random reflections

Christmas Journal: Part 2

Creating the pages for my Christmas Journal took quite a bit longer than I expected. I love the divided pages and options available by using the Simple Stories album, but it takes a lot of forethought so the pages all go together in the end. I'm very happy with how it's turned out, but I did think I'd be posting pages as I went along. I still have Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and one other page I want to do. I'll post a few pages each day until I've shared them all. Days 1-3 are here.  And the cover and prep pages are here.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for the title page. Then I found this design on the Silhouette site and die cut the numbers with the Typewriter dies by Memory Box.

I don't attempt to do a December Daily so you won't find pages for each day in December. This spread is about this year's Christmas cards and the family letter I sent to out-of-town friends.

The annual spread on Christmas decorations.

Last year I included a calendar and I loved having a record of all we did in December. I still need to finish writing in the activites since I took this photo.

My friend, Nancy, and I spent a lovely afternoon at two gallery shows and lunch out. This photo was taken at the Memorial Art Gallery in their atrium.

Hope you have a great weekend. We have a very quiet one here. I'm looking forward to some reading, purging, and learning new software!

Journal Your Christmas: Days 1-3

Here's a look at my 2012 Manifesto and the first three days. I am enjoying the Simple Stories album and think this might become a favorite for this kind of project.

The last few years, I've just used Shimelle's Manifesto, or skipped it altogether, but this year I ended up using part of hers and adding some of my own journaling. (Oops, just caught a typo/grammar error in the Manifesto, so I'll be reprinting that. I know I proofread it once, but obviously not carefully enough!)

This is the third year in a row Tracy and I have gotten a pre-cut tree. This year's is really lovely, but the process just isn't as much fun as it used to be. Some of my all-time favorite photos of my kids were taken on our annual Christmas tree hunt.

Tracy and I lit the first Advent candle in chapel on Sunday. I printed the text from the bulletin on vellum and decided that was all the journaling this page needed. I'm not sure about the Washi tape, but it does a good job of keeping the vellum in place.

This was the day I did the Festive Photo Walk for Cheryl Johnson's Twelve Days of Christmas class. I really like these 3 X 4 photo slots. I'm not sure whether I'll add two more 4X6 photos to the back of this last page, or whether I'll use those spots for December 4's page. (Still thinking about that one.) Typically, I'm not all that happy when I do a lot of prep work for a project, but this year it seems to be working out just fine.

Journal Your Christmas

Tomorrow Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas class begins again. This will be my seventh year doing the journal, and I've never tired of it. Earlier this week, I brought out the first six journals which reside in a basket in our living room during the holiday. I flipped through a couple of them, and it brought back memories of things I might well have forgotten if I hadn't captured them in the journals. Over the next month, I'll probably read through all of them again.

This year I actually did some preparation ahead of time. During the October Papertrey release I saw a Simple Stories album that seemed just perfect. It's an 8 X 6 two ring binder, and it might become my new favorite size for single topic scrapbooks. Here's the spine and cover.

The cover is a simple circle cut with Spellbinders Nestabilities and a piece of Teresa Collin's Christmas paper from last year. The holly is cut from felt with Papertrey's Holly Jolly dies. The title is created with my old favorite SEI alpha stickers.

The binder comes with several patterned paper pages:

They seem perfect for Christmas, but I decided to embellish most of them. I've left some (above) to embellish as I go along.

A piece of Washi tape, a circle of paper from the Merry Mint pad by American Crafts, and an American Crafts sticker.

More Washi tape and Crate Paper Thickers by American Crafts.

The border of the paper is just about the same red as the stamped banners, but sure doesn't look like that in this photo. The banner was stamped and hand cut using Papertrey's Countdown to Christmas stamps--the only new addition to my Christmas collection. The twine came in a Studio Calico kit. I also used the stamp set to create the numbers for the daily pages:

The frame and arrow are die cuts by Papertrey Ink, the button was from my stash. There'll be a photo in the frame eventually.

