December Daily™ 2013 | Day Four

Welcome to December Daily™ 2013 | Day Four.

Over on the December Daily™ 2013 Message Board at Studio Calico yesterday there was an interesting post about the pressure for perfection related to this project. The question was asked by Julie Campbell: "Do any of you feel pressured to just document the most perfect/beautiful moments of the season?"

My response was this:

I vote for real.

Whatever that is for you right now because it could be totally different today, tomorrow, next week, next year.

Real is a mix of everything - stuff so insanely beautiful you feel like you will burst and stuff so heartbreaking that you feel like you can't go on. And it's the mess when you get all the Christmas stuff out while you are decorating and it's the magical tree afterwards.

I want the mix of it all. Today for Day Four I'm going to journal about where I find beauty and it will include beauty in the broken places/pieces.

Here's a look at my Day Four:

I like the idea of posing questions to ourselves as we journey through projects like this to get us thinking about what's really important. The question that came to me the other night was, "what is beautiful?"

Aaron joined us on Tuesday night when we were decorating the tree. As I watched him interacting with the kids and stringing lights and setting up Christmas tunes and responding to the many questions and "Hey Aaron, look at this" from the kids I was thinking about the beauty of the reality of our (the collective "our") lives right now.

Beauty isn't about the perfect tree, the perfect family photo, the perfect December Daily album or keeping up with your neighbor online or in your hometown.

Right now for me what is beautiful is remembering again and again that people make it through things. They our lives are fluid. That what is here right now, as it is, is beautiful even if it doesn't fit some preconceived notion in our heads of what it's supposed to be.

Silly dancing in the mess of the Christmas ornament boxes and other decorations is beautiful.

Dragging the kids out to get more lights because I forgot that our tree isn't pre-lit isn't really beautiful, but the resulting twinkle on the tree was pretty darn awesome. It was another reminder to myself to slow down and remember what's most important.

The process of capturing stories throughout the month exists to enhance my joy.

A couple things of note for Day Four (all products were from the Studio Calico kit with the exception of my 3x4 journal card):

1. I added the super thin gold strip washi around the two photos as a border.




2. Letter stickers on a pattern transparent overlay spell out my title.




3. I printed these two, 3x4 photos on one 4x6 piece of photo paper. Here's a tutorial for that process if you are interested in learning more.




4. If you purchased the December Daily™ kit from Studio Calico it included printables (one of the labels I used here was a printable and the other was from the label sticker sheet). Log on to your account and click under your name to access your Digital Files.

Here's to embracing a little more beauty this holiday season.

NOTE: I work on one story each day. That story might have happened yesterday vs. today. It doesn't matter. It's all part of the bigger December story I'm experiencing right now. Sometimes stories don't really evolve until a few days later.

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TODAY'S POST SPONSORED BY | SIMON SAYS STAMP