December Daily® 2024 | Done By December With Lisa | Part 01

Right about now is the time I am inevitably feeling inspired to break out last year's December Daily® album and attempt to get it done, or at least make significant progress, before starting my 2024 album. I love Done By December. I am an unabashed member of the "doesn't always finish" club and find so much value in 1) the stories I do finish, 2) the joy in the process of noticing and documenting, 3) the community spirit around the project. Over the next few weeks, myself and other community members will be sharing our process and progress towards completed albums.

Last year I put together a more in depth post about my approach, you can find it here. It includes quite a few photos from previous albums. I also put together a progress post after that one, sharing the additional pages I made for my 2022 album. You can find that one here.

Each year I have a very similar approach to getting back into my December albums. First and foremost, I consider what's important to me and revisit why I do this project in the first place. This may change from year to year. Some seasons will be busier than others, some seasons I may feel more creative than others, some years I may want to lean into the words or products more than photos (hard to imagine for me). Starting here helps alleviate some of the pressure I may put on myself to create certain types of pages, or reminds me to prioritize progress over perfection. Next, I purged supplies and got organized. This year I have a designated work space as opposed to floating from one surface to another. That has helped tremendously. The next step in my process was revisiting my older albums. I can't overstate how much this helps me each year. Then I'm taking inventory of what I've actually finished. It's inevitably less than I thought. Sigh. After I've recreated the month, I make my plan and get to work. I'm writing this posts a week or two after I've begun and I actually have a bit of progress to share.

Here's a little more on that process:

Lean in to what you love.

I like to manage my expectations and remind myself of what's important (to me) before I jump into this project.

• Simple + Graphic spreads for the win. That will always be my style. Is that boring for some folks? Yep! For me? Nope. I think simple can be beautiful. This is the project where I will occasionally step out of my comfort zone, but it will always be more important to me to get more stories told versus creating gorgeous, interactive spreads. But I sure do love looking at them!

• Big photos, always and forever. I love to take pictures.

• I love to play with type.

Pare down my supplies.

Like most people, I pack away all of my December Daily® supplies at the end of each season. Since joining the AED full-time a few years ago, I’ve been lucky to receive the entire collection. That translates to a lot of product. Before I get started, I decided to go through and pare down my options to my favorites. I was ruthless this year, more so than in years past and it felt great. The pages that I have created since then have come together much more quickly because I'm not digging around. I'm still using the cart I bought last year. It's amazing. I also bought two of the storage boxes Ali recently shared and they have been a great addition.

Revisit my albums.

Revisiting my albums each year is a big part of my process of diving back into this project. As I flip through each album I’m looking for a few things:

• Recurring stories I want to be sure to include. Or favorite photos I tend to take from year to year.

• As I look at these albums/stories do I have questions? Meaning, do I want to dig deeper? Am I curious about something related to the story? I make a running list of things to add to the upcoming album. For instance, 2023 was 10 years of Chillbert from our Elf Chippy. I'd like to see each of the little figures. Maybe that's just in a 2x2 page protector. Maybe it includes rankings from the kids.

• Page designs I like and want repeat. Or things that didn’t hold up well. For instance, Minc on transparency does not hold up well. I love the look and have found if I laminate it, it lasts longer and feels more like our shop transparencies. Also, I hate glitter. It always seems like a good idea and I always regret it later.

• Perspective. Flipping through albums and reminding myself that it’s the stories and not the pages that I love…keeps me motivated and focused on my goal. It’s also a great reminder that I am not looking at any imperfections…so stop stressing about the little stuff. I will also ALWAYS have typos. It is what it is.

• I love to include photos from previous Decembers. I rarely do that and it adds context to these stories. Especially for years where I have not completed an album.

• More stories about our spaces. For us this is even more relevant for 2024. We're starting construction on our pool, and a few other projects in the house that include ripping out some older spaces. It might be nice to have pictures of the old spaces to look back on.

• Make space for the hard stories. This is a personal choice. You may not want to include hard stories in your album. But I do, with certain constraints.It's sometimes a nice reminder of how much you and your family may have grown or overcome in the past year.

• Take note of a few design-related things I 'd like to do more of:

  • Include more pictures for individual stories. I rarely use dimensional embellishments and that means I always have tons of space left in my albums (probably doesn't hurt that I rarely finish, either.) I don't need to stress about choosing only one or two photos from a day/story. Some people are strongly against this and Ali does a fantastic job of choosing just one. But I have the space and since the photos are a big source of joy for me...why not include them all?

  • Include more transparencies and patterned paper to add more interest and break up so many photo heavy pages. So many pretty papers this year and in my stash. I need to use this stuff.

  • I really like using cut files and my silhouette. It's such pain for me (probably because I only use it for this project), but the end result is almost always worth it.

  • More easy shaker pockets made with the Fuse. I love these in other people's albums and they are pretty easy, even for me.

Reconstruct the month.

A year later it can feel overwhelming to revisit a project like December Daily®, especially when I have so little of the album complete. But even without a dedicated journal, it can definitely be done. And I’ve done it before. Here are a few of the tools I use to reconstruct the month:

• My phone. A quick search in photos will pull up all of my photos for the month. For me, that includes a lot of screenshots. Things like emails and text messages. I’ve gotten into the habit of taking screen shots so I know they will be in one place when I come back to the project. Your calendar/schedule is also a great resource for what was going on during the month.

