Tuesday, February 28, 2023

December Daily and Stories by the Month

Under The Plum Blossom Tree, December Daily and Stories by the Month, a blog post about keeping my New Year's resolution of documenting more family stories using the Stories by the Month kit by Ali Edwards and her concept of a story a day in the month of December

Hello everyone, how are you doing with your New Year's resolutions so far?

The only one I have this year is to tell more of my family's stories.

The desire to do so came to me last November when I saw that Ali Edwards offers a Stories by the Month kit subscription. Each month you get a small assortment of journaling cards and embellishments, geared towards telling seasonal recurring stories.

At the same time I was seeing that Ali and a lot of the other prominent memory keepers were gearing up for December Daily, which is literally telling one story each day in December, focusing on whatever holiday tradition is being celebrated.

So here is the beginning of my attempts to get those stories told!

This is only my second December Daily. I made the first one ten years ago and of course our lives looked very different then. I'm grateful to my past self for having made that project happen. Knowing how intense the task can be, at first I decided that this year I would just write a small note at the end of each day, and that those accumulated notes would result in one page in my 2022 album. However, as the month progressed I started seeing how those notes could become bigger stories and found myself making a plan to complete an entire album. Now the album is essentially done - there's just a few more items to check off the list.

Under The Plum Blossom Tree, December Daily and Stories by the Month, a blog post about keeping my New Year's resolution of documenting more family stories using the Stories by the Month kit by Ali Edwards and her concept of a story a day in the month of December

In January there was only one big story to tell. My son Tayo got his first apartment with his girlfriend Ellie. Of course such a big life event requires mom getting a photo on the big day and I felt that a large 6 x 8 print was essential in the documenting. I will write in some details on the two journal cards on the left.

Under The Plum Blossom Tree, December Daily and Stories by the Month, a blog post about keeping my New Year's resolution of documenting more family stories using the Stories by the Month kit by Ali Edwards and her concept of a story a day in the month of December

The most appealing idea behind both December Daily and Stories by the Month is that there are no rules about how to document. It just requires that you think about and know your why. For some, December Daily is telling stories every day in the month, while for others it's December 'Daily-ish', acknowledging that there are limits to what one can (or should) get done during a busy hectic month. Same for Stories by the Month - maybe there is only one good story in the month to tell or maybe the plan is to document several smaller stories.

So here is where I'm currently at in my memory keeping journey thus far this year - one big, long story for December and one big important event for January.

It's the last day of February and I had a birthday earlier in the month so I'm hoping to get my photos of that event edited and printed, because, after all the February Stories by the Month kit is just waiting to be crushed, right?

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