I saw this idea somewhere and thought I'd pinned in on my Pinterest board, but I don't see it there. This is a Starbucks sleeve from last year, and I'll be using it for journaling. If anyone knows the source, let me know.

One of the things I like the most about this scrapbook is the divided photo pages. I bought some of Ali Edwards digital  journaling cards, printed them out and found some subway art on the internet as well. 

I'm hoping this will be easy to assemble as we go through December. Several years ago, I gave up trying to respond to all of Shimelle's prompts or to do a page for every day. Shimelle has updated the prompts for this year, so I'm looking forward to some new ideas. Mostly I just want a record of our time as we travel through the Advent season.

 

 

Ten on the Tenth

Normally I wouldn't subject you to ten scrapbook pages in one post, but I really did want to do 10 on the 10th this year, and I have finished my Christmas Journal and there were exactly 10 pages to share. You can find more 10 on the 10th at Shimelle's blog.

Years ago, we added a new ornament to our collection every year. For many years, we added one from our travels. Once we had more ornaments than our tree could hold, we stopped buying new ones. But this year, I bought two beautiful new glass ornaments, one from Denver, CO and one from Ashland, OR. They’ll remind me of the year both of my kids made big moves.

This year my gifts are under three trees:  one here, one in Oregon, and one TV tree in Denver. When Matt received some boxes a few days ago, he called to see which ones were safe to open. Only one of three in which I had sent some wrapped gifts for him to open Christmas Day. 

 Knowing full-well he hadn’t any intention to buy a tree, I said, “Put them under the TV and pretend it’s a tree.” 

 “That’s the plan,” he responded.

 I’ll miss my kids on Christmas morning. This is the first year in 31 years that neither one will be here on Christmas Day. But it will still be festive, as nearly 20 of us will gather here at 4:00 for Christmas dinner.  And I only had to send a few of Matt’s gifts as he’ll be here for a long weekend in early January.

I love to make tags and wrap gifts. This year I had fun making some tags for specific gifts and people. I don’t always find the time to be as creative as I’d like during the holiday season, but it certainly is fun when I do.

Having seen Sarah and Adam in November, and knowing I would see them again as well as Matt in January, I didn’t expect to feel particularly sad at Christmas. But Tracy figured out how to stream our Christmas music through Apple TV and added lots of Christmas photos from past years as a screen saver. I was done in when this one showed up on Christmas Eve. I really do miss my kids at the holidays! 

The first page of a two-page spread.

The Walker Family Christmas is always lots of fun, but this year it seemed even more laughter-filled and joyous than usual. We visited, sang, saw interpretative dance, ate, ate some more, opened gifts (more laughter and fun), and simply enjoyed one another. The only way it could have been better was to have Marc (who had to work), Sarah, Adam, Betsy, Skylar, and Matt with us.

I've ordered a pile of prints from Christmas which should arrive today (after we leave for the airport). They'll go in these pages:

Despite a gorgeous new kitchen, I just wasn’t interested in making tons of Christmas cookies this year. It broke a 40+ year tradition, and in the end, both Tracy and I were sorry about it. We did, however, have cupcakes! I made three kinds: carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, chocolate with peanut butter frosting, and our favorite:  gingerbread with lemon frosting. No one in the family seemed terribly disappointed, but I especially missed not having goodies to give to our neighbors. 

I didn't journal for this page, I know I'll have lots of baby pages in the near future and I thought "Best Gift" said it all.

Matt was home for the weekend, and I took tons of photos. This is one of my favorites. Skylar is so attentive now, and she is staring at her Aunt Sarah in Oregon on the iPad. I love how much easier it is to stay in touch with Face Time. We visit with Caleb, Sarah, and Adam almost every day. 

Matt left today, and that signals the end of the holiday for me. We’ve been blessed beyond measure again this year by family, friends, and good health. On our way home from the airport, we stopped to see the night lights at the Lamberton Conservatory. I was glad we hadn’t missed it after all.

