The holiday album dilemma

There is just too much choice out there and I need to decide now, if not very very soon just what sort of holiday album I am going to do this year.

I’ve done shimelle’s Journal Your Christmas for the past 2 years and even though I didn’t complete last year’s album I did get plenty of pages done. But the not completing it bugged me. I think I need to scale back my expectations this year. And possibly my design style. I’m thinking very clean, almost graphic only style with either white or black backgrounds. I’d like to do just graphic only but I know I’ll end up wanting to use a bunch of embellishments on some layouts and that would be jarring in appearance I think sitting amid a bunch of smooth, unshadowed graphic designs.

But I really want more of a photo book look than a scrapbook look I think.

Then there is the thought that occurred to me that ‘the holidays’ actually started last Friday with the Halloween party at school. Possibly they could start on Thanksgiving, which would give me a bit more time to get my plans sorted. Though since I take a photo a day anyway doing a ‘2009 Holiday Season’ photo book can pretty much start whenever I feel like it. I never take just one photo so I can even make sure there is no photo overlap between it and my 365 project.

I could even get Havoc & Mayhem to take the photos for it. Now there is an idea! Start the day we leave to visit my parents in a couple weeks and run through the end of their xmas break & use their photos! Havoc loves to use my D40, Mayhem prefers seeing things on the screen on the old Olympus, so there would be no fighting over the camera. This could work!

But still, if I want to do scrapbook pages (which I just know I will end up making in December) I need to get my act together pretty much this weekend or so and pick my templates, design style & a start date

I’m thinking of getting these templates

and adapting them as I go, but they want more photos than I usually manage.

I like these as well

and I have some by Janet Phillips, that are no longer available that I’m sorting through. Then I have to work out what kits to use. My favorite designers haven’t put any out yet.

You know, I never do a holiday newsletter. They are too complicated & time consuming.