December Daily 2012 - How I'm organzing It (All Things Alicia)

This year I'm organizing my December Daily album a little bit differently. Since my stamp room is not at my small house, but is rather at my gracious mother in law's house, I know I can't work on it every day.

Knowing this, I decided to plan well at home, so when I go there (once a week) I know exactly what I want to do.

My point here was to develop a system that I could work on by sorting, planning, etc.. and waste less planning time when I'm actually in my craft room having time to assemble pages.

Here's what I look like so far:

I bougt this little office folder for my album a few months ago. For some reason I fell in love with it and decided it would be great for my DD album this year.

I also decided that, since my husband will be medically retiring soon and we don't have job offers, I shouldn't buy a bunch of new stuff for the album this year. I like to normally buy stuff that goes together, but this year I'm pulling from my stash.

I pulled a lot of things that aren't necessarily Christmas, but work (like the red star paper and ledger paper).

I'm organizing partly by making small plans at home. I decided to make index cards for each day, write down stuff that happened that day at the end of it (because I really won't remember) and sketch a little layout on the back. Seriously, 1 minute at the end of the day, less if I'm remembering things during the day and rushing over to write it down. I also made a card with general ideas of things I know we're doing and that I want to get pictures of and include in the album.

As I get some time over in my office, I often start working on pages and don't finish them. I'll start something and then think, Oh- I want that receipt! Or Oh! I want to take a picture of this for this page. Or I even sometimes know exactly what pictures I have, have the sketch done, but just haven't picked up my prints yet.

In such cases, I really can finish my pages at home because I don't need a lot of my office materials for them. For these pages I have written daily numbers on some cello bags that fit my pages perfectly and stick everything (including my planning card) for that page in there to take home and work on when I have time. I may not get it done, but I have it there just in case.

I plan on reusing these cello bags (even though they're cheap enough to use one per day) just by crossing out the number when I'm done with that page and renumbering it for the next one I need a baggie for.

I numbered about a week's worth ahead of time so that I would have a place to stick ephemera and such that I wanted to use and to sort the photos as I get them developed.

And lastly, I keep it all together in a large project envelope with a velcro closure. These are from Stampin' Up! and I LOVE them. I really really love them! I have been using these for years to keep projects together. They fit way more than they look like, they're reusable (this one is about 5 years old), they have a closure so stuff doesn't fall out, and they just make storing ongoing projects so much easier!