Thanks for sticking with me through a lot of pages. I always enjoy this project, and every year I'm so glad I've made the time for it. We're off to Oregon later today, so I'll be checking in with your posts, but probably not commenting as often. Babies to hold, you know!!!

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.

 

Journal Your Christmas: Part 3

I spent three hours at lunch today with four good friends. It was a great way to spend our first wintery day. I did get one more page for the journal done tonight and a couple of thank you cards, all of which will show up here in a day or two. For now here are the pages I promised yesterday.

Betsy and Skylar came to dinner. We feel so blessed to be near by and get to see her nearly every week. I have new photos to share of her as well. Journaling reads:

What a blessing Skylar Rose and Betsy are to our family! Although she’s too young this year to understand Christmas, we know what a special joy she’ll be bringing to all our holiday celebrations. She is the sweetest baby ever!

It's not often I have a page to add with the prompt about visitors, but this year my brother spent a weekend with us and we had great fun.

I extracted part of a template by Ali Edwards for this page. The journaling reads: We were delighted to discover that Colgate Rochester Divinity School was hosting a carling party and bell ringing concert today. Our street dead-ends on the CRDS property so we had an easy walk up the hill to listen to the bells and sing carols along with our neighbor, Paul, and about 300 others.

This was a fun page to do. I used one of the October Afternoon Holiday Style journaling cards to write out the list of things I still had to do. The houses are from a sticker sheet from the same line, the clouds are from Studio Calico, and the Filagree Border is one of the two new ones I just got from Papertrey Ink.

Journal Your Christmas

I've had some time the last two days to get a few more pages done on the Christmas Journal. Rather than work sequentially, I've been doing the pages I had photos for, or ones I had written the journaling for already. Since there are several of them, I'll post a few tonight and the rest tomorrow. It's a rather electic scrapbook as I've been choosing papers based on the photos rather than sticking to a particular set of papers or a consistent template. I'm quite enamored of some of the Christmas Journals I've seen this year that have a more consistent look, but I'm not sure how well I'd be able to stick with them. Food for thought for 2012. 

The idea for this page came from a prompt I received from Tracey Clark about holding onto gratitude. The journaling reads:

Thanksgiving is the holiday where everyone focuses on their blessings, but, truly, Christmas seems like just as good a season to take stock of all I am grateful for.  The list is too long for this entry, but the top three are . . .

 FAMILY--I am more appreciative than ever of time with family now that both Sarah and Matt live miles away. This holiday season would seem much bleaker if it weren’t for a large extended family that is here and will make Christmas Day a rousing, happy holiday.

 HOME--Having done so much work on our house this year, I am truly grateful for a beautiful home, a fabulous new kitchen, and wonderful neighbors.

FRIENDS-- We are truly blessed with many friends with whom we share joys, tribulations, fears, and celebrations. Our lives are enriched by our many close friends with whom we share meals, events, and travel. Our book group, our fellow bridge players, my blogging buddies, and our church community add such richness to our lives.

One of the articles in a recent Creating Keepsake magazine was about using calendar pages in your scrapbooks. I had this page from a Papertrey Ink calendar I didn't use this year and decided it would be a fun way to document the social events of the holiday season.

I lifted the idea for this page right off Miriam's blog. (Thanks, Miriam, I like it a lot.) Tracy and I were bemoaning the fact that it didn't seem much like Christmas this year, but in addition to the fact that neither of our kids were here, we also skipped a few of the annual traditions. We've decided we won't do that again.

For both Advent and Lent our fabulous church choir presents special music. Since we live in a town with a renowned music school, our choir director and organist (who also teaches at the Eastman) has access to wonderfully talented muscians who accompany the choir on these occasions. This year it was two brass choirs, and was not to be missed! I included the page from the bulletin that describes the two pieces they sang. Our church is always beautifully decorated. I wouldn't take a photo during any service, but I did get one of the chancel area before the service began.

