Friday, November 14, 2014

December Daily - the 2009 edition

December Daily 2009 is the only one that I ever fully completed. When I dug it out of my decorations though, the cover had been damaged and had gotten some sort of schmutz on it. As a result, I need to redo the cover. Lesson learned: store mini-albums in the cabinet rather than with decorations. I plan to redo the cover and display this on my coffee table during the holiday season this year. I hope to be able to accomplish this before Thanksgiving this year.

I made the cover of my album out of colored chipboard, and it's probably a 6 X 9 in total size. That was really too big for me to work with easily. I think I chose it because I had a 9 X 9 pad of Christmas paper, but I'm not 100% sure of that. (It has been a few years,  ya know.) I'd recommend a smaller size than this to work with for this project.

Here's the title page.

Day 1 is an overview of how I was feeling at the time I started making this album. It's journaling heavy, and I was still using a printer for my journaling at this point. Reading this is painful in some ways because it represents a time in my life and people in my life that are gone, but I'm grateful that I have the record of that time period nonetheless.

Day 1 on the left is journaling heavy, while day 2 is about Brooke decorating the Christmas tree.

For day 3, I typed out a "day in the life" schedule. I'm kind of exhausted just looking at it. Day 4 is a pic of Kelsey and Jake.

Day 5 is a two page spread documenting the shopping that accompanies the Christmas season.

Day 6 is a journaling heavy discussion of some of the holiday traditions we had when Kelsey was growing up coupled with some little kid pics of her.

Day 8 is a typed out holiday to-do list while day 9 was a small insert page on a playing card that features a pic of  Brooke coloring.

Here,you can see the back of day 9 and the compilation of tags/receipts that made up day 10. Notice that I've incorporated some handwriting on these pages.

Day 11 is a two page spread about making holiday cookies with Brooke.

Day 12 focuses on Brooke in front of the Christmas tree and visiting Santa. I do think it's easier to do a December Daily when you have small children in your life, but it's possible to do the project without them.

Day 13 focused on grocery shopping while day 14 was a chance for me to wax poetic about Christmas music.

Day 15 is about my favorite Christmas memory from when I was a kid (I really want to tell this story in more detail and with pics sometime) and day 16 is about the nativity scene that Brooke played with this year.

Day 17 was a 2 page spread all about the holiday gatherings we had at school the last week before Christmas break.

Day 18 focused on a great gift that some of my students gave me for Christmas.

Day 19 was my chance to reflect on the joy of Christmas break from work while day 20 was about a dusting of snow that Kelsey and Jake enjoyed.

Day 21 was about our annual trip to Opryland Hotel for family photos during the holidays; I focused on a couple of pics of Kelsey and Jake as well as one of the decorations themselves. (I could do a whole album sometime just about Opryland Hotel's decorations, but the real story here was about us visiting there each year.)

Day 22 was about the grocery store again, and I added a pocket next to it about the various Christmas cards I received that year.

Day 23 was about family time leading up to the big day - we watched Elf and played with Legos that day.

The Christmas Eve layout includes a pic of Kelsey opening up the traditional Christmas pajamas and a pic of our gathering with my best friend's family.

I spent a couple of more pages including more pictures from our friends' holiday gathering on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day makes up a total of  6 pages in the album. I really should've printed those pics smaller or something to  minimize the number of pages, Oh well, live and learn.



Day 26 focused on going back to the gym after the holidays, and I included part of a postcard they sent me to illustrate this. Day 27 was about the books and magazines I planned to read in my free time off work.

I think I meant to include pictures on these pages but never took them or forgot to print them. I guess I need to check on that and add to the pages if I have the pics. Day 28 is about a trip to the movies and lunch with Tracie.

I discuss the difficulties of the 29th being the anniversary of my mom's death on the left hand layout and taking down the holiday decor for a cleaner house on the right hand side.

The 30th was a page about Charlie hanging around in my snuggie that had been a gift from my students.

On the 31st, I focused on our NYE plans.

And to finish the album, I included some New Year's Resolutions and more Christmas cards that I received.

Here's the closing page of the album.

And here's what the open album looks like from the side.

When I look back at this album, I can't figure out why I included so many two page layouts when they really could've just been one pagers. I'm glad that I corrected that trend when I made my 2013 DD album. I'm not sure what I was thinking there, but it seems pretty forced in spots.

I'm still happy with the patterns and colors I used overall, but there's a lot going on in this album. In fact, I wish I'd used some more subtle papers in spots because it seems a bit riotous on occasion. I'm not a huge fan of the mix of writing and printing for the journaling; I think I like it better when I do one or the other.

There you have it - my 2009 DD album. I have another album that's partially finished from 2011 and a planner that I made for December in 2006 that isn't really a DD but still is pretty cute that I might share later in the month. Until then, peace out and happy DD!

3 comments:

  1. I like it! I think is special since its different that what you do now, a good representation of your life (& scrapping) then. (at least that is how I look at mine)

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  2. I think you seem like a different person now even how you look and your facial expessions!

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  3. Thanks so much for sharing this, Tiffany!! I think you did a wonderful job, & I am going to scraplift a couple of ideas for my very first DD this year!!

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