Past December Daily Albums

I finally finished up December Daily for last year this week. I had all the pictures ordered, I just needed to cut down & sew some page protectors, write a little bit of journaling for one page and do something with the cover. December Daily is a mini album project that Ali Edwards created (or at least made popular). I actually still need to punch holes in four pages and put them in, but I can't find my cropadile. It was on my desk...but now it is MIA.



2011 was my 4th year of December Daily. Each one is a different size. Different binding. None of them were actually done in December (of their respective years). In fact, when I was working on the cover for 2011, I also finally put together a cover image for 2009. 2008 was a 4x6 book with metal rings for binding. 2009 was a little larger (maybe 5x7) using my binding machine. 2010 I used embroidery floss to bind it and it was a little bit bigger than 2009's book. 2011 I used an actual scrapbook with lots of randomly sized page protectors.



Why do I do December Daily? It really makes me think about all of the traditions that we have and new ones that we might start. I like how I was able to find the same events in all of my different books and seeing how we have changed. For example, our advent velcro & felt tree, visiting Santa, decorating the tree & baking cookies. 2008 was when I was pregnant with Claire, so in addition to the Christmas events, I also have some pictures about my pregnancy. That was also before I started Project Life, so a lot more everyday stuff made it into that album.



However, I'm not entirely convinced that I should do it this year actually. Since I'm doing Project Life and I don't like to include the same pictures/stories in December Daily & Project Life that leaves Project Life rather lite on Christmas stuff. I noticed that last year and I didn't like it. In fact, I've been thinking about going back and adding to Project Life. If I do it this year, I am going to do it as a Blurb book...maybe.

Finishing 2011's DD was one of the things on my 31 before 31 list, so YAY!

31 Before I'm 31

There's this thing going around the blog world - at lest the blogs that I read - where on their birthday people make a list of things they want to do before their next birthday. The number of things on the list is the age you'll be on your next birthday. And since I am kind of a follower, I decided to do it too!

So, we're going to call this my 31 things I would like to do before I'm 31. Now, in the interest of honesty, I've had this list on my mind for a while, but my birthday was back in April, and now it's July. Some of them have been done in the past 2.5 months and some of them are things I just thought of as I was writing my list. I also didn't include anything that I really may want to do, but I know it just isn't going to happen this year, like going to Disneyland/world. I wanted my list to be mostly reasonable, not outrageous where I would be setting myself up to not be able to complete them.

The List

1. Make a Cheesecake from scratch
2. Run (not walk) an entire 5K
3. Take a photography class (online or in-person)
4. Take Ali Edward's 31 Things story tellng class - IN PROGRESS: the class was May 17 - June 16, I took the class, but only finished about half of it.
5. Continue with Project Life 2012 - IN PROGRESS: PL Layout Posts
6. Clean out the basement room
7. Bake cookies at work - DONE 7/2/2012
8. Complete Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred
9. Find reason to hang out with friends at least once of month
10. Go to the Nelson Atkins Museum
11. Repaint master bedroom & bathroom
12. Make 6 kinds of Pie - IN PROGRESS: Peach Pie, Apple Pie
13. Read 12 non-fiction books (ideally one per month)
14. Finish PL 2009
15. Go to KC Market
16. Stop biting my fingernails (yes it is nasty, I know)
17. Take an adult swimming stroke improvement class
18. Update blog regularly throughout the week (approx 20-25 posts per month)
19. Finish December Daily Album from 2011
20. Go to the Aquarium - DONE 4/28/2012
21. Take a scrapbooking class through Big Picture Classes - IN PROGRESS: Taking Becky Higgins Project Real Life class
22. Mail a card/letter to someone every month (starting in July)
23. Rent an expensive camera lens for the weekend - DONE 10/20/2012 Calling this done, although I borrowed from a friend instead of rented from a company
24. Go Camping-ish
25. Host a charity bake sale type thing?
26. Make 12 different kinds of cupcakes
27. Invite people to my house
28. Tour the Roasterie Coffee plant
29. Go to a wine tasting (yes in KS)
30. Visit Science City - DONE 8/1/2012 (Vacation Day 1)
31. Become an Aunt (coming Oct 2012)

Let's see how many of these I can't get crossed off my list by April 24, 2013! Obviously a lot of them won't be crossed off until next April since they involving doing something EVERY month, but that's ok. And if everything doesn't get crossed off, that is okay too. And okay, number 31 really doesn't have MUCH to do with me really, but oh well.