26 Things: My plan for December Daily 2014

It's been a while since I've posted, but I've been planning.  It seems like the more I do with scrapbooking/documenting the more I want to add to it with more projects.  It's a lot of fun, but I'm getting a bit backlogged at the moment.

Anyway... on to my newest project... 26 things.  Last year I attempted a December Daily album.  It didn't go so well.  I started strong, but didn't finish.  I learned from the experience though and I'm hoping that will help me be successful this year.

Here's what I learned:

1. Doing DD doesn't capture all that I want to include.  Our Christmas traditions start on Thanksgiving night, so it I needed something that extended beyond December.
2. The daily thing just didn't work for me.  Maybe someday it will... but last year it nearly sent me over the edge.  We don't do something Christmas-y every day in December and I found myself trying to create events that shouldn't have been attempted just to have something for that day.

So now on to what I'm doing differently this year.

1. My working theme for this book is 26 things.  The actual subtitle on my title page says "26 days, events, details, moments and traditions of Christmas 2014".  Why 26?  Because I wanted some of the numbers to coordinate with the actual date.  I wanted #25 to be Christmas Day and since we celebrate with my in-laws after Christmas, I needed another number which brought us to 26.  This theme helps address my two major issues from last year.  I can go outside of December for "things" to include, which then helps out with issue #2 above.  It is no longer daily, no pressure to create things out of thin air for my book.  It's just 12/2 and I already have five "days" worth of things to include in my book and all of those happened in November.  We did nothing Christmas-y yesterday and have no plans for today.. I already would have been freaking out with last year's theme.  
2. I'm attempting a hybrid album.  I've been wanting to try one.  It's not truly going to be hybrid as I doubt that I'll be using any physical scrapbooking products, just designing with digital stuff and printing it out.  I really loved doing our travel journals this summer, so I thought I wanted to add some "smash book" to my project.  I want to include brochures, playbills, cards, etc. as I come across them.  I decided to go for it one day and bought a Sn@p album and some (possibly entirely too many) inserts...

Those are the high points of this year's project.  I'm excited to get started!  I have my title page and four "things" done so far!  They're all off being printed at the moment.  I have to decide how to share them... as the digital file or printed out and in the album.  We'll have to see.  The title page won't be shared for a while, as it is basically our Christmas card and I want to get those mailed out first.

Oh... and since the December Daily idea still intrigues me and I can't totally drop it... I'm attempting a photo a day for the month.  Not following any prompts, just a single photo a day.  I'm posting them to instagram, but I'm also organizing and labeling them in the Collect app.  I'll print them as 3x4's from Persnickety and add them to a section in the back of my album.  I know it's just day two, but it's kind of fun when there's no pressure... just one photo of something Christmas-y, no further story needed.