So far, until this weekend, chatter about Christmas has passed me by: I normally refuse to even think about it until well after Hallowe'en. However, the sheer pressure of the inspiring Ali Edwards' posts on her December Daily 2010 has shifted me into contemplating how I might do one in a way which means I can keep up and will finish it. This may be an unusual December for us here: with luck, and a lot of hard work, the extension to our house for my parents (in their eighties) could be finished by then, and we will be helping them move - slowly, with comings and goings - to live with us permanently. It would be good to record this: for us, for them, for our own children, and for theirs ... However, it really is going to need to be super simple, and very well planned in advance.
I anticipate there will be quite a lot of photos and a fair amount of story-telling too - not to mention realia like removal firm bills, receipts showing the cost of new items for the home, and favourite Christmas recipes of my Mum's which we will now be cooking together. So I think Ali's 6"x8" is not going to be quite spacious enough, and I'd like enough room for a border around mine so that the punch holes are not intruding on the journalling or the photos (which they seem to in the 6"x8" version). Then I saw this:
It's built on the principle of dividing by two, vertically and horizontally, so that although the sizes of the resulting shapes are different, the eye is soothed by the similarity of the proportions. I think this will suit my purposes very well, and translate nicely to A4 or 8.5x11 - although mine will either have a border all the way round, or down the punched edge. Playing around with the possible combinations results in the page layouts below. (For 'photo', read also 'patterned paper' or 'embellishment').

All of these can be flipped horizontally as well, of course, for right-hand pages. This gives a current possibility (there may be more!) of 16 different page variations: I think that's enough to be going on with! Next step will be to think about the design of the date/title sections, whether I will need transparencies or will use pockets instead, and how to do the cover...
Any of you thinking of doing a December Daily? I am still hovering between naming mine "A Book of December Days", or "A Book of Days for December". How are you thinking of designing it? What will you be putting into it? Or perhaps you are doing something else, or not bothering at all? Please do feel free to share your thoughts below!
Two helpings of gratitude before I finish... Firstly, a special thank-you to Amy for her splendid foodie blog-hop yesterday! If you missed it, you are not too late: set off here. And secondly, thank-you to you all for mulling over which of the colourways for 4 on Friday you liked best, and for letting me know. I promised to tell you mine: it was the top row, on the right - the soft taupe one. Which, as it happens, was also your overwhelming favourite too. :)