Category: december daily

Okay, after two days of emotional posts I need to focus on some lighthearted things for awhile. Let’s start with this, our finished holiday minibook! I know it’s almost Valentine’s Day but since nothing was getting done but the bare minimum until this baby was born, I’m pretty happy that I finished it while it’s still winter anyway.

For the base I purchased a mixed paper book from Petaline Prints (currently none are available but maybe she’ll have more next holiday season) which I loved and was perfect for what I intended. During the holidays I saved anything I thought I might want to add to the book, took lots of photos, and then after Christmas I printed them all and gathered together any extra paper, stickers, or supplies I thought I might want to use.

That pile sat around until last week when I spent just a few days putting it all together. I have never done a minibook before so this is kind of a trial run to figure out my style. I changed a lot of things around during the process as I decided what I did and didn’t like, and then tried to keep things somewhat consistent like the placement of photos and the way I did labels and journaling. I really enjoyed it and I am looking forward to doing this every year, although right now I don’t plan to make any additional minibooks other than for the holidays.

Below you’ll see the finished project, and a few notes on particular pages. If you have any questions about any of it let me know!

The “making a list” printable was found at A Pair of Pears. 

That drawing was made by an artist at the church we went to for Christmas Eve service. It’s supposed to be our family although it took me a long time before I realized he hadn’t given me someone else’s. :)

Inside the envelope are about 5-6 more Instax photos of Christmas Day. I didn’t want to overload the album with them, so I just pulled out the ones of our family to display.

Pretty simple overall, and very satisfying! Right now I’m in the middle of updating Liam’s baby book, then my next big maternity leave project will be catching up on Project Life. Yay crafting time.

Hey friends, hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! We had a full and happy day eating way too much as we had two dinners to fit in. I’m happy that Meredith was in a wonderful mood despite not napping and having lots of treats. :)

Today I’m holing up at home but trying to be super productive! I’m so thankful for my parents who brought our new bedroom dresser over today. It was free from a friend – hooray. Then my mom played with M. while my dad helped install new curtain rods and switched out all the outlets in our bedroom. Slowly but surely we are making progress!

David and I get a date night tonight (yay!!) but before then I’m trying to get some Christmas decorations put up. This weekend I want to knock out a couple of Project Life spreads and do a little bit of shopping – hopefully most of it online though!

I wanted to quickly share with you what I decided to do for a holiday minibook. I had planned on making my own, but then when I considered all of the other stuff on my plate, I realized that if I tried to make my own this year it probably wouldn’t happen. I still really wanted to do it, and a quick Etsy search made up my mind when I found this book by Petaline Prints. I love it so much and it’s almost exactly what I would have made! I didn’t post photos of the inside because you can see it all at that link. Also FYI, she has a really great blog that I am now following.

I’m not sure yet if I’ll be able to keep up with this book during the holiday season and post updates, or if I’ll be putting it together at the end. I also might change up the cover some more, but then again I’m fine with the simplicity of this. We’ll see – I’m trying to keep things as low-stress as possible! Either way, I’m pretty excited about it.

Hope you’re all enjoying the long weekend! See you next week!

And this little album is finished! I decided to end it after Christmas because now I am completely focused on the new year and a fresh start in so many areas. But I’m pleased with the tradition and I think it’ll make a nice addition to the holidays, even though as I said before I won’t be doing it on a daily basis in the future.

You should have seen what was going on while I was taking these pictures. I had to keep moving the book around on the floor because the child or dogs would get too close. I was trying not to let Meredith get her grubby little hands on it but unfortunately I wasn’t quick enough once and one of the pictures now has her cookie-stained fingerprints all over it. :)

Now that this is over, once I take down the decorations this weekend I will really feel like the new year has begun. Happy Friday!

The rest of the album can be found here: cover, week one, week two.

I’m home today with a surprise fever baby (boo!), but before we head into the holiday weekend I wanted to give you an update on my December daily album. It’s coming along! This is from last week, and I will do one more update after Christmas.

Have a great weekend everyone! I, unfortunately, am so not prepared for Christmas yet. I still have a bunch of cleaning, shopping, and wrapping to do. Good thing I don’t mind the hustle and bustle. :)