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December Daily 2020

We had a snow day yesterday! Like for real snow! Generally speaking, it “snows” here once ever 2 or 3 years. And by snow I mean, there’s a bit of sleet and we just tell our kids it’s snow and to go our and play with it. But yesterday we had 2 inches of actual, honest to goodness, snow! So while my kids were outside getting hypothermia (we live in Texas and thus have zero winter gear) I finished December Daily. 🙂

This year I was torn between getting a travelers notebook or sticking with my usual square format and in the end I decided to split the difference and make my own book that was 4×6, portrait. I love love love the look of full page photos in December Daily, but there is zero chance I will pay for enlargements for this project so this seemed like a good compromise.

I used the December Daily kit from Citrus Twist, the December kit from Freckled Fawn, as well as my (extensive) stash. I really love having a kit! As for the construction of this book, it involved a whole lot of tape. Honestly, I wish I had given up on the idea of making my own travelers notebook and had just whole punched it and used some binder rings, but it’s finished so I’m not complaining. 🙂

This December was pretty crazy around here, what with overseeing virtual schooling and all, so I made a deliberate choice to simplify the process. It’s not my favorite book (I like more variety and embellishments) but I finished it in January and not September so I’m counting that as a win. 🙂

I tried to be really intentional during the month to make sure that I had a portrait orientation picture (I tend more towards landscape photos) and a specific story to tell. It really paid off!

I did a mix of crafty pics and pics of my kids because it’s my project and I’ll do what I like. lol. I tried really hard to eliminate choices so that it would be quick to finish. Each page had a plain lined journaling card, a strip of washi, some tiny word stickers, and a circular number.

I also tried very hard to lure the tween from her cave so that she was included in some pics. Easier said than done. lol.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with how it turned out! Next year I think I’ll go back to being a bit more creative with it, but for right now when I’m soooooooooo far behind with all of my scrappy projects, it feels so good to cross one off of the list. Now if I could just get caught up with Project Life and the 12×12 scrapbooks…

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Scrapbooking!

Man, it has been a long time since I have had any real scrapbooking mojo, but I think it’s back! It started when we went into lockdown and I decided that I needed to work on Project Life in real time. So now I have a system and it’s actually working! Each Sunday night, I go through my phone and choose photos from the week and email them to myself. Then on Monday, I squeeze in little pockets of time to print the photos and get them in the album. They are not the most creative layouts that I’ve ever done, but I think it’s way more important to get the stories captured in real time than to agonize about which embellishments to use. Week 11 was our last week “in the wild” so during week 12 I completed the week 11 layout. And it was like a dam broke! I’ve now completed weeks 11-16 in real time, and then I got inspired to try to fill in the gap. So I went back and did weeks 1 and 10. AND weeks 32-37 in the 2019 album! I think this is actually a doable way to stay current and catch up. Fingers crossed! I have 8 layouts in 2020 to do and 16 in 2019.

Then I decided, what the hell, maybe I should give scrapbooking another go. lol. And it was super fun! I ignored my huge backlog of layouts in favor of scrapping some pics from March. I’m enjoying doing Project Life in real time so much that I think I’m going to keep focusing on current layouts. It would be amazing if I could actually finish the previous month’s layouts in real time!

So what does this mean for actual goals? Well, first priority is to keep doing the previous week’s Project Life layout on Monday. Then work on both the previous month’s scrapbook layouts and filling in the gaps on Project Life. Once Project Life is up to date, I’ll think about a plan to catch up the actual scrapbooks which is going to a huge undertaking. I think I’m currently on August of 2018. ::sigh:: But, I made a scrap list for March 2020 and I’ve started working through it. I also got out all of my mixed media goodies yesterday and made 9 background so that should speed up the process. 🙂