The Topic:
Anna Aspnes joins the bunch to share ideas on getting through the holidays; how we plan to document the holidays and when. Which one of us is feeling anxiety about the holidays and getting them scrapped? The answer might surprise you…or will it?
Joining the Discussion:
Anna Aspnes
Peppermint Granberg
Katie Nelson
Steph
Show Notes:
-
Gather Memories
Picks of the Week:
Anna: Darling Magazine
Peppermint: This Is Your Life with Michael Hyatt ()
Katie: Mashable
Sponsors:
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Uh, I was trying to download this episode but I can’t find the usual link… Did you change the system? I don’t have iTunes so the “right click-download link” was the easiest method for me.
Yes, I changed the way I was doing it, so I could schedule these shows to go live at the same time every week. I added a download link to this show. I’ll see what I can do next week to be able to schedule it and have the link in there at the same time.
Thank you very much, Steph!! It’s no big deal, I imagine how easier it is for you this way. I’m playing catch up so I’m not listening to the most recent shows, but if I keep cleaning my house as I’ve been recently and start exercising again, I should be caught up in no time! Then I’ll know the addict’s torture of having to wait a WHOLE week between getting my TDD fix! LOL Thank you for sharing such an amazing, entertainting and informative show (and helping me keep my English fresh (I’m French))!
Was wondering the same thing as Chloe. Is this only going to be available for iTunes now?
Thanks for another great show – always a great way to start my Friday!
I am hoping to make some photo books for family this Christmas so this was a great reminder not to get too overwhelmed or set my expectations too high. I too have a half finished December Daily from last year, but love what I do have and will perhaps finish it.
My husband & I are expecting our first baby next spring and I’m starting to consider my memory keeping strategy. It feels like such a commitment. I love my own baby book and want to do something similar but I’m wondering what other people have done. I’ve considered a pocket style book – it would be my first and I like the idea of having memorabilia with the photos and stories. On the other hand adorama books are so pretty and thin that I’ve considered going all digi and then doing a memory box. Any suggestions?
I have a Linux Mint computer, and I’ve never gotten i-tunes to work under WINE. I miss the old link that I could download.
I’d like to hear the designer interviews too, I had the same problem there.
Is this more from your programmer’s wife’s illness? She’s more important than my dishwashing listenting, but I’d like to listen soon.
I answered back on the comment you left on The Daily Digi about your Linux system on the first. I’m sorry you didn’t see it.
I added a player a while ago to the side bar at TDD as well as links to download all of the episodes of the Digest. The Funtastic Friday post today, has information for getting all three of the podcasts we are producing right now:
/find-your-happy-place-today/
This doesn’t have anything to do with my programmer’s wife’s health issues; more about where my priorities are. Taking care of revenue generating items is always going to come first, so it took me a little bit longer to get those download links up on TDD. Being able to schedule these Digi Show posts ahead of time, is really going to help me out a bunch, and will be great for listeners to know exactly when they are coming. It will be bumpy as I figure out the best way to do it, but that’s to be expected a little bit.
Thanks for adding it in Steph – I sure can’t fault your priorities!
I’m glad to be in Australia right now!!
No Halloween (well a few people trick or treat), no Thanksgiving (though what an awesome holiday theme).
We do have Christmas, then Australia Day is 26th January, but on that day it is truly a relaxed barbecue maybe some swimming and maybe watching the fireworks. Doing what Aussies do best: Sitting around doing nothing!
Melissa, I was in Melbourne on Thanksgiving 1981 — well, it was Thanksgiving in the States and I had done the massive math calculations to figure out what day and time it would be in Melbourne when my family got together. I didn’t expect to find a traditional Thanksgiving dinner anywhere but I did think that I could at least get a turkey sandwich and make a long distance phone call. Wrong! I don’t think there was a single (dead, at least) turkey in Australia. I worked the situation and tried to find things that I could cut into the shape of a turkey! A really fun Thanksgiving for me and I enjoyed the whole trip.
As for Halloween, I live in an age-controlled community (this is a polite, legal way to say old people live here). We don’t get kids trick-or-treating door-to-door but we do get a few older “witches” going door-to-door with empty wine glasses.
You may not have any more luck 32 years later! Turkeys are as rare as hens teeth!!
Thanks for sharing your story Joyce
Steph I cracked up with your comment at Peppermint’s intro. Maybe you could just say you’re here with your co-hosts -plural and introduce Katie and just use an “and” to transition to Peppermint…just a thought if anyone was uncomfortable with the usual way. Love you guys and enjoyed the discussion. I’m going into the holidays with a lot of optimism
(great show title) and a positive attitude 
Personally, my co-host and my other co-host just sound right. LOL Like my brother Bob and my other brother Bob! (Dating myself!)
I loved that show Wendy! I think that’s hilarious!
actually, I was thinking of Newhart when they had the brother Darell and the other brother Darell. Always made me laugh.
That’s totally want I meant. Darell, not Bob. My mind is a little scrambled these days! LOL Got Bob from the Newhart part, I guess!
My current brilliant concept is to have a kit I could buy at Target or wherever that includes a fully-decorated Christmas tree, a frozen turkey, and a Halloween costume so it’s all done with one big box!
that would be fabulous Joyce!
Some happenings don’t seem that important as they begin but in retrospect are significant. That makes them great targets for December retro scrapping. You never would have scrapped that little bitty event, but now you see it as the beginning of something big. Maybe I bought a little something in the clearance bin at the scrapbook store and several months later it grew into an intriguing idea and then months after than it was a magnificent album. Well, that may just be an example and may not represent my reality.
