Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaaaa, December Daily® Begins!

Although I have been taking and keeping photos for December Daily®, last night was the first night I actually started on the physical album.  Here's what transpired in the wee hours, as that seems to be my most creative time.

The base album looked a little something like this:

Then evolved into this.  Ali Edwards is big on stating intention with scrapbooking.  Many of her projects encourage scrapbookers to start out this way.

I used her December Daily® 2016 freebie .png file, and then put 2016 in the wreath using Hello Typewriter font.  That will be my album font this year.

This is the door to my new home.  I found it fitting to start the album with this for many reasons.  First, and most obvious, it's red--the color of the season.  Next, I had plenty of "white space" to add some subtle creative pieces, as shown in the next pic.  Last, it complements my intention quite well.

Here is the text of "My Reason Why:"

In browsing my 2015 December Daily album, one thing is abundantly clear: a lot can happen in a year.  The Platos at this point in 2016 are so different than the Platos in December 2015.  Good differences.  New struggles.  Just wow.  We moved to 205 Fleetwood Drive in Bloomington at the end of July 2016.  It took until November to sell our home on Gabby.  At present, we have still not closed on the house, so that will make 4 months of two house payments.  That caused an intense amount of stress.  I fell back into the throes of depression, and it hit me hard in September.  Unpacking, therefore, has been quite slow.  Almost a crawl.  I finally got my craft room to be usable, and got my mojo back just recently.  I was not even sure I was going to embark on a December Daily journey this year. I went to The Paper Forest and created a base album in a class there. I have decided to commit to that wonderful creative feeling I had when I worked on this last project year.  I love revisiting all that happened last December.  2016 has been a very strange year.  I imagine that December of this year will follow suit.  So, here we go, 2016. A month of recapping lessons learned and hopes for a new year.  The journey begins.

That probably lends itself to the stickers I used on the bottom left to make much more sense.  All are from Ali's Story Kits of past and present.  I am an addict of her word stickers.  I always find the best paired phrases!

On the back of that 6 x 8 page (which, by the way, the page protectors are way bigger than that), I typed out this Sunday's first reading, as I felt like it spoke for the season of the church year as well as life reminders for me to be joyful and acknowledge what I have been given after patient waiting, as well as what has been with me all along.

I maintained the Santa "Happy Holidays" divider as it was.  On the back, I had the foundation set and just needed a photo.  I chose one of my son in front of our new house's family room fireplace which he decorated himself.  He loves to "doll up" the house for the holidays.  I made it a wee smaller than the mat and stamped the date of the picture.

On both sides of the chipboard dividers, I stamped with one of Ali's stamps.  I thought it was fitting as the season begins.

Yep, that's "all" for now.  That took quite some time.  I had to reacquaint myself with my photo printers (yeah, much ink was wasted on the door picture) and the wifi in my house was being ornery.  More to come!!