December Daily- Day One Documented!

December Daily- it's here and time to get started! If you aren't familiar with December Daily, check out Ali Edwards' Blog for all the details. It's a fantastic project focusing on documenting the days leading up to Christmas. This is my first year doing the project, and I'm really excited about it.

While I absolutely love Ali's hybrid albums for this project, I was really worried about being able to complete this project, so I chose to go Digi. I think I've decided to do an 8x11 photobook from Persnickety Prints. I've been wanting to get a photobook printed by them, and I've also been wanting to test out that size, so this project is the winner of that test.


So my first step in this process was to get organized. For Ali and other Hybrid scrappers, that meant building their foundation pages. For me, that meant two things: 1) picking out the kit I was going to use and 2) picking out the templates (because I am being lazy and am letting others do the work on this part).

For the kit decision- it wasn't that hard! I designed my A Very Vintage Christmas kit with this project in mind, so it was the winner!

Next I needed to decide on my template, and this was actually a TOUGH decision because there were so many great templates to choose from, but I ultimately decided on this (free) template by Scooty's Designs:

I liked that she offered the template in both 12x12 and 8.5x11, since I was still undecided at the time what size I was going to use.

So that's it! I am now ready to begin, and here is my first page:

The journaling reads:
"One of the best things about Christmas is the anticipation- the build up and the excitement of what’s to come at the end of the month. So what better way to build up that excitement than an advent calendar? This year I decided to do something really special, and I made an advent calendar for us. I loved how it turned out, and hope it becomes a tradition for us for many years to come. Since Lilly is still too little for treats, so I filled the little boxes with treats that I knew Jules would love. This kid loves Tootsie Rolls (random), so we have regular Tootsie Rolls, fruity Tootsie Rolls, Christmas themed erasers, and a few quarters spread out throughout the month. Our first night of the advent calendar was a bit of a challenge when Jules realized she could only open ONE box, but she’ll learn how this all works as we start to do it daily. "

Ugh- I will not even get into the ugly scene that came after the opening of that first box and ONLY the first box. Let's just say it was an early bed-time for Jules.