• Social media. I'm typically sharing updates over on Facebook for out of town friends and family and sometimes I can grab captions (or even photos) from there.

• School calendar. With school age kids, the school calendar basically dictates my life. I make sure that I keep the physical copy the school hands out with my supplies when I pack them up each year.

• Lightroom Catalog. This is where all of my DSLR photos live. I export and organize by year, then by month. You can sync your smartphone to your Lightroom catalog to simplify, but I choose not to for a variety of reasons.

• My husband. I also do a quick search of his photos for the month of December. He will sometimes have photos of me or the kids that he never shared. We’re also in the season where we have to divide and conquer for practices or events, etc, so he will have photos I don’t. Additionally, there are sometimes photos I like to grab that share pieces of his life I’d like to include in our album.

Once I've done all of the above, I sit down and make a spreadsheet of stories. I'm not much of a planner, but I find a lot of value in this one document. I like to spend a minimal amount of time planning, allowing for the bulk of my time to be spent making. I know for some folks planning helps the work to flow more efficiently. Do what works for you!

Here's the spreadsheet I put together to work on my 2022 album. I'm following the same template for 2023. For me, my list has to include a chronology of the month and then a list of stories. We often have multiple events happening on the same day. I choose to include those as separate stories. I knwo everyone has to find the approach that works best for them. You can see I have a list of "micro stories" on the spreadsheet. These are stories or photos that happen during the month where the chronology doesn't matter. For me they are similar to the concept of "filler stories" (holiday decorations, around here, wrapping paper...stories where the date doesn't matter and they can fill in any gaps you may have), except that they are also meant to take up very little landscape in my album. Maybe one photo included with an attacher sticker, etc. They are also stories that I don't feel are absolutely necessary to include. If the album gets too full, I let them go.

Take inventory of what's done.

My next step is to take a look at what I've actually completed. Not much, to be honest. Maybe half a dozen pages. As I mentioned, I also started in a 6x8 album and transitioned to a 10x8. Here are the pages I completed last December:

After starting out in a 6x8 album, I knew almost immediately I needed to switch to 10x8. Here are those pages from last December:

Do the work.

This year's process was slightly different than years past. I had started documenting in a 6x8 album. I thought I wanted a change from doing 10x8 that past few years. I knew after a few pages that that was a mistake. I think I got maybe three or four pages/stories in before I started making 10x8 spreads. When I revisited my album a year later and was thinking about my strategy, I went back and forth about remaking those pages. It's not something I've ever done. Those pages are so easy to transfer to a different size album, and I actually love a variety of page sizes in a 10x8 album. What was bothering me was having so many 6x8 pages then oddly transitioning to all 10x8. In the end, I decided to re-do the stories I had completed. A few quick notes before I share those pages! You'll notice I am occasionally using product from this year. I have consolidated all of my December Daily® supplies and will be using whatever I think works. I don't feel like I have to "save" anything for this year. Some of these pages feel like they need a little something more...I may end up adding additional embellishments as I progress with the album. I think that's it!

Here are the spreads I've created recently:

This is a remake of the 6x8 version I did during December 2023.

This page is another remake. One thing I noticed putting this page together is I miss that full page December first morning photo. I really didn't take one, despite having done it every other year. Similar to below. I don't know how many years they will actually let me dress them in matching jammies...I need to document it while I can. Honestly, last year may have been the end of that era.

This page is another remake from an insert to a full page 10x8.

This marks the end of the pages I remade for 10x8. They didn't take long and I was actually able to copy paste the original journaling and use pieces from those spreads.

This little story is so important to me and all I had was a real, really crappy iPhone photo from very far away. You don't need a photo to tell a story...but that's the way I typically do it. Looks fine to me in black and white, even enlarged to 6x8.

This page was an addition to the pages I put together for this story in December. I wanted to include the story on the reverse, which meant I could either come up with another micro story...or select a photo that didn't make the cut last time. I went for the latter.

Same shirt. Same age. Same love of accessories. VERY different kids.

I'm still going back and forth about adhering the pocket onto the photo, or just clipping it into the album. Love, love, love including video with QR codes in my albums. I'll be doing that this year.

This is an example of a page that just "needs something." Ultimately, I'm fine leaving it...but if something inspires me while I continue working on it, I'll fix it. It may be hard to see (I hate pictures of pictures), but this is a series of photos where Ben gets hit in the face. It's a stuffed animal and he's obviously fine. Something is always being thrown in our house. Ava's just as bad. Occasionally I'll join in.

This page is not story sixteen. It's another micro story that can be fit wherever there is space.

I'm really happy to have made this much progress. I'm up to story fifteen and I know I'll be going beyond 25 this year. I have TONS of space left. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments. I'm looking forward to hearing from more of our community members as they wrap up their albums.

I'll be sharing the majority of my progress on Instagram, but I do plan to do another post. You can also find all of my December Daily spreads from the past seven years on IG: @frecklepickle