One Litte Word

Ali Edwards is someone I really admire.  I want to be her sometimes.  Ok, that sounds a little creepy. 
But she is definitely a massive inspiration.  I love how she makes every day life meaningful.  I love how she leads through example, and encourages you to see the stories which threads your life together.  I love how she then ties it all together with creativity.   

Today I discovered she is running a year-long workshop around her One Little Word tradition.
I've been following this since I chose my word "foundation" in 2008.
This was followed by "build" in 2009.  And this year my word was "action".
I do believe in some way, the intention when choosing a word at the start of the year has propelled my life in subtle ways I may not even be aware of; so the thought of a workshop which gently brings this back into your consciousness every month could be an extraordinarily powerful thing.

I haven't completely decided on my word for 2011 yet, although I have a shortlist; but there's not even a moments hesitation before I sign up for this.

image from Big Picture Scrpbooking

Day 1 - December Daily

Okay, so it was a little more complicated than I thought, trying to take and incorporate, ingredients from 3 classes into one!

My main dilemma is where (and how) to tell the story.
My eventual aim is to get the pages printed into a photobook, so it will be something I want to show others.  As a result, I don't want the journalling to be too personal.  Equally I will want to look back through it 10, 15, 20 years from now, and remember what I was feeling.  It's a tough line to tread! 

In the end I did most of my journalling off line and print, and used the prompt from Picture the Holidays to write the couple of lines I did.  

My December Daily

So, the mayhem starts tomorrow!
And I say this as someone who doesn't have a large family to worry about, or children for that matter, and I still struggle!

This year I am making a revived attempt to Journal [my] Christmas, and (hopefully) combine it with my December Daily album, whilst being inspired and motivated by 30 Days of Festive Photography.  Good plan?  I thought it should all work pretty well togther.

Now I was trying to give myself a head start by at least getting the template of my December Daily album ready.  I've decided to go completely digital this year (much to the disgust of some of my scrappy friends no doubt :) but I need to give myself at least a fighting chance of completing this!  Unfortunately it's Day 1 tomorrow, and I've only managed to get up to Day 7 so far.  Oops. 
But Cam is working late tonight, so maybe I can crack on with this...

I've used embellishments from Weeds and Wildflower's Jolly Holiday range and the page templates are from Oscraps Paislee Press Snapshot No 2. 

So excited...

AE Halloween MiniBook 2010 Promo from Ali Edwards on Vimeo.

OMG I hope this is a sign of more to come!
Ali Edwards has just launched a new addition to her, already fabulous, website: a self-paced, downloadable class!

One of my all time favourite e-courses was Ali Edwards Yesterday Today class through Big Picture Scrapbooking, and in terms of storytelling with photographs, there is no one who does it quite like Ali Edwards in my eyes! For me she treads the fine line between scrapbooking and journalling with perfect design.

Halloween isn't such a big deal in the UK, although it appears to be growing annually, and even less so when you don't have kids; so her first project isn't necessarily my cup of tea.  Having said that, it shows great promise for what might be here in the future, and I am saving my pennies now!