December Daily® 2016 | Days 24 & 25

Welcome to December Daily® 2016 | Days 24 & 25.

Thank you so much for being a part of this community adventure in celebrating our individual seasonal stories. This project continues to be one that I love and treasure and I'm so thankful I've had the opportunity to build a collection of December focused albums over the years.

Today I'm also simply feeling thankful for words and photos and products that support them and finished albums and moving forward with other projects.

Here's a look at what Day 24 turned out looking like:

Day 24 includes a full page photo of a puzzle that could be one of the hardest puzzles I've encountered. It was perfect for our Christmas Eve and we are still working on it. I'm seeing it in my dreams. I learned about this particular brand (Eeboo) of puzzles from my friend Liz Lamoruex (she has great taste in puzzles) and ordered this one from Amazon.

Next to the puzzle photo I added the "twas the night before Christmas card" and a yellow star journal card in a trimmed page protector (I cut off the outside two pockets). Christmas Eve was super quiet with just Aaron and I and was filled with cooking and the puzzle and a super long documentary series about OJ Simpson. I loved that we finished up the wrapping the day before and had it all cleaned up so we could just hang out. An Avery Index Tab + a stamp from the December Daily® Christmas Phrases stamp set was attached along the edge of the page protector.

One of my hopes when I work on this project is that through my words and photos and products I am somehow able to capture the spirit of each individual December. Some have been crazy busy and some have been calm and some have been painful and some have been just bursting with happiness. These days my December stories seem to include the mix of all of those emotions at varying degrees.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (and the few days leading up to them) were very calm and quiet with just Aaron and me here at our house. We had lots of time to prepare and cook and hang out and get ready for the whirlwind that came when all the kids arrived here around 2pm.

And the sun was shining. That should absolutely not go un-noticed.

For the start of my story for Christmas Day I included the "10 Things" journal card + the tree pattern paper + a glitter star + the "25" card with a Dec chipboard on top + a "Happy Christmas" messy circle + a photo of Sam the cat in the windowsill. I knew I wanted to include a couple more pages so I just kept adding things into the pockets.

On the back of the messy circle I wrote down what each person's favorite gift was for 2016. I paired that with the "merry everything" gold foil card and a photo of Aaron looking through the photo book I ordered for him from Artifact Uprising.

As I was adding and editing a couple more photos I felt like I wanted to add more words that summed up this holiday (formatted them to fit on a 3x8). Here's what I wrote:

Just a few words to bring to a close this 2016 Christmas season (that went so tremendously fast). This year I’ve thought a lot about the things that have changed and the things that have stayed the same. This year signals another transition in all of our lives - a merging, a blending, a coming together of our families in a more formal and concrete way. We are all still new at this - sometimes tip-toeing, sometimes diving head-first, sometimes leaping, often times just closing our eyes and hoping for the best. The holidays can be so intense with expectations and histories and the stuff of life. This year we didn’t have the kids before Christmas (we both do one week on/one week off with Christmas Day in the middle) and it really gave Aaron and I a chance to have a quiet, calm, prepared lead up to Christmas Day. Next year it will likely be the opposite and a completely different experience. Things I loved this year: (1) working on a puzzle during the day and (2) when they all showed up right around 2pm with all the excitement that five kids between 7 and 14 entails and (3) drinking champagne while presents were opened and (4) watching It’s A Wonderful Life before bed. I’m not sure just yet exactly what traditions will last for us - what will become “our thing” for Aaron and me and then for all seven of us. Bring it on.

Behind the words I cropped a photo of our tree + presents to 3x8 and added the "happy' rubber phrase from the Paislee Press Mini Kit.

I decided to go big with this one photo of all five of the kids. I was trying to get Audrey in mid-air but ended up with a bunch of blurry options - I love the movement her action gives the photo and it's so representative of how fast these kids move right now. All the other kids are checking out a new keyboard to all of them from Santa.

On the back of the last page I've placed a photo Anna took with an Instax camera (one of her presents). I was making a kissing-face to her from my spot on the other side of the tree. I like the idea of ending this with a photo of myself this year + that it's from her photo voice. I don't always end my albums with intention the way I begin them with intention (I often just stop and call it good) so I liked picking up this photo and feeling like it was symbolically a nice way to bring this one to a close.

I can't wait to see what next year's December stories will hold.

DAYS 24 & 25 | OVERVIEW

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