Journal Your Christmas 2008

It's time again for Journal Your Christmas with Shimelle.
Last year I Journaled My Christmas, or at least most of it...Here's a few of the posts I had about it. I was looking thru the book the other day and actually finished more pages than I remembered.
The concept is to record something each day of December and into early January. It was a fun project but I decided that I better get my book prepared first in order to be able to get it done again this year. I have started on that and I think this year I will have a combined project of Journal Your Christmas and Ali Edward's December Daily project. Which is a similar project about just recording a memory a day, no matter what it is, where Shimelle's project has daily jump-starts and specific prompts to get you going each day and creative suggestions for your pages.
With two trips planned to MO this December, I think I better keep it simple in order to keep up!
I have my book almost ready and will post some pictures soon.

Journal Your Christmas

Browsing around a few days ago I somehow ran onto this website, shimelle and discovered she is offering a class called Journal Your Christmas. This sounded very fun and a good way to really soak up the spirit of the season. So I thought what the heck and joined up.

Basically it's keeping a journal for the season and documenting what it means to you. Read more about it here. This is the manifesto offered to jump start December's first entry:

I declare my intention to Journal my Christmas. Writing something down every day. Creating a little bit whenever possible. Getting my stories documented for myself and maybe for others to read too.

I hope by taking a little time each day to reflect, to write, to create, I will keep my Christmas alive and well, despite the commercial pressure that exists outside my door. Family, friends and hot beverages will help.

I may meet others taking this same journey. I may share my work from time to time. I may remember just why I loved Christmas in the first place, and that may be a very magical moment indeed.

Here is my first page. I have yet to do the outside of the album, but have something in mind.

Journal Your Christmas, Dec 3 and 4

Dec 3's prompt was about Christmas cards. Do you buy them, make them from scratch, etc. Since I haven't even started that project yet, I will skip that page until later! Christmas is officially on hold until after LAD's birthday on Dec 11. Just doesn't seem right to start with Christmas yet, well at least decorating, doing cards, etc.
Dec 4ths prompt was about your idea of the perfect Christmas. My idea of the perfect Christmas is pretty much based on happy childhood memories and that's what I journaled about. The light colored paper here flips up to refeal journaling underneath. I hope to create some of the same happy moments for LAD and hope he grows up with happy memories of perfect Christmas's too.
Love this paper from Basic Gray-Figgy Pudding!. Santa is a stamp and the tree is a rub-on. I am going to put clear glaze over the chipboard letters so they are a little shinier and stand out a little more.
Christmas is 3 weeks from today (i'm still on Tuesday, even though it's 1:41 AM. 1:41 AM Holy Cow-off to bed). 1 week until LAD turns 2! Yikes!!!

Journal Your Christmas/December Daily 2008

Well it's December 1, can you believe it???
Neither can I. Granted it's only :58 minutes into December as I write this...
I finally got my album prepared for daily entries for Journal Your Christmas / December Daily. I'm combining the projects this year in hopes of completing each day.
Here's the cover:

If you want to see all the photos of the album go here.

Journal Your Christmas 2008, week 1

Whew, got this caught up this weekend. Been taking photos all along and doing some journaling, and finally got time to print and assemble.
I'm doing a combination of Journal Your Christmas with December Daily.
Here's how it's turning out so far...
I may put a different photo just behind the cover of this. But this looks OK for now! Lots of fun colors here!

Dec 1) I stapled the photo right to the back of the transparency.

Dec 2)

The photo on the right is backed by the sunset photo.

Dec 3)

Then on the back of 3

Dec 4)

I typed my journaling right on the photo then printed it out. Backed it with patterned paper for now.

Dec 5)

Repurposed a glossy magazine advertisement for the background of this page, since I didn't actually have a photo of the event! Duh!

Dec 6)

Another repurposed glossy magazine advertisement. I liked the colors of the word against the black background.

And on the back of the Think page

Dec 7)
Printed two 4x6s and glued them back to back. Used a white Sharpie paint pen to draw the line around the photo and write the day-seven.

Did a photo collage in Photoshop and printed it and stuck it in. Did some journaling around the clock photo in white before printing. Drew a while line to separate the photos after I printed it, with a white Sharpie paint pen.

