Two Notebooks

The holidays are rapidly approaching, and I am already beginning to prepare for two projects that I plan on completing to document this year's holiday season.

On a recent episode of the Live Inspired podcast, Tracie Claiborne interviewed Victoria Marie about her class, The Holiday Project, which could be an alternative to the popular December Daily, or a different kind of documentation to add.

Now, I love the idea of December Daily, and I have done the actual project, as well as several variations, more than once. But last year's version did not go well. I know this about myself: daily doesn't work very well for me. It's hard for me to sustain in the best of circumstances, and last year, I was dealing with more than one stress-inducing realities that made it even more difficult for me to summon enthusiasm and energy to keep up with any kind of everyday documentation.

This year, I wanted something different, and listening to the description of this class, I thought, "This is it." Twelve Stories, One Album is the subtitle for this class, and I thought coming up with just twelve stories to document throughout the holiday season would be doable, so I signed right up.

Here is the notebook I'll be using as a class workbook, the cover decorated with supplies from a past Basic Grey collection:

The other project I'll be doing this December, as every other for the past several years, is Journal Your Christmas, a class taught every year by Shimelle Laine. What I love about this class is that it includes not only current holiday memories and events, but also past, and even a little bit of the future. By far, the albums I've created as part of this class have been my favorites. I have plans to create an album this year, as well, but I can also imagine keeping it as a journal only, just writing, no photos or anything else, if I so choose.

Here's the notebook I will use, its cover decorated with last year's Christmas collection by Shimelle:

It gives me just a little bit of excitement to anticipate the words that will fill this little notebook as I enjoy a holiday season I hope will be a lot less fraught than last year's.

What are you doing to prepare for documenting your holidays?