Ali Edwards's Blog

December Daily® 2014 | Day Twenty-Two... One Little Word® 2015

December Daily® 2014 | Day Twenty-Four And Twenty-Five

Welcome to
December Daily® 2014 | Days Twenty-Four and Twenty-Five.

Thank you for joining me on this adventure again this year. I'm always excited to begin and I'm always excited to wrap it up and move on to the new year - most often moving on to think about my new
One Little Word® (I'll share my new word tomorrow).

I hope this project helped you to connect with joy in your own life this December. I know for many people, December can be an emotionally challenging month for a million different reasons. My hope with this project is that it's used as an opportunity to connect with what's real and beautiful even in the middle of struggles (both big and small). It's definitely been something that has helped me as I've experienced changes in my family over the last few years. I'm ending my album this year with a strong sense that this was really a very happy Christmas for me - it was full of old traditions and family and open hearts and new beginnings (
regardless of what comes next). If this holiday season was hard for you, I'm sorry. I hope that working on this album was a path to joy for you - a way to literally see the things that are good and true and awesome.

If I've learned anything over the last few years it's that those things exist even in the middle of pain if you are willing to look.

Here's a look at my Days 24 and 25:

Christmas Eve for me this year included waking up to the biggest storm I ever remember experiencing on the coast, a long-lunch with Aaron before leaving the beach, stopping at a grocery store on the way home when I decided I had to cook pot roast on Christmas Day, driving home to Eugene, wrapping all the presents, heading back over to Aaron's and spending the rest of the evening with him while he wrapped presents and we got ready to see the rest of our families on Christmas Day.

It was a year of new experiences, of changing traditions, of being open to what it is right now and being thankful.

For Christmas Eve documentation I decided to use the photo of it storming at the beach and hand-write the journaling directly on the photo.

I adhered the large gold 24 and then stitched the plastic "December" on top.

In between the 24th and the start of the 25th (which spans a few pages) I included the printed transparency with the tab from my
foundation pages.

For the beginning of my story of the 25th (spans a few pages) I printed out a 6x8 photo of my tree the way it looked before Anna and Simon arrived home.

I cut the top off of the photo to reveal the red and white pattern paper from the back of the next page in the album. I tucked one of the gold foil circles in between the two and then added the 25 chipboard circle on top. I also added three red plastic hearts using silver mini-brads directly to my tree photo.

That gold foil 25 page was waiting all month to be used. I knew I wanted to use it here.

On top of the 25 I layered the plastic heart + the tree + a red star + a silver mini-brad.

The words repeated over and over in my head on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were
give love and as I was putting this page together I knew I wanted to include them in a big way.

I used my
Silhouette to cut the words "give love" from vellum. I laid them on top of a 6x8 transparent sheet (cut from these 12x12) and then slipped the sheet inside the pocket. Over the top I stitched two lines to keep everything in place.