You can see the complete Raw Album here.

And now it's Monday again!

Embarking on a Christmas ADVENTure

Today's Journal Your Christmas was about Advent, and whether you offically count down the days and if so, how, etc.

Advent (from the Latin words advenio, meaning "to come", "the coming of Christ our saviour") the period of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of Christmas.

We never had Advent calendars growing up, that I remember, so this is a new tradition for our family. I guess I’m always aware of how many days are left for preparing for Christmas but officially counting the days and doing something fun or meaningful seems like a good way to bring back the spirit each day of this season.
I’ve been seeing very creative and festive ways of honoring Advent on the internet, but LAD is a little too young yet to really understand what’s going on, so I found a fun downloadable, printable Advent calendar for this year. Maybe next year we can have a more elaborate one and he can help craft it! And we can start creating it in October or November!
Today is the 5th, so only 20 more days to go!

Journal Your Christmas

Christmas cards are in the mail...finally... so I was able to complete this page!


















This is a prompt about Christmas pasts, page is done, no journaling done yet...







All about the presents, again no journaling done, but page is mostly done. Might stick on a pic here later after Christmas.

Journal Your Christmas-December 19

This was about a letter to Santa. The first page is an envelope about a Wishing Tree community service project I did this year. Families in the Ballard school district can write their children's list of needs and wants, then people can take a list and purchase items for them to have for Christmas. I got a list of 3 girls and 1 boy-whew-girl shopping is HARD!
The second page is where LAD got to meet Santa this year and sit in his lap. He's now hooked on candy canes!

Journal Your Christmas 12/7 thru 12/11

I was a few days behind, but have finally caught up, basically...with ideas for a couple days I am missing...
12/7 was lists, to do, organization, etc. These days were spent preparing for a B-day party!
12/8 was Do you see what i see, eyes open for holiday changes, etc. This was very fun. I like how it turned out.
12/9 was traditions, which is in my head but not on paper yet!
12/10 was about trimmings, wrapping paper, etc. This was a pretty easy one, except I see the glue i used on my craft wrap paper to stick to the red glossy paper is not holding so will have to reinforce that. but later.
12/11- Happy Birthday LAD- was about the Ole' Christmas tree. This was pretty easy since we just put it up on Sunday. LAD, like the cats, enjoys lounging under it! I like how this page turned out too and the little book thing was pretty neat to do. It has another snapshot of the tree on the back of the second page. I think I'll add a little line around the edges of the whole page here, but later...

Daily December 2009

Daily December. A project where you record memories and photos each day during the month of December. Inspired by Ali Edward's Daily December project and Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas, this is the third year I've done this project. I really liked how last year's book turned out, I finally finished it this past weekend! Well almost, I need to print a few pictures from the last few days of the month. Turns out I had quite a bit to say each day, and, as always, took lots of pictures. So as I put this year's book together I decided to add a journal page and another page for photos. This is pretty much done, aside from the words and photos. I will probably add a few small embelishments here and there as I go, but feel like it's pretty complete as is. I still need to add something to the cover. This was a post bound Bazzill album (9x9) that I took apart and re-bound with 2 inch rings. See all the photos here.
I'm putting this thing away, been working it all weekend. It'll be fun to get it back out on the First and start filling it up!

Journal Your Christmas-December 2

Today's entry was about the weather. Well we've started the month off with a bang in that department. Yesterday we had sleet and freezing rain, but it warmed up to the mid 30's later in the day so it didn't stick to the trees and power lines like it could have. My journaling for this page got a little long winded so I just tucked it into the envelope that I attached to the page.
LAD colored the center snowman, from something that came in the mail. Bird pics are from 2003!
Yikes-where has the time gone!

December Daily 2009-Finished!!!!

Inspired by Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas and Ali Edward's December Daily, this is the third year I've created an album like this. I created the basis of the album back in November, assembled all the pages and day numbers, etc. Photos of those pages are here. Then once December rolled around, journaling and photos are added. I kept up with the writing each day or every other day, and printed and added photos every few days in order to keep up. I took it on our trip and journaled each day, then added those photos later.

I love how it turned out and the fact that it's finished makes it PERFECT!

Here's a few photos. Go here to my Flickr gallery to see all, if you are interested.