A December Journal

This month, I am keeping a daily journal of how we are celebrating Christmas in Germany.  A lot of scrapbookers enjoy taking on this type of project each year, and I decided to attempt it with a bit of a twist – the biggest being that we don’t have a color printer to print instant photos.

I don’t have fancy hole punches, stickers, decals.  All I have are my words, a glue stick, scissors and some pretty papers.  You just can’t find 99% of the paper craft supplies in Germany that you can in the United States.  At first, this frustrated me beyond belief.  When I did find something, I couldn’t justify spending the prices.  (Scrapbook supplies costs about double here.)

You probably know what I’m going to say next…

Turns out I don’t need all of the fancy stuff.  I can still put together a fun book.  It’s hard to remember that we can make do with very little.  We get so used to feeling like we have to have the latest gadgets and tools to do things.

I plan on making a December journal like this each year.  I imagine where we will be – USA? Germany? – and who we will be with.

Do you ever reflect on past Christmases?

Here are some of the pages of my journal:

december daily jounal

I took the advice of Ali and made a bunch of pages in advance.  I just pull a page from the pile that seems to fit my mood that day.  Each page also lists the date and a heading, so it’ll be easy to flip through the pages in the future.

I sit down after dinner and write, then start my German homework.  I really like the simplicity of these moments.  I reflect on the day and the bits we’ve embraced.  Sometimes it’s big things like St. Nick visiting us on December 6th.  Other days are simpler, like yesterday when we found a cheese called “Christmas cheese” at the grocery store.  Some days have nothing “Christmasy” about them.  Some of those days are my favorite.  That’s when I reflect on what the season means and what I can do to spread that feeling.

And as you know from my shop, I’m all about creative journaling.

Have you ever had success with writing daily?  In a journal?  A blog?  Or if you were to write about today, what would you say?