the story: 1) the railing and background is clearly at Grandma's house (to me) 2) The red bow highlights all the decorating we were doing & season 3) The kids & cousins are playing in the leaves together. Technically, four of them are there, but B is completely buried in the leaves. Yes, I have a lot of photos from today, but this one best told multiple aspects of the story in one image. Doing the Day 1 entry took way less than 10 minutes (choosing the photo being the hardest part).
That's it, right?
Nope, as with last year, I'm including a section at the back that ended up being called "More Magic." This is for stories I want to tell beyond the one story per day. This sometimes includes prompts from Journal Your Christmas or art work from school or just bigger overarching themes or moments. It also includes Christmas things that happened before December. There were three this year and they are already in the book!
The first was a party to pack our donations for Project Christmas Child. The donations are due in November so they can be mailed worldwide for Christmas. The Wainrights hosted this party complete with lots of treats and lots of fun playing. This picture of the girls was better than the ones of the box packing so I used it!
Saturday (Nov. 30) we had lots of Christmas fun too so in it goes! This page talks about my trip with the bigs to Saturdays with Santa at the Devon Tower. We made crafts, rode this small "Polar Express," took pictures, played on the grounds, ate gelato, packed care packages & made cards for the soldiers, and basically just had fun together.
By evening, Brent and E were feeling better so we got down the Christmas tree and proceeded to deck the halls. I am 34 years old and have never in my life had a Christmas tree up in November, but here's to new things and having fun together. I love telling the kids stories about the ornaments and they love finding the ones they made. E, especially, found the whole thing fascinating and did plenty of undecorating and playing with lots of jingle bells.
Two-page spread of Saturday's pages.
So, that's where we are. I have a great kit + stash of things to work with, a very simple plan to write one story and print one photo daily, and the freedom to do more/tell more if I want to. I think it sounds just right for me!
You can see the early pages of my prior years through these links:
Questions? Comments? Ideas? Drop me a comment as I'd love to help others have fun with this project and welcome all ideas to make our December awesome!
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