Day 9 was a rough one for me. I don't think I realized how emotionally draining it was until I was home in my own house. Day 10 was the day I needed to recover.
I'm finding that every weekend seems to have one day where I have 2 pages of pictures. I have plenty of filler pages I can use to make the book flow well, so I'm using two pages if I need them. And if later in the book I need 3 or 4 pages, I'll do that too.
Ha. I just realized that my journaling for every day this week starts "Today was busy." Not planned, just opened PSE every night and started writing. I guess it really was a busy week. Cracks me up. I thought about going back and changing it, but it's genuine and authentic and it feels better to leave it.
Hopefully if you click on the photo, you'll be able to read the journaling. Just a typical week at our house... along with some holiday stuff mixed in...
We pulled out our holiday decorations this weekend and one of my favorite things to set out is my December Daily albums from the last two years.
It took me a long time to find that the idea of doing an album every December appealed to me. Mostly, I thought it was a pain in the rear. Seriously... who has time to take a photo every stinking day during the busiest month of the year?
And I'm so glad that two years ago, I decided I should give it a try. I use a combination of Ali Edwards'December Daily and Shimelle Laine's Journal Your Christmas. My previous December albums have been paper albums... one from an upcycled Golden Book and one is an art journal kit. This year, I thought I might like to do it digital.
I've rejected the digital idea in the past because I thought I wouldn't keep up with it. There's something to be said for sitting down with my album every day and journaling every day. This year, I'm going to do that on my computer. Every evening, as I watch TV with my children, I will open photoshop elements and journal for that day. The photos will probably be done weekly (as they were the last two years) and at the end, I'll have a digital book I'll print at Viovio.
For supplies, I used Nettio Designs Holiday Faves Mini Album. I resized the templates to 6x9" from her 5x7' format. After a couple of trial and error attempts, I did my pages using Star On Top, a collab kit by Amy Martin and Peppermint (One Little Bird). The kit really went with the graphic feel I want for this album.
So here is my unveiling of my 2011 December Daily album. The numbers on the journal pages are just a place holder (and this is just a sampling... I have all 25 ready to go). The font for the dates might go. Again, a place holder until I decide what works. I rather like this font, though. It's just enough not me for me to like it. The font I used for "filler pages" and "journal cards" is definitely going to be my journaling font, though. I love, love, love it.
And now I can't wait to get started. Can't wait to see what December will bring!
So last year, I did a fairly strict Journal Your Christmas project. Every day, I read the prompt and my journal entry and photo went with the prompt.
This year... not so much. I'm sort of following the prompts, but I'm more following the philosophy of December Daily. Just getting something on paper every day during December.
I don't have photos of my up to date journal. I'm getting the photos printed about once a week, and at the end of the month, hopefully I'll be able to share my completed journal.
In addition to my foundation pages and journal cards, I'm having my photos printed in 4x4" size with a white border. It's really pretty cool, if I do say so myself. Sometimes I'm sticking the photos on a page, and sometimes I'm just punching holes in the photos and putting them right in the binding.
I've shared most of my journal photos here on the blog, but thought I'd take this opportunity to share a few more.
Photos of my beautiful black Christmas tree. And by black, I mean the actual tree is black. You know, where it would usually be green. Or sometimes white. Mine is black. It's gorgeous. To get the photos above, I placed my camera on a tripod, dialed the aperture as low as it would go, and then used the timer on the camera. This let a lot of light into the camera, creating those starbursts you see in the picture.
One more photo, this time of our Christmas art project at school. First, I may be really creative with a computer, but as a teacher, my weakness is art projects. I have a hard time thinking something up, and an even more difficult time giving up play time to do a structured art project. I did manage to do these handprint Santas, though, and I think they turned out super cute.
For a couple of days, I've just included layouts printed in the 4x4" size. I didn't want to depend on myself to do a layout every day, which is why I purchased my journal ready to go and just made sure I could handwrite the journaling each day. Over the weekend, I managed to do a couple of layouts I'm adding to my album. One is the Holiday Baking layout I shared on Monday. The other is this one I did for a day when I talked about how this year's celebration will be different than in the past.
My kids were so adorable when they were little. I wish I'd know more about taking good photos back then. Still, I'll scrap what I do have. And be happy with it.
