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HOW TO: Capturing the Everyday this December (for DYD)

Angela Toucan

Angela Toucan

I keep looking for THAT wardrobe
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Nov 6, 2017
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Wow, is it the middle of November already? December will be upon us soon, and our talented designers have created a new colour co-ordinating Document Your December Collection. Have you ever done "Documenting Your December?" I did my first one in 2017. It's a great way to look closely at what happens in December. Some people can get swept away by the busyness of the season, or overwhelmed by expectations. I find that DYD helps me to focus and see the every day. To look at everything in perspective, and to enjoy what is different, and what is the same in my day to day life.

December contains Christmas, but December isn't all about Christmas Day. There are the preparations, and decorations etc, but there's also the laundry, the cooking and baking, school and the daily routines and exercise plans. For me Documenting December is about documenting those every day daily life moments with that December flavour.

Getting Ready
Here are some tips for preparing to your everyday this December in a DYD album
  1. These are great formats for your DYD:
    • A page a day. A mini album works well for this. I've done them at 6x8 and 8x8 in the past.
    • A 2 page weekly spread. Pocket style pages are ideal.
  2. Choose a template set and create some foundation pages with papers from your chosen kit(s). You can then add to them each day your photos, journaling and embellishments.
  3. Going for a clean & simple / less is more approach to your page design will save you time and make the DYD experience less stressful.
  4. If there is a day you know is going to have special stuff in it (e.g. 25th Dec) you might want to add the page title and themed embellishments to that foundation page now.
Here's the beginnings of my foundation album. It's a 6x8 clean and simple album.
Angela_DYD ALbum Example.jpg

Products used:
DYD 2023: Sweet December Stories 6x8 Template Album by Rachel Jefferies
DYD 2025: Daily Details by ninigoesdigi

The Day to Day Stuff
In my house we don't start decorating for Christmas until a few days before. So my house looks fairly normal for most of December. I have friends who decorate on the 1st and then all their day to day life photos are set against a decorated backdrop. These are some of the things that I have included in past DYD pages:
  • school
  • Medical procedures or appointments
  • weather
  • daily routine
  • currently watching, listening to, reading etc.
  • laundry
  • housework
  • cooking/baking
  • travel/day trips/ going for a walk
  • music
  • dance
  • sewing/crafts
  • board games
  • mail - posting letters etc
  • church/faith
  • Those special moments that happen when with someone I love
The Special Stuff that only happens in December
Obviously there are the special things that only happen in December, and no DYD album will be complete without them. Things like:
  • The Christmas Tree / Decorations
  • The Advent Calendar
  • The Menorah or other Candles
  • The Nativity Play/Service
  • The School Play/Concert
  • The Brass Bands
  • The Christmas Market
  • The Christmas Carols/Songs
  • Christmas Dinner
  • Presents
  • Hogmanay
Warts and All
"Warts and All" is an English phrase I grew up with - basically it means we document everything not just the good stuff. Does what happened mean plans change? Does it cause problems? Can they be overcome and what happened as a result? Here are some examples from my December pasts:
  • There's the year the children caught chickenpox and we were in quarantine for nearly 2 weeks. We got so many craft activities done, and played lots of board games.
  • There's the year the car broke down and we had to cancel our travel plans and have our first quiet Christmas at home with our young family.
  • There's the year the Christmas Tree I inherited from my grandfather fell over and smashed. We found a new tree and the children thoroughly enjoyed decorating the tree twice, and the new one had more branches so we made more ornaments.
  • There's the year the washing machine broke. My DYD page for the day the new one arrived was a total celebration. Hand washing in winter is not fun.
Kit Mixing and Matching
We have some fabulous DYD kits in the store, but they don't cover every possible page theme for those everyday moments. It's totally okay to mix and match with other non-DYD and non-Christmas kits to tell your story. In the past I have used
  • a space themed kit for a page about the Star Trek DVDs I was watching with my daughter.
  • a laundry kit for the day I celebrated a new washing machine
  • a medical element pack for the day I had an MRI
  • A dentist elements pack for the day we had a dentist appointment. I took a photo of his tree - he'd decorated it with mini tubes of toothpaste.
  • a birthday kit (we have 3 of those in December)
Have you done daily life DYD before? Do you have any hints and tips to share?

If you have never done a daily life DYD I'd like to encourage you to have a go. When December starts we will have a special place to post our daily pages to in the DYD forum.

Most importantly - have fun.

*******edit*******
The 2025 DYD pages thread has now been posted:
https://the-lilypad.com/forum/threads/document-your-december-2025-pages-encouragement.98707/
 
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This is so encouraging! It doesn't have to be elaborate; it just takes a simple commitment. Best wishes to everyone who joins in this year. It's my first year, and I'm just doing a photo a day to see how it goes. There will be events where I will take more photos, but using the prompts from the Photograph Your December thread will get me started!
 
Thanks for inspiring me with all of the non Christmassy ideas ...I'm not one to have a lot of fuss for Christmas....I'm not exactly a grinch or anti Christmas but a summery Christmas just doesn't have the same excitement so I typically struggle scrapping anything December related
 
littlekiwi said:
Thanks for inspiring me with all of the non Christmassy ideas ...I'm not one to have a lot of fuss for Christmas....I'm not exactly a grinch or anti Christmas but a summery Christmas just doesn't have the same excitement so I typically struggle scrapping anything December related
Click to expand...
scrap your summer in your DYD pages.
 
Like you I first did DYD in 2017. I don't have a lot of Christmas activities to document so my pages tend to be more about my daily life in the month of December with a little Christmas thrown in.

Some non-Christmas things I've documented:
Photos of something I've watched on TV - league championship games for my 2 favorite teams in 2017! And, other TV shows/news that I felt was important to me.
In 2017, we had extremely cold temps on Christmas so I used screencaps from a weather app to document it.
A concert I went to in 2018.
Also, in 2018, there was a horrible fire in a residential hotel in downtown on Christmas Eve.
In 2023, I documented my 2nd heart surgery.
I watch several different Christmas Eve services on the internet since 2021 so I do screencaps and do a page about those.
Then there are the other daily life things like you mentioned... laundry, doctor's appointments, grocery shopping etc.

I still haven't scrapped 2024, guess I better work on that! Isn't the first time I did it a year later though! I do have the cover page done :)

I scrap mine as regular layouts and have printed the 12x12 prints to put into albums. I can get 2 years in each album. Title page, 31 individual pages and a summary page showing all the layouts (used one of Fiddle-Dee-Dee's MOC templates).

As for kits, some years, I used the same kit all month. It was an extremely large kit so there was a lot of variety so each page looks different. Other years, I used a kit that goes with the photos. Heart surgery, I found a kit about heart medical issues. A page about a jigsaw puzzle... a kit for puzzles. Cold weather, yep, a kit about cold weather.

For templates, I have used those that were available here in the past. Not always used in the year they were released though. The first year I did it, I just used a template that fit for the photos I had for the day.

Of course, the date was on each layout. Some years it was just text. Other years, it was incorporated in the template. One year, the kit had small word art in multiple designs for every day. Another year, I made my own numbers. I was consistent about how I did it throughout the month every year I did it.
 
Love these ideas! While December is a special month, we all live our daily lives in December too and I agree those are important to include!
 
Thank you for sharing what you do Angela. I document every month the same with photos and a few words that I scrap on my phone with an app.
 
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