Done By December | Special Guest Ingunn Markiewicz

Happy December Daily® season, everyone!

December Daily® is my favorite scrapbooking project (okay, maybe except for travel albums), but I will admit that I tend to start off super motivated and then just sort of…fizzle out as we get closer to Christmas Eve. I’ve participated in this wonderful project every year since 2015, but so far I’ve only completed three of my albums. I hope and dream that I will finish all of them at some point, and I hereby pledge, in front of all of you fine members of the Ali Edwards community, that I will finish my 2021 December Daily® album before December 2022.

Here's what I have so far:

Okay, so I have 9 pages done, out of what I’m planning will be a total of 27 (24 days of Christmas + intro + post-Christmas snow event + outro). That leaves 18 days. *nervous laughter*

In order to not feel completely panicked and overwhelmed by this, I’ve decided that I need some structure to this process. After some thinking & looking through what I have left of the 2021 December Daily® collection, I’ve decided on the following plan of action:

•  At least three pages using the template I had set up last December
•  At least three scraplifts of pages in my inspiration folder
• Three pages using the glitter phrases
• Three pages using the red pockets
• Three pages using the In a Creative Bubble cards I fell in love with

There might be some overlap in these pages, but this plan of action should have me well on my way to completing my album. Rah rah rah! Also, can you tell that I love the number three?

Now, onto a mindset change. I mentioned earlier that my motivation tends to fizzle out as we get closer to Christmas, and while this is natural for many reasons, I have come to realize that for me, this is mostly due to impostor syndrome. I was on Ali’s Creative Team from 2016-2021, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like my pages were too boring and simple every December when far more creative community members would post their gorgeous, interactive showstoppers every single day. But you know what? My style is simple, and that is totally okay. So for this project, I am going to try to follow the mantra that Ali let slip during a December Daily Instagram Live this year (and which I still hope will be available as a motivational poster): “Stick that shit down and move on.” Instead of moving embellishments around for 20 minutes and wondering if I should add more stuff, I’m going to trust my initial instinct. When my daughter looks through my albums, she spends all her time looking at the photos and reading every single word of journaling, and exactly zero seconds commenting on my design choices (unless I’ve included a particularly adorable bear somewhere on the page), and that’s what matters to me right now. At some point in the future, I might have the time and motivation to be more fancy and get my creative life fulfilled through that, but for now I just want the stories told and my album done.

If you’re still hanging in there through this blog post, thank you! I just want to end with three (of course there are three) final things I did to get myself ready and motivated.

1. Thankfully I had kept a Word document on my laptop last year full of notes from December and plans I had for the different days of the album. The notes are somewhat chaotic, but I printed them out so that I can use it as a home for my sketches and ideas as I work my way through this project.
2. I went through my products from previous years and only kept what I can truly see myself using. Given my simple scrapbook style, having a huge stash makes me feel overwhelmed FAST. Bonus: going through my products again reminded me of things I really want to use, like those glitter phrases.
3. I went through a big box full of memorabilia from last December and divided it into four piles: holiday cards and postage stamps // kid art and letters to Santa // memorabilia from specific days (for example restaurant menus) // cute things I had collected that can go anywhere in the album. I find that the further removed I am from an event, I’m less likely to feel like including memorabilia, but at least it’s now easily accessible, and going through it made me remember some random little details from December!

Thank you so much for hanging in there through this post, and I hope some of it was helpful for anyone else who might be feeling a little overwhelmed at the thought of catching up on such a huge project!

I’ll be posting updates on my Instagram account as I complete my pages, and will come back here to show you the finished product once I’m done! Let’s do this, #donebydecember friends!!