December Daily 2016

Today I’m sharing some pages from my December Daily album for 2016. This year I was able to work on the album here and there in order to complete it on New Year’s day. That’s a first for me. While it’s called a December Daily album (inspired by Ali Edwards), my approach this year was to document 31 stories or memories for the month, no matter the day. They aren’t in any particular order either. I added them how things happened or when I was inspired to capture the story.

Using the December Daily kit from Ali Edwards this year gave me a good start on organizing my album structure. I did not set up base pages like many crafter’s do for this project. I like having the freedom to go with ideas of the moment. This might mean using cards that come in the mail, pieces of ribbon or tags, or in the case of this first day spread, a page from a magazine that makes a nice backdrop (the poinsettia page). I created the short page for the Day 1 number by combining vintage stamps and seals I have in my stash.

I put an accent page or two in the album as well, like this stitched tree and the 2×2 pocket page with different elements.

Wesley the Labradoodle was a big story in our life this year. And he certainly made the holidays interesting. Stealing ornaments off the tree, eating the head off Grinch, destroying embellishments on packages (and causing me to move them from the tree to a table), and even chewing on the tree were part of his antics. About the only thing he didn’t do was knock it over, thankfully. The shaped page to commemorate his first Christmas was created by cutting out the design on a Christmas Card we received and adding a photo of him to the back of it. I like using cards, bags, tags and other Christmas memorabilia in my albums.

I used tags a few times as the spot for my story. Once I documented Andrea’s recent interest in cooking and her amazing asian-inspired dish. Another time I chose document the amazing sunrises and sunsets that I have captured during December. For the past couple of years I’ve been capturing the sky and wanted to include these in the album since they are part of our December memories.

One spread includes “10 FACTS” about our family during the holidays. To make it easy to open the flip up elements, I slit the page protector and slid the foldover through it. Now, it opens easily without having to pull the page out of the plastic.

We never miss our favorite holiday movies. This year I one spread captures them all so that if someday they don’t exist Lauren and Andrea can look back and remember the hours we spent watching them, eating cookies, recalling our favorite lines (or more accurately, reciting the entire screenplay!).

My husband and I celebrated a big milestone this holiday season – our 30th wedding anniversary.

Among the magic of the holidays was this amazing programmed light display we found on the way home from dinner one evening. It was quite a show and we hung around a while to enjoy the music and lights.

A new tradition in our house is Andrea’s mini tree. Each year when we choose our Christmas Tree she takes clippings and makes herself a mini tree. She trims, arranges and decorates to create her masterpiece complete with lights. This year she painted the pot and added other trims, too.

Christmas Eve cooking baking is an annual must-do with the girls. Each year as they’ve gotten older the cookie decorating has gotten more and more advanced with some pretty amazing cookies in the end. We always have a ton of fun, get flour everywhere and of course we have way too many of the “oops-it-broke-I’ll-eat-that-one” cookies. I used a decorative cookie bag on the left of this spread to hold a tag with another picture on it. The ribbon is long enough that you can pull it up without having to move the page out of the protector.

This Christmas I did very coordinated wrapping paper for our gifts. I used pieces of it in the scrapbook pages here and there as well. Because Wesley could not keep his nose out of them, I put them up on a table near the tree with Analisa Elf in charge. Andrea also helped me with a project I did called the 12 Days of Christmas where we delivered surprise gifts inspired by the song to someone in need each day.

I ended up with 31 stories for the entire month of December. It is a fun album we can look back on for many years. And, for the last page I decided to use this felt Santa suit that I saved from a gift mini bottle of Champagne. I kept looking at it thinking there had to be a way to use it since it’s so cute. So, I put it on the last page and added a tag that documents a final bit of info from the season.

Last but not least, I created a little tag to hang on the album from a little card I saved from last Christmas. This came on a gift I received from Anthropologie. I knew I had to save it and turn it into something else. Makes a nice addition doesn’t it?

This is one of my favorite projects that I do each year. I hope you enjoy looking at my pages and get inspired to create your own album for your family. I like to use products and create this arts and crafts style album, but it can be done anyway you like. Even if you choose to write stories and add photos in a binder. In the end, it is about capturing your family stories for years to come.