Christmas Album 2011-Day 6

Today was good for my little homebody soul. We only left the house to get Christmas bins out of the shop, to get the mail and to tell Lilly to quit barking at the neighbors! ;)

It was really cold today so I'm glad we didn't have to leave the house. With all the fog, we only reached a high of 36...brrrr! As well as keeping it chilly, it made it too dark to get decent Christmas card pics. If it doesn't clear up soon, I'm just going to use a pic from my November Photo Challenge of the two munchkins smiling together. Those smiling faces are all my family and friends want to see anyways. I'll give it until the tenth and then it's Plan B, baby!

We brought in a few more boxes of Christmas stuff and the kids had a blast digging out as much as they could and decorating the living room. Mickey was so excited to get started that he even vacuumed the living room for me. Ahhh, he's going to make some woman very happy when he gets older. :)


The kids spent most of today playing nicely together. We had a few minor spats but nothing that couldn't be diffused with a little talk. Hide and seek was the most popular game of the day. It was so cute to hear Audrey count to five and then wander around the house saying, "Where's my Mickey?". I love how much they love each other.


Since we took it easy today, I'm feeling much better and I'm going to set out my gym clothes in the hopes that I'll wake up healthy! Yay!

My favorite part of today~Getting out Christmas decorations. (And, getting caught up on my Journal Your Christmas prompts! Yay!!!)

Mickey's favorite part of today~Getting out Christmas decorations.

Audrey's favorite part of today~Getting out Christmas decorations.

Our holiday event~Getting out Christmas decorations. (Notice a theme?) ;)

My Christmas Album-The Album Cover

I finally got my album in the mail yesterday! Wheee!!! I had fun last night decorating the little 3"x3" opening. Hee!

I grabbed one of my excess pieces of kraft cardstock and trimmed it down to fit the opening. I have some Christmas themed Tim Holtz stamps and stamped the holly and the music images in the upper right and lower left corners. I used Frayed Burlap Distress ink for a kind of tone on tone look. :) The letter stickers are newer Mini Market ones from October Afternoon. The red velvet brad is from Creative Imaginations and I picked them up at the CKC-Seattle convention. The red foil Christmas and the white poinsettia flowers are older Making Memories.

Late last night I ordered my first batch of photos. Since I'm pretty happy with how this album is turning out, I want to use a really good photo place. So, I'm going with scrapbookpictures.com. The other really awesome thing about them is the fact that they carry sooooo many sizes! My order coming has 4x6's, 3x3's, 4x4's and even an 8x8!

Once I get those pics, I'll add them to my completed pages and then I'll share them here.

How's your album coming? :)

Christmas Album 2011-Day 3

Yesterday was pretty uneventful. I'm still a little sickly and really getting sick of it! ;) I spent most of the day cleaning and crafting. Mickey and Andrew headed out for a wedding in the afternoon and Miss Thing got a much needed bath while they were gone.

My favorite part of yesterday~Making a really cute treat container!

Mickey's favorite part~Going to the wedding with Daddy.

Audrey's favorite part~Bath! She doesn't get a solo bath very often and she loved it!

Holiday Event~Getting the backdrop set up for our Christmas card pictures.

(Almost forgot to add this, Aud got to tear off the link!)

Christmas Album 2011-Day 2

Today was beautiful out! Sunny, with beautiful blue skies. We took Lilly for a walk in the morning before preschool. She hadn't been on her leash in a while and it took her a few minutes to remember how to behave but she did pretty well.

We took Little Man to preschool and then went early to pick him up so one of his teachers could leave early. I love helping out at his preschool and so does Audrey. That girl is going to be thrilled when she finally gets to go to school herself.

After preschool was over, we ran one quick errand in Canby and I debated zipping into Tigard for another but decided against it. I'm (hopefully) on the tail end of this cold and I didn't want to wear myself out today like I did yesterday. :)

This afternoon I got to get some crafting done and work on my Christmas Album! Yay! Once I get pictures ordered, I'll start posting completed pages. :)

My favorite part of today~Helping out at Mickey's preschool.

Audrey's favorite part of today~Probably going to preschool just in time for snack. (She sacked out early tonight on Daddy's lap.)

Mickey's favorite part of today~Going to school and (when I reminded him) playing Madison's Nintendo DS all night.

Andrew's friend Lamont came over with his oldest daughter to watch football and at first Mickey was bummed that Morgan (who's six) didn't come but once Madison showed him how to play that game, it was all over for the evening!

Today's holiday event~Not much Christmassy going on, so I'm going to say that making a little holiday container for the candy I'm going to be giving away was my holiday event. Oh, and Mickey tore off the second link on our Advent chain. Aud wants to do tomorrow's.

See you tomorrow! :)

Christmas Album 2011-Day 1

Today was pretty busy. We ran a ton of errands. Albertson's, Michael's, Tuesday Morning, Costco and Fred Meyer were all on the list. We even had a stop at home in between to drop off some groceries that needed to be in the fridge. I'm busy fighting off the crud and so didn't remember to pack my camera today.

