I’m excited to be adding a new holiday tradition this December for our family. I just completed the foundation pages of my first December Daily album. Essentially, it is a daily scrapbook/journal for the 31 days of December. This has become a very popular idea in the scrapbooking community as it was originated by Ali.

When I committed to doing this project, I had a couple of things that I desired. I wanted my book to contain 31 days since we celebrate 2 birthdays, an anniversary, and 2 holidays each December. I believe having 31 days in my album will allow for more ordinary December days and stories, which I really want to capture. Since we are also blessed to celebrate Hanukah, I wanted the album to have some blue and not just the traditional red and green. I wanted my book to contain fabric since Samantha is all about her cloth books right now at bedtime. I wanted to use these digital overlays from Ali. And last, I wanted to learn something new.  I’m working on getting out of my comfort zone and learning how to sew and quilt (as it is on my list).

So I headed to the scrapbook store with only the above criteria in my head. I got 1/4 yard of 27 different fabrics. I had printed out the overlays onto white Bazill cardstock. I cut the fabric to be slightly larger than the overlays knowing they would “shrink” with seam allowances, user error, etc. After I cut my squares, I used my extra fabric to die cut all of the numbers. Note: If Santa or Hanukah Harry had bought me a Silhouette Cameo, I would have kissed him right then and there. 

I came home and sewed using a zig zag stitch with a stitch length of 1.0. If it sounds like I know what I’m doing, please don’t be fooled. Totally in the learning process. I used a straight stitch to sew the pages together and I inserted a piece of chipboard to give it some sturdiness for durability.

And then, my dear husband helped me put the grommets in this album. He said that if our marriage can survive grommets and royal icing (another story for another time), then it can survive anything. He might need physical therapy for his hand after using that poor excuse of a grommet tool that came with them. (If Santa had brought Jeff a Big Bite, he might have kissed Santa himself.)

Here are just some of the pages:

This includes the digital overlay printed onto white cardstock. I have all 31 printed off to house the pictures and journaling for the events and stories I hope to capture.

I love this book. I love the feel of it. I love the idea behind it.

My plan is to add some baseball page protectors to house my Fujifilm Instax mini photos, a couple of transparencies, and Ali’s digital overlays to house pictures and stories from each day.
So looking forward to this project and capturing all that life will bring during this holiday season. I will post every Tuesday in the month of December to show you my updates.

Hope you had a terrific Thanksgiving!-Jenny