Category Archives: December Daily

2013 memory keeping retrospective

Posted in Creative Practice, December Daily, Digital Scrapbooking, Layout A Day challenges, Make Stuff, Memory Keeping, Project Gal- Memorykeeping, Project life, Project Life 2013, Week in the Life, Week in the Life 2013 by

I love memory keeping and telling our family stories.  I am happy to be the gatekeeper for the family photos and memorabilia and the designatee to get it all organized in a format that we can share with our little family, our larger extended family, friends and with the world at large.

Plus, it’s fun

Toward the end of this year, I felt that I hadn’t really accomplished much as far as my memory keeping / scrapbooking projects were concerned.  I know I have a big bunch of on-line classes that I am going to finish up next year, as well as other ongoing memory keeping projects (that is another post for another day) but I thought I’d tally up my efforts this year and see where I really stand (I am planning in my “to do blog list” to share about some of these projects)…

Project Life

PL-for-Blog-PostYes, as of the close of 2013, I am still working on 2013 while looking forward to starting 2014.  Am I OK with it?  Yes.   Does it work for me? Yes…  Am I going to continue with this way of documenting our lives weekly?  Absolutely.    I’ve found during this my 3rd year of this kind of documentation, that sometimes this works best for me if I can “batch” it and do several weeks at once.  Earlier this year, I put together 8 weeks of layouts (8 double or 16 single) in less than 2 hours (!)   For 2014, I would really like to keep more current on this project but we’ll see how it goes.  The most important part is that the photos and the stories are getting documented.

Tally:  52 weeks of 2 – page spreads  (or 104 single spreads) (plus some extra stuff thrown in for good measure)… am going to down grade the number of weeks completed because I realized after I published this post that I’m still working on the last 4 months of 2013….that would be the not-caught-up-but-its-ok part of the project !

Revised Tally:  36 weeks of 2 page spreads (or 72 single page spreads)…still a good number!

Albums

Florida Keys vacation 2012:  

FLA-album-for-blogI was really happy to find a way to liberate the photos and stuff from this trip and get it into an album we can all enjoy.  I still need to corral everyone to write a few things down on some of the journaling cards but it’s basically done.   Love how it all came together, since I had everything all categorized and organized ahead of time, it took about 3 hours to pull the actual album together.

Tally:  20 double spreads/ 40 single pages

50/50 for Charlie’s 50th birthday:  

50/50 Timeline-album cover pageWhen I thought about my memory keeping efforts, for some reason I did not count this album or Project Life (???)  I know, silly.  This project was a true labor of love and I’m so so happy that I made this gift for my wonderful husband.  In short, the album was a 50 year retrospective of my hubby’s life to date, including photos from 1988 forward that I had, and photos from 1963 to 1988 from his mom.  Everything until about 2007 had to be scanned, cropped and edited (!)

Seriously love this book!

Tally:  202 photo album pages or  large images scanned

484 images edited/manipulated/printed

48 double page spreads / 96 single pages

50th Surprise Birthday Party Album

party-album-for-blogThe album about the party (yes we were just a little party-centric earlier this year!) I almost forgot about this album…I used the same type of album as the Florida Keys vacation, slipped in photos taken at the surprise party and notes from the guests.  Easy peasy done.

Week in the Life Album

WITL-13-Cover-Page I almost didn’t do it this year but at the last minute decided to jump in and keep it SIMPLE which I think I succeeded in doing…. layouts are printed and note sheets are all tucked away just waiting to but put into the album.  This project was all digital which was the only way I could keep it super duper simple and it worked.  I shared about this project on the blog (yay!)

Tally:  24 single page layouts

December Daily Album

December Daily 2013-startWork in process…I don’t think I’ve ever actually finished one of these in December (!) and thats ok.

Girls School Days Albums

Had them each pick out an album color, ordered the albums and started sorting current year and last year items loosely into each album….ongoing project I hope to work on more in 2014, but hey, at least they’re started.

Layouts 

Layout 2013-Julia's kitchenAh the backbone of scrapbooking and part of my memory keeping toolkit.   I love making layouts and have to admit, that I’ve been doing a lot more digital scrapbooking than paper but I’m making a concerted effort to do more paper scrapping to:  a) step away from the screen b) use up the large amount of scrapbooking supplies I own.  I am working on a better system to keep track of the layouts that are in process, completed, printed out (for digital layouts) and photographed (for traditional layouts) so I kind of feel I have work all over the place but here is a rough estimate of layouts completed….

Tally:  103 single page layouts   …   61 digital  … 42 paper

More than I would have guessed, I think my tally was helped by a weekend crop in January, and Layout-a-Day challenges in February and May.