When I lived in a big house in Mukilteo, north of Seattle, we had a lot of holiday dinners at my house with massive cooking help from my sisters. One year I started a Cook’s Lounge right near the island in the kitchen with a few chairs and little table to hold drinks or snacks. It gave me a place to sit between stirring sessions and encourage others to keep me company for a while.
By the way, it’s not the glass is half full or the glass is half empty — it’s just the the glass is the wrong size.
love the idea of a cook’s lounge!
Steph, what about using your Instagram feed for December daily?!?! I use the collect app to document pretty much every day of the month with either just pics or a pic with the story. That would also be an easy way to document your December!! You could then print maybe a 4×4 Instagram size album? I documented all of September with my collect app and then made a screen shot of the calendar and named it life in the days of September and I love it!! So this is definitely my plan to document the holidays! It literally takes about 3-5 minutes a night and your story is told!!
The Collect app and the Day One app has really got me rethinking my memory keeping processes and my thoughts on scrapping in general. We constantly talk on the digi show about ways that will help us streamline our memory keeping. We want to find balance between taking time to make memories and taking time to document them. Lately I have LOVED documenting my stories and pics quickly. I am standing there waiting to pick up my kids and in 5 minutes I have downloaded a pic to my phone and told the story! This has allowed me to spend less time glued to my computer scrapping and have more time with my family. I recently listened to the episode 58 “the failure show” which also had me thinking about how I should redefine my memory keeping. What are your thoughts? Do you think we need a show on streamlining our memory keeping and maintaining balance? Or maybe more specifically what resources there are to help us do this. There have been several shows that have touched on this so I don’t know if this idea in itself would be enough for one show. But I am interested to hear all of your thoughts on streamlining our memory keeping and maintaining a balance. This hobby/job is time consuming but so important!
Summer! You are spot on! THIS is a brilliant idea!
Why thank you
Summer, you are brilliant! Like Steph, just the thought of doing December Daily stresses me out. There are so many extra things going on in December that trying to scrapbook on top of everything else does not make sense for me and would not be fair to my family. I thought about using Instagram, but don’t want everything that I would want to document to be shared publicly. Reading you comment gave me the lightbulb moment! I have used the Momento app to document vacations before. It seems to be similar to the Collect app that you referred to and I just downloaded it to give it a try. Momento and Collect are both private apps so I think that this is very doable and a great option. Thanks for the great tip!
Also, I think you are so right about the need to streamline our memory keeping. Our kids are really not going to want to inherit hundreds of photo albums that could potentially burden and overwhelm them. I’ve been a certified photo organizer since 2009 and find that my clients are completely overwhelmed with the thousands of photos that they have and can’t manage. We help them focus on the photos that they feel are most important and tell a story and make them accessible in a photo album, photo book, slideshow etc. Accessibility of the photo (a/k/a memory) is the key!
That’s what I am doing this year. I hesitated doing another December Daily – no kids with us and well, to be honest, in Australia we don’t do Christmassy things every day in December like it seems to be in other parts of the world. Then I thought hmmm, I am addicted (a little bit) to instagram, and well I update that every day, so I have been taking one of my daily photos, putting it in a template type page I made, adding a couple of elements and calling it done. And I’m loving the uniformity of it, and well, it’s the 8th December today and I’m throwing together my page for 8th December right now. I’m up to date!
Great show ladies, I’m playing catch up at the moment.
I could listen to Anna’s comments over and over about keeping things simple and making choices during the holidays. I’m so grateful that another mother out there feels the same way. It seems to me like everyone wants to have the most beautifully decorated house, the most fabulous holiday meals, go to every single social event etc. It’s just plain exhausting! In the past 3 years I have sat next to the bedside of 2 people very close to me and watched them die. It made me realize that ultimately what’s most important (to me anyway) are the meaningful conversations, the laughter, the tears and the experiences shared. Not what our homes looked like, how many decorations were put up or how many social events that we attended. So, in my family, we started making choices and cut back on what we do during the holidays a ton. This decision has given us the sanity to enjoy what we do decide to do because we aren’t so stressed and busy. It’s ok to say NO! We even alternate some of our favorite holiday traditions so we aren’t trying to fit in every tradition every year. Thanks Anna for all of your wisdom on this topic!
A few years back I asked my husband if he would feel more festive if I put up the tree. He rather emphatically said no! So no tree and we are more festive and cheerful now: We appreciate the efforts of others and often comment on their decorations. Now we have a Yule Gris (Christmas Pig), a 3D wire form in the shape of a pig with pink fabric stretched over it. It’s made to be an lawn decoration but it is displayed in the front room with little gifts under the pig. This year I bought a wall hanging with a Christmas Tree on it from IKEA. The snow supposedly glows in the dark — now who knows how to have fun?
Simple up and simple down (with funny inside jokes for us) is our style. We are very happy people!
Ok Joyce, you have to share a picture of the Christmas pig!
I just looked through the Christmas time photos for 2011 and 2012 and I didn’t find a Yule Gris picture (I found the semi-hilarious beard hat pictures, though). I’ll try to remember to take one for you this year but then there’s the difficulty of showing it to you. You may have to come over to the house to see it, but if you come at Christmas you can enjoy it in person in all its glory and you won’t need the photo.
Oh wait! I just remembered Amazon. They don’t have the exact pig (mine was on sale at Walmart) but it gives you the idea: http://www.amazon.com/Pre-Lit-Outdoor-Chenille-Christmas-Decoration/dp/B005ZI2J9M/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1383794064&sr=8-2&keywords=christmas+pig
God Yul, y’all! [That’s Merry Christmas in Norwegian from Texas]