the december daily journal your Christmas whateveryoucallit / by jen geigley


So, really, I've gotta admit ... December was 100% hectic around our house.

I was knitting like a crazy person and hitting up the craft shows nearly every weekend in November and December.

And in my free time, I wanted to do the fun holiday things with my fam that I always like to do ... cookie baking, gingerbread house making, eating, shopping, consuming apple cider and lovely holiday-flavored coffee drinks.

So I kind of almost gave up on doing a Christmas mini book this year ... until I uploaded all the photos that I took (just in case I had time to make one after all.) And found a fast easy way to tackle this project before Christmas memories of '09 became a thing of the past.

So I did it. I grouped my fave photos together in iPhoto. I grabbed a few 8.5x11 sheets of photo paper, and printed out contact sheets (which automatically makes one copy of each photo in a smaller size, so you can fit 12-ish photos per page.) I used scraps of paper that I already had lying around and the cover is a greenroom eco folder I found at Target awhile ago, cut in half.

And in two evenings, I finished my little Christmas book.

While it may sound like I'm bragging here (look at me, I finished my book in two nights and I'm awesome!) I'm really just telling you this so that if you're still wondering if you have time (or the energy) to make your Christmas re-cap book, you can totally do it.

A lot of my pages are just slam bam thank you m'am – found papers + tiny photo with a little bit of writing or a simple caption. It's smaller and more condensed than the books I'd made the two years prior.

But my husband just looked through it with a smile on his face and confirmed that I had nailed the details, recorded the most memorable parts of our Christmas (the five cousin pile up, part deux) and the documented the cutest and most awesome things Lo did and said.

Because I already know that those little things are going to be forgotten someday if I don't write them down now. You know how it goes.

So now that it's January and things have (possibly) calmed down for you too, here's your little nudge. (It's not too late.)