Journal Your Christmas: Part 4

I'm still working on my Christmas Journal. I have seven or eight more pages to go, and I'm determined to get them finished before we leave to visit Sarah and the new baby. Matt comes home today. We're off to Buffalo to pick him up, but he'll leave from Rochester on Sunday. It's a short trip for him, but I'm so glad to be able to see him as part of the holiday. We've left our tree and Christmas decorations up until he has a chance to open the rest of his presents. It will all get packed away this weekend before we leave on Tuesday.

Here are the latest three pages. I continue to work on them in a random fashion, and it's a process that seems to work very well this year.

Sometimes I put one of the cards I make in my Christmas Journal, but I didn't have any left this year, and wasn't inclined to make any more so I was glad I'd taken a photo of some of them ready to go with the letter to out-of-town friends and the family photo. The journaling reads:  

Almost all of my Christmas cards this year were of the same design. I’ve found over the years, it’s just easier to mass produce a lot of the same card than do many different designs. I did send out the cards I made in a Memory Box class in Buffalo, and ones I made for the Scrap-Mart design team. The beautiful snowflake die was cut from some silvery text-weight paper from Paper Source which required a quick stop in Berkeley to pick up some more on our way to Sarah’s at Thanksgiving.

 

It's been awhile since I played around with the opacity of a photograph. I didn't want the large one to overpower the strip of close-ups so I decreased the opacity to about 65%. I tried printing the journaling right on the patterned paper, but it has a bit of a shiny surface so that didn't work. I ended up printing it on vellum and attaching it with the border sticker. Journaling:  

Although we frequently walk past Lamberton Conservatory, we don't often stop. Today we enjoyed a leisurely stroll through their lavish display of poinsettias. They've also installed lots of tiny lights among the tropical plants which are lit on Sunday evenings. We'll definitely be going back on January 1st to take another look.

I was blessed by receiving cards from all over this Christmas, many of them handmade. One of Shimelle's prompts encouraged us to use postage stamps from some of our cards to embellish the page. I still have a few saved to use on other pages (or projects). Journaling: 

Being part of a crafting community, both locally and through blogging means I received many beautiful, handmade cards. This year they came from England, Ireland, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Arizona, and California. I also got a lovely card from Australia. I decided to showcase all the handmade cards on my new magnetic chalkboard in the kitchen. They were admired by many during the holiday!

I can't resist leaving without sharing a couple of baby photos. This one of Caleb was taken in the brief hours they spent at home last Sunday. Within several hours of arriving home, Sarah developed a high fever, and they were back at the hospital. She had a kidney infection which took several days to get under control. They're all home now, and doing well.

I can't wait to get my hands on this little one. In the meantime, I'll be spending more time with Skylar this weekend while Matt is home. I have to figure out how to post a video. Betsy posted the most fabulous video of Skylar laughing on Facebook yesterday. Here are a couple of my favorites of Skylar, taken right before Christmas.