December Daily 2019 | Days 23 Thru 25 Finishing Up!
Hey everyone and welcome back to the last few days of December Daily 2019! Thanks to #DoneByDecember I am wrapping up this amazing project for another year. Just in time for 2020 December Daily to start! Today I am sharing Days 23 Thru 25 with you, so let’s jump right in. If you’d like to see more pages from this project, check out the link here: December Daily 2019.
Truth be told, the days leading up to Christmas Day for us were all about getting ready for our Disney trip. Our plan was to open Christmas presents as soon as Nick and Natalie arrived, and then hop right into the car to Florida. But I had some photos that were unrelated to the packing from those days, which went into the Disney album. For Day 23 I used a photo of our Christmas presents all wrapped up. In our tradition, Alan and I hold onto the presents in our room and we get them wrapped in the last few days before Christmas. Then on Christmas Eve or morning the children carry them all downstairs. It’s a bit production in our house! But I always love to see the pile of presents stacked up in our closet, and I make a point to ponder with gratitude how amazing our Christmases are each year. I have told the story in the past about how one Christmas when I was a single mom I had exactly $80 to purchase presents one year, and I never want to forget that. We are incredibly grateful and privileged to be able to do all this, and the project of December Daily itself is an act of gratitude for me. My page is super simple, just a journal card + my photo. I added a tiny label and word strip, plus two tiny chipboard stars on top of my photo. All the products in this page are from Ali Edwards except for the tiny number tag which is Tim Holtz.
Day 24 was a simple bokeh photo of our Christmas tree. Alan and I had found a little Nikon DSLR to take on our trip with us, and we were playing around with it. This gave me an opportunity to tell that fun little story about finding this cute little Nikon and having a bit of fun trying it out. Again I only used a simple journal card from Paislee Press, and I added the number to my photo. This page leads into Day 25, and to mark the beginning of that day, I laid the two wooden numbers 2 and 5 onto a transparency. The transparency I chose is a black grid, which I felt added a tiny bit of contrast behind the white numbers. I sewed a tiny bit of red twin at the top, and after I finished filming I also put a few tiny glue dots on the back just to help hold them in place. They kind of feel like little presents or ornaments on the page!
When you turn the transparency page, you will see our traditional kids-under-the-tree photo. I had the idea when I was creating my foundation pages to put the Be Merry paper at the bottom and then have this photo across the top. The Be Merry paper was originally a 3×8 card, and I loved using it this way! I also added a felt star just as a simple embellishment. Notice how the number 24 peeks out from behind the transparency now.
Behind the kids photo I placed a full 6×8 photo of our tree. Usually I like to have a photo with all the presents underneath, but for some reason we were so excited that I didn’t get that photo this year. I wonder why??? I loved the cork hexagons so I added those around the tree. My idea was to sort of create a frame around the tree, do you think it works? By now I follow a sort of formula for what photos to include from Christmas Day, and so I try to include a photo of each family member at some point during the festivities. The 3×4 pockets make that super simple and manageable. I went with more hexagons, punching them from journal cards from Ali Edwards.
For the final page of the album, more from the festivities and one last photo of myself. I love capturing the emotions and excitement in the kids’ faces on that day! I used an Ali Edwards journal card to reflect how, even though we were so excited about our trip, we had an amazing time opening gifts. Even though it was a smaller Christmas than normal, it was absolutely just as special and just as memorable!
Wow, what an incredible journey! This album will go down as one of the extra special ones, as it marks a time that now feels completely different. This year will be very different too. Thank you so much for following along with me, and for sharing your excitement and inspiration as well. I will be sharing a flip through of the full completed albums with you very soon. See you then!
~Theresa
Are you following along with us for December Daily 2020? We will be sharing videos and tips and pages for that project very soon, and this year we will be sharing some behind the scenes content exclusively to our newsletter subscribers! Be sure to sign up for our mailing list today!
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