December Daily® 2023 | Done By December With Lisa 02

Hi guys! This is Lisa and today I’m checking back in with a few completed spreads for my 2022 December Daily® album in our second installment of Done By December. I have not been quite as productive/efficient as I'd like, BUT I've made progress and any progress is a win (for me). As I've been working on these pages I've noticed I'm approaching the project differently than I do when I'm working on it during December. While I'm enjoying it, and not necessarily rushing, I'm focusing on getting pages done. That's translating to simpler pages and resistance to incorporating time consuming elements like Minc or Silhouette. I'm not sure if I'll regret that. 

Before I share my most recent pages, here are the ones I had completed last year during December (these were also in my first blog post). 

2022 Completed Pages

New Spreads

As I mentioned, I've got a spreadsheet with my stories and I'm slowly working my way through. I am going in chronological order, but I don't think you have to. If you're not feeling motivated, I'd recommend starting with the stories or photos you are most excited to document. 

The first story I added happened before December 1st. It's the process of putting up our tree. Because I hd already finished my "official" story 01, I'm just putting this one in front of that one, but after my title page. It works. Story 01 for me almost always has to be the arrival of Chippy our elf. Lots of enthusiasm in our house for that guy's arrival. 

For some reason that I can't remember, we decorated the tree at night. Normally I'd have a big pretty full page photo, but I honestly didn't love any of the pictures I took enough to enlarge them. My favorite was the one of Ava on the step ladder. That prompted me to use this page from last year and just add thumbnail-sized photos nixed with a little journaling and a few embellishments. Good enough. 

On the back of the specialty paper, I adhered an enlarged photo of one of our Christmas bins. I loved that you could see Ben's little foot in the upper left hand corner. I added the number 29 because this happened November 29th. 

Next I actually added on to a story that I had already finished. I dug up these additional photos of the kids wrestling in front of the tree and a shot of Chippy. I was honestly inspired to add these purely because of the 4x6 card from Liz's kit (2023). It seems like such a great fit for the story.

On the back I used the gold puffy stickers and a piece of chipboard from this year's Main kit. 

Story 02 is a big outtake. These are always my favorites, especially in group photos. I rarely like the pictures with everyone looking at the camera and smiling. We obviously had a bunch of family come stay with us. 

We love, love, love when we get to spend time with the cousins. These kids are the absolute BEST! My kids are the babies of seven and the older ones spoil them, especially Ben. The tag tells a little story of Ava getting her 2nd piercing. A few of us went with her (I also got another piercing). Jake took pictures and video. She loved having them there. 

Ben and Nate are especially close. Ben isn't happy unless he's right next to Nate and always has something he wants to show him or tell him. Both my family and Mike's family are sports fanatics, so it's often sports-related.

I'm trying to do better about including photos of myself, so I went back and added this one to the already completed story about all of us at the Steelers game. I used a paper die cut as a tab to help flip the smaller page. 

The next story is a hard one for me. I lost a beloved family friend in late November and had to fly home for his celebration of life. Rick comes from a very big, loud, loving, Irish family and there was quite a rowdy celebration of his amazing life. 

Even though a funeral doesn't qualify as the most wonderful time of the year, gathering with friends and family really rang true. 

While I was home for the funeral, I went with mom to take Sasha, their golden retriever puppy, on her very first visit to the beach. At that point, Sasha did not care for water, but she loved the sand and other dogs. 

The morning was such a big hit, but we did learn that she was not ready to be let off the leash. It took forever to catch her after she tasted freedom. 

Per the usual, I was just meandering around while mom and I were talking and taking a few photos. Mom had wanted to capture her first visit to the beach. I put a bunch of the pictures into a quick template and adhered one of the vellum phrase strips from last year's kit. The sentiment of a white Christmas felt like a fun little joke on a December beach page. 

I think that brings me up to story 06, with several additional ones that I completed last year out of order. Slowly but surely, friends! Let me know if you have any questions! 

You can find all of my December Daily spreads from the past seven years on IG:  @frecklepickle