We had a fabulous Christmas celebration with our family. I turned my point and shoot over to Jessie, Tracy's cousin's daughter who took over 250 photos. She recently sold her camera and is saving for an DSLR. She had a lot of fun, and I got to relax and enjoy the family. I have them uploaded, but it will be a while before I get through all of them and decide which 5-10 photos I want to use for my journal.

 

Journal Your Christmas

My first Christmas Journal was made in 2006, so this is my sixth year and it's a project I still enjoy. I'm much more relaxed about it than I used to be, and by the end of the season I always have a record of our holidays. Some days I write the journaling based on a prompt. This year I'm receiving Shimelle's prompts (as always) as well as prompts by Tracey Clark through Paper Coterie. Some days I'm too busy to even read the prompts so I come back to them later, and some days I have my own stories to record. In the midst of getting Chrismas cards finished (I made 50 of them this year), writing the letters to out-of-town friends, cooking for our holiday Open House tomorrow night, and the usual meetings and appointments, I squeezed in time to make the first three pages. They're all going in a Doodlebug StoryBook 3-ring 8X8 album that has two kinds of page protectors--regular and a photo page where I can just slip in extra 4X6 photos.

I don't always include Shimelle's Manifesto, but I liked this year's and decided it would make a good first page. It took me forever to come up with this simple page design!

The next page actually happened in November, but it was our first Christmas activity, and our only one with Sarah and Adam this year, so it had to be included. 

The journaling reads:  The Friday after Thanksgiving is Ashland's annual Christmas parade. Someone had told us everyone in Ashland turns out for it, and that seemed to be true. The weather was perfect, and it was lots of fun to watch Mr. and Mrs. Claus pull the switch from the balcony to turn on all the Christmas lights. It's easy to see that this will likely become a new tradition for Sarah and Adam and their family.

Journaling:

Today’s weather report on Channel 13 reminded us that last year we’d already had several inches of snow by now, and by the 7th of December we’d had 24 inches of snow. I remember that last winter seemed like it lasted forever. No wonder. 

This year was the mildest November on record since the 1800s, and I’m not sorry. I’m enjoying walking outside without freezing, and without slipping and sliding in heavy boots. I’m glad to be finishing up my shopping without worrying about whether the roads are passable. I love pushing the grocery card on dry pavement. I’ll be happy to see a coat of snow on the ground on Christmas Day, but I can easily wait until then!

I'll be back later today with my blog post for the Scrap-Mart Christmas blog hop.

Journal Your Christmas, Finally!

This was my fifth journal, and frankly, the most difficult one I ever did. As soon as I saw Ali Edward's set-up for her December Daily, I knew I wanted to give it a try. If I had thought about it more carefully, I would have known it was overly ambitious. I liked doing a 90% digital album (a new experience for me), and I enjoyed using Ali's templates and overlays. Finally, however, I had to admit I couldn't complete a two-page spread for even 25 days. So I put a disclaimer in the front of the journal and called it done.

Will I do another journal next year? Probably. I'm always happy to look back at the differences from one holiday to the next and the special events that are unique for a given year. I've certainly covered our traditions and customs in earlier journals, so from now on I'll stick to the new and special events of the season.

I had some nice red chipboard in my stash that I wanted to use as the cover. I couldn't decide how to decorate it, but finally used one of the KI Memories overlays I had cut for one of the transparency sheets between each layout. I added the Paper Source ribbon and some new American Craft Thickers that came in my last Scrapbook Circle kit.

Here are about half the pages from the journal.  I didn't take photos of most of the transparency pages which lie between each layout.

On some pages I added an embellishment, but I kept them to a minimum to keep the journal from becoming too fat. Sometimes I used patterned papers from my stash, but most of them are digital papers.

This page comes from one of Shimelle's prompts about Christmas cards. I make all of mine and took a photo of the basket where I was keeping them and a collage of some of the cards I made this year.

Another page from one of Shimelle's prompts; this one from an In Focus prompt about the view from your window. I really enjoyed the In Focus prompts and know I will return to them during the year---lots of inspiration and good information about photography which wasn't part of the first few years I participated in Shimelle's class.