I love advent calendars. Last year, I bought a chocolate advent calendar for Chesney for a buck at the local grocery store.
No such luck this year. I can't find them there, and you don't expect me to spend any serious time looking for one, do you?
So I had these numbers from Elle's Studio that I orginally bought to use in my December Daily album, and then realized I had no need for them. I thought... what can I do with them?
I took each of the number cards, and somewhere on the card I wrote a "to do" for the day. On the 2nd, for example, we are going to Chesney's Christmas play, so day 2 was done. On some days I wrote "write a story" or "sing a song." On some days, I got a little crazy and had tasks like "clean your bedroom without complaining."
This advent wreath is for Chesney. Brady and Mykiah are far too old to enjoy something like this, and Chesney is so excited for Christmas that the *tasks* will help her to calm down, stay busy, and pass the time faster.
My photos were taken early on Sunday morning, before we had any natural light in the house, so I apologize for the fuzziness. Having said that, here's some detail shots:
Last year, I combined two great projects -- December Daily and Journal Your Christmas -- to create an album that was uniquely about our family's Christmas.
It's one of the few projects I've actually completed in the last year and I have been excited to do it again. December 2009 was a month that changed the life of my family forever, and I remember while our life was falling apart, I clung to December Daily. I was in tears, chest heaving, and still trying to get photos of my nativity set with a bokeh background of Christmas tree lights.
It was my normal.
This year, I decided to treat myself to a foundation album like I've always wanted to make, but don't have the creativity to do myself. I love art journals. I cannot do them. My very tidy and graphic mind just won't let me jumble stuff up. So I let evalicious do it for me. It's simply the most gorgeous thing I've ever put my hands on.
In addition to her foundations, I added a set of Pretty Little Studio journaling cards. I punched holes and slipped them in between the funky pages of my evalicious journal. My plan is to journal daily on these cards (and the unity of them appeals to my clean and simple style), and attach photos and memorabilia to the foundation pages.
It's going to be amazing.
Truthfully, I'm hoping this December is a lot less eventful than last year's. This December is a focus on my family remembering the lessons we've learned and celebrating what we have done together, and what we will do.
Here are some of the pages that will allow me to capture that:
the cover
the cover with the transparency removed
at the end, I added some journal cards from bananafish studios. last year my journal went through january 1 because we took a trip for new year's. no plans to do that this year, but I wanted to have a few extra spaces at the end. so this is what one of those pages looks like:
and the adorable final page:
So I was browsing Etsy on Thursday, while home with a sick girl, and found some other cool December daily options.
These etsy sellers are making it so easy to participate... and what a tradition to start right now, in 2010.
C'mon. You know you wanna.
You may be thinking it's a little early to be talking about December, but you're wrong. December will soon pounce upon us without any warning, and people, you'd better be ready.
Over the last week or so, Ali Edwards has been posting about her December Daily project. Ali started the whole idea of having a December journal, and her posts always inspire me.
I've never been quite satisfied with just one approach to something, though. I like to take a number of ideas, pick and choose what feels right for me, and create something new. Towards that end, I also took Shimelle Laine's Journal Your Christmas class last year.
The final product was my So This is Christmas project. A paper crafting book that captures all our days of December. Even the ones that were very, very dark. I can't wait to get out my holiday decorations and see my completed book in the box. I have such a feeling of accomplishment knowing that I finished that project. I'm notorious for starting a project and dropping it (hello, year 40).
I've been thinking about this year's project. This post by Katie the Scrapbook Lady got me thinking again. My original plan for this year's album was to use another altered book. In fact, I had Jodi alter a book for me, a book that has great memories from my childhood.
However, the book is an odd shape (tall and skinny) and it holds so many memories that I thought perhaps it would be better used as a diary. Perhaps given to my children to use starting now and going on into their adult years.
I'm really loving the idea of art journals right now. So I preordered a holiday art journal kit from Evalicious.
It shipped earlier this week, and I simply cannot wait to feel the paper, and plan how to put it together. In addition to the Evalicious journal, I also purchased Daily December Journal cards from Pretty Little Studio. I plan to hole punch these and slip them into my journal. Hopefully those binder rings are big enough.
So now it's just a waiting game. Waiting for December to arrive. This Christmas is going to be amazing.
