December Daily® 2021 | Story 06
Welcome to Story #06 in my
December Daily® album for 2021.
Today includes a photo on the back of yesterday's Hallmark bag, four pages of journaling tucked inside a pocket, and a second photo stitched along the outside edge of the 6x8 transparency.
Let's dive right into the process video:
Here are some images of the project in and out of my album:
My first task today was to print a full page photo and adhere it to the back of the Hallmark bag I cut up and added in yesterday.
I used small Fiskars scissors to cut around the scalloped edge and really like how it turned out.
It's a little wonky on the side with the photo which I think has to do with the fact that this is a dark photo but today was a lot about embracing all the things.
On top of the photo I used gold thin puffy letter stickers and white cardstock alpha stickers to create my title (a phrase which Aaron texted me during the day yesterday and jumped off my journaling for this story). I also added a vellum star and a small puffy gold star.
Today's story ended up being a lot longer than would fit onto the card that came inside the pocket so I removed that and added in four pages of my story (see below) and tied them together with twine. On top of the outside of the pocket I layered two vellum stars and a black/gold pleather circle from last year's December Daily® collection.
Today's journaling:
“Some days are diamonds” was a text Aaron sent me this morning after I was going-on about some frustrations related to kids and holidays and expectations. Expectations. Man, it always comes back to that doesn’t’ it? Today was one of those days where things felt like they were compounding and I had a hard time moving through my expectations not meeting the reality.
Sometimes I have fantasies about family hangouts: I love the idea of us all sitting around the tree leisurely decorating while Christmas music plays and the fire burns. In my fantasy everyone is happy to be there together to celebrate the season. Some of this goes back to when I was a kid and we had a family tree decorating evening when all the ornament boxes came out and we took turns putting each ornament on the tree one at a time. Ornaments were special in our house - my Mom even kept a list of when we received all the ornaments in our individual boxes and who they were from. As an adult I 100% realize that she was the one who made that magic happen and set the expectation for family participation. I now fully understand the emotional effort that goes into keeping some traditions alive. And don’t get me wrong, our tree decorating evenings were imperfect because it involved people with thoughts and feelings and emotions. Even considering all that I still look back on the idea of it all with fondness.
Today I talked to Aaron about how I really wanted us to all spend some time together to decorate the tree. It didn’t need to last hours and I have generally low expectations that everyone would enjoy it (and I get it and remember what it felt like when your friends were everything and hanging with the people in your house might feel like a chore) but I still really wanted to make something happen even if was for a limited time frame before people went their own way for the evening.
As with most family stories, there is a lot more that goes into all this (oh the layers of these stories) then I could ever include in one telling. I love our diverse personalities, our unique family set up, and I enjoy spending time with each of them (I enjoy it most when they are enjoying it too). I’m also working on - and have been for a number of years - adapting my expectations and taking things down a couple notches and being open for beauty and goodness to appear in ways I hadn’t considered.
With all that in mind Aaron and I did some quick brainstorming on what we could do to make this a more enjoyable hangout for our crew and ended up deciding to do a “board” dinner (basically a couple charcuterie trays and some sparkling cider) at a set time (concrete expectations for a beginning and an end: about 30-45 min total) to go along with each kid adding their own ornaments to the tree.
No one complained one bit during the entire time. There was smiling and eating and laughing and a broken ornament and corny jokes and chatter about Christmas and conversations about rides and sleepovers and cheese tasting. It ended up being just right for the seven of us. I adjusted. They adjusted. The tree got decorated. And when it was all over Anna and Simon and I watched Home Alone.
Along the outside edge of the transparency I stitched a color photo of our tree and placed a vellum star on top along with a puffy number from the Main Kit.
SUPPLIES
December Daily® 2021 Main Kit
December Daily® 8x10 Album (same size)
December Daily® 2021 Star Mini Kit
We R Memory Keepers Hole PunchDecember Daily® 6x8 Transparency Pages
Red + Cream Ribbon
Tiny Attacher
Epson PictureMate PM400
6 Hole Punch
Fiskars Trimmer
Fiskars MicroTip ScissorsVellum Stars from Road Trip Mini KitPleather Phrase CirclesCorner RounderWhite Glitter Cardstock Stickers
Thin Gold Puffy Alphabet Stickers
SHARE YOUR STORY #6
You are invited to leave a link in the comment section if you'd like to share your daily pages. Please include a direct link to your blog post sharing your Day 6 vs. a general blog address link.