This page has the transparency over the photo page. I wanted to document all the time I spent in December in physical therapy for my sprained ankle. My very competent, and cute, therapist was happy to pose for the photos.

This page documents an unusual event. On December 15th, Shimelle's prompt was about unexpected visitors. I had to laugh. We'd been up since 4:00 am that morning because our carbon monoxide dectector went off for the second morning in a row. The second day we decided we should call 911 and in just a few minutes our wonderful firemen arrived. It turns out the dectector had gone bad, but as the firemen said, it's better to be safe than sorry.

Here's a page I'll do another year, just a list of all the activities that were on our calendar for the month of December.

I did this layout after friends of ours told us they'd given up hanging stockings and exchanging gifts. Although, we too, need to simplify and pare down our possessions, I am not ready to give up the joy of finding just the right item for stockings or of wrapping gifts for under the tree.

This is one of my favorite layouts because the template allowed me to get so many photos on it. All in all, making the journal was a satisfying experience, and I was very proud of myself not to get caught up in the need to complete every page just because I had the transparencies cut and decorated!

 

Happy Mail and Journal Your Christmas Days 1 & 2

If you're looking for the Scrap-Mart Blog Hop, it's the post below this one. Thanks for stopping by. I must say this blog hop broke a record (that will likely not be matched) for comments on my blog!!!

When I got home from California I had two pieces of Happy Mail. One I knew about and the other was a surprise. Before I left, I was lucky enough to win a random drawing of two new stamps sets from Wplus9 Designs, and I'm looking forward to having a chance to create with them.

And the surprise was Happy Mail from Big Picture Classes. I updated my profile on their site and was lucky enough to get one of their fifth birthday happy mail packages. I especially love the little notebook.

I promised myself I would not get behind with my Christmas Journal this year since I decided to do a December Daily format. The last couple of years I didn't hold myself to daily pages, and it was a lot easier. I have the photos, but no pages done for Day 3 or Day 4. I decided to use the same format Ali Edwards was using and I wasn't really sure I was going to like it, but so far I'm pleased with the results. I'll follow along with Shimelle's prompts as they appeal to me, but since this is my fifth Christmas journal, prompts about some topics have been covered in full in previous years. I'm also using photos from the prompts from Picture the Holidays with Tracey Clark.

This is the first page. I've finished a transparency with a number for each of the days from 1-25. The green cardstock is the back to the first two-page spread.

I like Shimelle's manifesto so printed it as the first page of this two page spread. The second page is a hybrid one. I printed Ali's overlay and then printed my photos and placed them on the page. Here's the journaling.

For Day 2 I went digital and printed both of my photos for the left-hand page and added a border cut from some October Afternoon paper. The right-hand page was also created digitally. I add a white rectangle to the bottom of the overlay so I could journal before I printed. The photo is the prompt, "Framed," from Picture the Holiday. The transparency lies between the two pages. I decided not to create a set of similar tags for the number tags, but used up a lot of my Christmas stash and some number stickers. The tag is a Papertrey mat stack die that was stamped and the circle tag with a two was layered on it.

The top photo is one of the poinsettias on our hall dresser reflected in the mirror that hangs above it. The bottom one is of the Christmas lights layed out on the floor before Tracy put them on the tree.

The journaling reads: "I found out today that my ankle is probably broken, but since I'm not in lots of pain, I don't see the specialist until Monday. Sigh. I hope I'll get an air cast so I can drive! Today's photo is from the Picture the Holidays prompt: Framed. I've been using my tripod this week, and it makes a huge difference."  As you can tell, I'm not focusing on any particular topic, just some photos from the day and a bit about what's happening.

Here's a peek at the stack of transparencies. I have the chipboard cut for the covers, but haven't decided quite what to do with them yet. I haven't decided how to bind the journal either. This is not the way I usually operate, but I'm feeling just fine about it for now.