GRAND TOTAL 

124 Double Page Spreads  (or 248 single page spreads)

127 Single Pages

375 Single pages (counting double spreads as 2 pages..which they are)

Wow

More than a page a day

No way would I have dreamed it was that many!!  Awesome.  So glad I tallied it up.  So happy that all of these memories are written down and in albums for everyone to enjoy and for those who are wondering…yes, I printed out all of my digital pages.

How did you fare this year on your projects/hobbies/memorykeeping exploits?  I’d love to hear!!

Bring on 2014!

December Daily 2011…building the foundation

Posted in December Daily, Project Gal- Memorykeeping by

I love December Daily…last year was the first year I consciously put an album together to chronicle in words and photos our December holidays.  I find it a great way to document the season and all the everyday things big and small that happen during the month.  Every year there are the traditions that are the same…fun things that are different and the sweet cycles of everyday life weaving in and out of the holiday preparations.

Last year and this, I’ve been “playing along” as I call it with Ali Edwards “December Daily”   I view this project as part documenting and memory keeping and part design project.  My approach to this project is evolving but basically, I follow along with Ali as far as size, general organization, and I use her templates and overlays (which you can find at Designer Digitals HERE)   It simplifies the process to set up a framework and a vocabulary to work within, that way I can focus on the stories and not reinvent the design wheel every day.

This year I purchased the December Daily kit from Studio Calico which had some fun embellishments, papers, and other goodies and (most importantly) an album sized for the project.  I also pulled out anything from my stash that could be included and christmas-ey.  I found a vintage paper kit that really spoke to me and how I wanted the album to look…I loved the “Dear Mr. Claus” collage kit by Cosmo Cricket.  I also picked up christmas bakers twine, a few different kinds of brads, stickers, alphas and a stamp or two…I figured the best way to start was to organize everything by type on my worktable…

My next move was to print out all of my December Daily base pages using Ali’s overlays and cream card stock.  It took some tweaking before I got things just the way I wanted it but eventually I got everything printed and trimmed to 6×8.5″

The next task (kind of concurrent with nursing the printing project) was to cut and assemble the dividers for each day.  I used a lot of Hambly overlays for this but I also used some super fun red glitter paper (think Dorothy’s shoes) for the 5th,

10th, 15th, 20th & 25th and some white velvet paper for the 8th (my birthday!) and the 31st.  Last year I swapped out the prepared dividers for ones made from packaging and other items I picked up during the month…I think this year I might incorporate those things in a different way.

So here are the finished base pages…Over the course of the month, I’ll be adding photos and writing and all sorts of stuff that tells the story of this month.  I’ve set up the dividers and the “right hand” page.  The “left hand” page of the layout will evolve depending on the day and what story there is to tell…or not…may be just some pretty paper or something fun.

So ready to start documenting the fun of December!  As last year, this will be a hybrid album…some digi scrapbooking and some cut and paste…hand written and typed and hopefully incorporating more from Charlie and the girls this year.

All ready and waiting …

yay

Week in the life / Project Life et. al.

Posted in December Daily, Project Gal- Memorykeeping, Week in the Life by

As usual, life gets in the way doesn’t it?  I do have the best of intentions, really…  I LOOOOOVE projects and my biggest failing is…I have too many balls in the air at the same time…but don’t we all?

So this month, December, my goal is to catch up and finish as many projects as possible before the dawn of 2012 and a whole ‘nother cycle of fun starts!

Here is where I am with two projects that I’d really like to finish up…

Week in the Life

This year, I decided to participate in Ali Edward’s “Week in the Life” project.  WITL is documenting everyday life for a week in detail in pictures, words, and the beautiful minutia of everyday life.  You can learn more about it HERE on Ali’s blog.  This year, the designated week to “Play Along” as I call it, was July 25 – July 31…the week we closed on our new house and all of the attendant craziness that goes along with it.  Needless to say, I knew there was no way I could actually document every day at the time so I set out to corral all my notes, photos, bits & bobs and supplies in one place to work on later.

Here is where I am today…

I figure at least it’s all in one place and pretty organized.  My photos are all in smart albums in iphoto sorted by date, my details are all in a file and ready to go,  I have the album, page protectors, and supplies…all I have to do is put it all together…

Hoping to share the finished product before 12-31-11 !

Project Life

Because I don’t have enough projects I also embarked on Project Life this year.  Project Life is a system and philosophy developed by Becky Higgins, you can read more about Project Life on Becky’s blog HERE.  I’ll write more about this project in another post but basically Project Life is an awesome way to document everyday life easily and relatively painlessly.  I have kept up with the photographs and collecting snippets of our everyday life, I just need to do some more writing and adding in all the lovely bits and 2011 will be done!

I actually have two books for 2011 because there is so much good stuff to celebrate and save!  I am really looking forward to keeping this project going in 2012.

So…all I can say is December will be busy busy busy and you’ll know where to find me!