December. Daily.

The last minute gal that I am, I just finished the cover of my December daily album. None of the inside pages are finished, but I'm not going to worry about it. I'm going to work on them tonight when I finish up my layout for the first and work on the second. I used a basic Grey chipboard album here, and lots of goodies from the December kit from Studio Calico as well as some bits from my stash. It wouldn't be mine without stitching, so I had to do a bit of that on the cover as well.

Here's my photos from the first. Even though it was unusually warm, I donned my newest pair of holiday socks and had the kids in Christmas/holiday wear too. We then took down all of the fall decor, I had them clean their room, and then we started to convert the house for Christmas. Morgan wanted to create a new picture to tape on the door to her room so I printed off a photo I found on the internet of a Christmas tree, and then she proceeded to decorate the little tree in her room. First we started with this little Santa, then she went on and drew ornaments and colored them, and then trimmed and hung them on her little tree. She was so cute.

If you want to make the Santa ornament, I found the project here. I don't know about you, but we hoard toilet paper tubes for crafts like none other, so it was fun to find a new project to use them with. I also trimmed one in half and adhered a star to the front of it for a tree topper for the kids' tree.

If you happened to purchase the Christmas Carol add-on from the December kit at Studio Calico, I wanted to issue a challenge. I really liked the Jenni Bowlin calendar cards, but my family is far to busy to make creating a calendar to use feasible. It would get lost and the spaces aren't big enough to utilize as a wall hanging.

Instead, I'm taking them as an opportunity to challenge myself in 2009. Each month I'm going to do a 2 page layout using the coordinating month from the calendar and the meaningful photos taken during that month. I'm a bit inspired by CK's monthly layout challenge for this idea.

What do you think? Do you think you can manage a 2pager? 12 of them in 2009? I think you can do it. I don't do many two pagers myself, but the design will be simple. And think of the fun little album you could have at the end of the year to document things? You could even make a photo book out of it and send it to family for a belated Christmas present.

So that's my challenge. I hope you will play along! Let me know if you do so I can check out your monthly's too. And let me know if you need the Jenni Bowlin calendars. I'm going to check with April and if you missed out on that album, I'll let you know if the store will stock some of these calendars. I think it would be a fun way to make use of them! The more people who need them, the more likely they will stock them for a short while.

Before I go, I also wanted to direct you to the Pink Paislee blog. We had an opportunity to create ornaments for a tree that was auctioned for charity, and we are posting our ornaments and instructions throughout the month. So be sure to check the blog daily for ornament inspiration!

Lastly, I wanted to share a quick layout I made for the December issue of True North parenting. I had some fun with some Basic Grey from my stash for an easy layout of my girls with Santa last year. Sometimes those Santa photos that you have to pay for are so hard to work with... You can check out this link for a peek at this issue and my article.

Have a great day! Davinie