‘Tis the season. The countdown to Christmas and time to start thinking about my annual Celebrate the Season album and start gathering supplies.
While I love Ali Edwards December Daily tradition, I have more of a process that isn’t so daily, shall I say. I am all about telling my story and preserving traditions but daily is just too much of a commitment for me. I take a more sporadic approach to record the ways we celebrate the Countdown to Christmas and in no particular order including Thanksgiving and New Years. I love recording the traditions we honor, the memories we make and the way we celebrate the holidays all the way up to the New Year. I am so grateful for the motivation to start doing this back in 2005. Those memories are just so precious.
As I am unpacking my boxes I am discovering many, many, many (don’t tell my husband) 12 x 12 papers, embellishments and scraps that I realized I shouldn’t need to shop for anything for this album this year. I am going to challenge myself to use up what I have. I am even considering putting the pages into another album I already have as a continuation of our holiday traditions.
My process:
- Use what supplies I have. I have many leftover from the last couple of years and as I am unpacking my boxes it is like Christmas around here as I uncover many of my papers I didn’t even remember I had.
- Pick a theme – I am going to pick 3 basic colors and find papers in those shades and will hopefully be able to throw in some non-traditional colors this year as accents, think gold and light blue.
- Keep it simple.
- Set a goal of finishing it this year by the end of January.
- Print out pictures from last year….that goes without saying, unfortunately. Going to use the Walgreens app on my phone. Incredible 1 hour turnaround, sometimes even faster! And maybe finish last years while I’m at it :-).
- Give myself a hall pass on documenting every little thing and focus more on enjoying the moments and making the memories, not so much on the process.
So what do you want to document about this holiday season?
Many new memories to be had this year with a completely different climate then what we are used to. No snow, shoveling, bundling up, wind chills or snow days off from school.
Simplify Your Happy 