2023 megaaa DECEMBER DAILY thread (ALL December projects)

Exactly! When we were in the Netherlands this Summer, we did a canal tour and on the boat with us was a group of Germans on an excursion from their river cruise. My husband and I are 49/51 and we were BY FAR the youngest people on that boat except for our daughter. They were having a blast.

I'd love to hear more about these. It seems like there are several companies who do the christmas market tours. I plan to read reviews. It might be fun to do something like that with my mom and my daughter. My husband would hate it.

If you want more info, just let me know, but here are a few details:

Viking Cruises was great, their service is first class. The cruise went down the Rhine from Amsterdam to Basel, Switzerland, over the course of a week. Cruising on a river is so different from cruising on the ocean. It was calmer, for one thing. You could usually see the land, sometimes quite close to the boat, which made it interesting - seeing towns and cities and beaches, etc, as we cruised past. The stops we made were awesome - Kinderdijk (a ton of windmills just outside Amsterdam), Cologne, Strasbourg, to name a few. We mainly walked around on our own, but you could book tours. We swam in the Rhine at one stop, the kids loved it. Viking had us at 3 tables for dinner, which worked out well. The food was excellent. There was a library/games room on board so we played a lot of trivial pursuit and other games with the family at night. During the day we sat on the upper deck where there was a huge chessboard that we all played with, plus just watching the towns pass by - it would be so gorgeous with Christmas lights, I can't even imagine. . So, there was plenty to do on the boat, plus there were many stops, too.

At one of the stops I bought some hand-blown glass Christmas ornaments, they are absolutely gorgeous - so if that's a taste of what a Christmas market is like, I'm all in. This is definitely going on my wish list.

Edited to add: I also bought a hand-carved wooden nutcracker and a little Santa (very rustic Santa, with a bag of sticks on his back) in a small town in Germany. I'd go back just to visit that shop again.

Take a screenshot of the text exchange with your mom. You don't need to have cute photos every time. The memory is totally her reaction!



This sounds amazing. Perhaps I am 80 in a 50 year old's body. ha ha.
I will definitely look into this in a few years.

Movie review of the day:
Watched Hallmark's Christmas by Design and it was lovely.
I definitely recommend. It's not something you're going to watch more than once (unless you watch it again in a couple of years and only remember halfway through that you've already seen it). But it is just what you want in a christmas movie.

I started Flipping for Christmas and it's a doozy.
I'll get through it but I don't know.

I just realized that this year will be my 11th year of December Daily.

I’m getting into December Daily mode.

I purchased a 9x12 velvet album and page protectors from sb.com.

Next to choose a paper line — i think A MIX & A MINGLE from last year. I have the digitals as well.

My Selphy is ready with lots of refills for backup.

As we are empty nesters with limited outings I need to make actual plans for each week.

OMG. Product Play just keeps getting worse and worse.

Put stuff in an envelope? Really? I hadn't thought of that.

Just like I never would have considered putting a 4x6 card in a 4x6 pocket of a page protector.

This forum needs a face palm emoji.

You know I do NOT like to talk smack but holy hell with some of these lessons.

My apologies to anyone who bought this class after I recommended it after the first couple of days.

I would love to know if anyone at the company actually looked over some of these.

I was waiting to see if anyone commented on this class again. Honestly, even with the coupon, we over paid for it. Some of these ideas are not worth anything at all...I am so disappointed. It's like no one 'vetted' the ideas before and then the contributors ran out of time so they just said 'fuck it' and submitted anything. 

I agree with all of you. I love all of Ali's products and inspiration, but I regret spending the $ on the Product Play class. Like a fool, I paid full price. My own fault-missed the sale.

I am adding to my thoughts about the DD class:

Part of what makes it a bust is that every lesson has been shared --- for free --- by AE and the DD instagram. And let's face it, almost all of them didnt need instructions to know how to recreate it. So literally everyone gets the class for free if they don't need someone to hold their hand and walk them thru putting cards into a pocket. And since Ali didn't give the main kit free or really, any digitals, you can't even say you got that when you paid full price for the class.

This is my first time doing the Product Play class. There were a handful of lessons I enjoyed and will recreate, and quite a few that I was just confused by - why are they in there? Like people said, very basic and obvious things. I'm still glad I took it, though, because like I said, I haven't before so it was still fun to have something to look forward to every day in November in anticipation of December.

Was I imagining it or was one of the recent videos not edited, and the instructor did the intro and horked (what's the word, there was a lot of mucus?) and then started all over again, but forgot to edit out the first part up to the loogie? That tells me there is no oversight for these videos.

Sorry, I got confused. No, the main kit wasnt included in the past. I was thinking there were more digitals but they came from the instructors that did projects where you needed their downloads to complete their projects.

..judging by some of the people asking questions in the DD Facebook group.. I think they'd rather have Ali come to their house and do it for them exactly how she did her own.

I will never understand the fan girling over Ali. It's kind of gross. And I think many are wanting to be a DD member and they believe kissing up will earn them points.

I try to follow regular crafters who do DD because rhey have unique ideas. Too many more well known creators (LOL keeping this because Samsung changed what I typed to this and its funny will know crackers) do exactly what Ali does. Like same layout, same order, etc.

It's supposed to be creative. Like do your own thing.

Agree 100%.

I took the in-person Paige Evans Sugarplum Wishes album class, and I absolutely loved it! BUT...even though I think my pages are gorgeous, not having to think about the design leaves my creative side wanting more. So I decided to use my Sugarplum Wishes album for 2018 (the year before I started DD), and I am creating my 2022 album like I always do...some original designs and some using ideas influenced by other creators.