Mickey finally picked out a present for his Daddy and I got a few more goodies for my Christmas Album. I also spent a $20 Albertson's coupon I got for buying $100 in gift cards on Black Friday. I mainly bought white candy coating to make Peppermint Cookie Crunch for neighbor gifts this year! Love that stuff!

I also stocked up on groceries so we don't have to shop for a while. Andrew's got a business trip coming up and I like to tackle home improvement projects while he's gone. This time around I'm either buying some tables on Craig's List or painting cabinets in the kitchen!

My favorite part of today~Costco with the kids. They were so good and we had a really fun time trying all the "snacks".

Mickey's favorite part of today~Getting a toy (a Cars mini coloring book with a few crayons & stickers) at Michael's.

Audrey's favorite part of today~Fred Meyer! She and Mickey got to play in the Playland while I shopped.

(Mickey just piped up that his second favorite part was seeing Colby, a preschool classmate, at the Playland.)

Today's holiday event~Mickey tore off the first link on our Advent chain that we made last night. (I snagged my iPhone for this one!)

So, that's it for today. I'm hoping to feel better tomorrow so the kiddos can go to the gym's Kid Watch. They love it there! It's great motivation for me to go. ;)

My Christmas Album-The Base Pages

This year, instead of my usual December Daily, I decided to sign up for Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas class. I really want this Christmas to be recorded a little more deeply and not be so much of a play-by-play kind of album. I'm really getting excited about it. It starts on December first and goes through January 6th. The other cool thing about this class is the fact that it's a perpetual kind of class. You pay once and you're in for life. :)


I've been poking around the forums a bit and there are a lot of other gals on there who have done it before and some of them have been doing this for a few years now! It seems like a really great bunch and I'm pretty sure I'll come out of this with a few new friends. ;)


So, on to my album. I decided on an 8x8 format for it this year. Bigger than I've done in the past with my December Daily albums but, I'm hoping to have a lot more journaling. This size should give me enough room without overwhelming me. Here is the album I chose, a cloth covered D-ring album from American Crafts in Cardinal.

I'm going with a kraft, cream and red color theme this year. I've done just Christmas themed product and all one line before but this is my first color theme. It's nice because I've been able to dig through my stash and pull out some seriously ancient paper! Scenic Route, anyone?


These are the base pages I've cut so far. I've got a little trick I'll share a bit further down for how I'm saving a bit of money even with having 8x8 pages. But first, some simple base pages. I've got a little stack of kraft and cream pages here. The cream is actually a metallic cream from American Crafts and it was a screamin' good deal! I picked up a 25 pack at Tuesday morning a year ago for $2.99. Score!


The red candy cane paper is from my scrap stash and is from one of last year's My Mind's Eye Christmas lines called Holly Jolly. The other sheet is from the Amy Tangerine line that I won on the American Crafts blog earlier this year.

Now, here's how I was able to stretch my paper a bit and get two 8x8 background pages from one piece of patterned paper and the scraps from my cream and craft pages. First up, he's a little shot of the way I cut my 12x12s into 8x8s. Not terribly ground breaking but you can see that I'm left with one 12x4 piece and one 8x4 piece. All I did was take my chosen patterned paper and cut a four inch strip off of it, just like the original. But then, instead of cutting off another 4" strip, cut the 8" x 12" piece in half. This will give you two sheets of 8"x6" from your one sheet of paper. Now, grab a couple 4"x8" pieces of your solid cardstock leftover from before, border punch one 8" side of your patterned paper and then adhere them together. Here I used a sheet from The Girl's Paperie Twig & Tinsel line (my most favorite Christmas line of all time!) and my leftover cardstock scraps!.

Here I did the same thing with another sheet from Twig & Tinsel and my leftover cream scraps. This method will get you three base pages out of one sheet of cardstock and one sheet of patterned paper and you'll still have a couple scraps left over for embellishing!

Here's the rest of my pages and the lines I used. This is one of the ancients I referred to, it's from Scenic Route (RIP!) and it's from the Garland line.

Here's another sheet from that line. (I've got a bit of a snowflake theme going on!)

And, another one from Scenic Route, I think this is the Roxbury line.

This next one has the leftovers from the above pages adhered to a piece of Scenic Route's Liberty line. It's actually a 4th of July line but the colors work amazingly well together! I cut the Liberty paper like I did the previous pages but the scrap is actually the 12x4 piece cut down to 8x12 and then cut in half lengthwise so I had two pieces of 8x2. I cut a piece of cream 4x8 in half the same way and border punched the edges and then used it to adhere the two patterned pieces together. By doing this I got five pages out of three sheets of paper. :)

This last page uses another scrap from my stash (more My Mind's Eye) that just wasn't quite tall enough to make a up an 8x8 page. So, I grabbed one of the leftover Girl's Paperie pieces and adhered it to the top.

Finally, I've got quite the stash of divided page protectors and cut a few different styles to be either 8x8(the two on the left) or 8x6(the one on the right). So, with all these, I should have enough pages to get started. I've got more of the cream and kraft if I should need a few more pages. I think there are 36 or 37 journaling prompts and I've got 33 regular pages. I'm getting some embellishments and such premade as well and I'll share those later.

Are you doing a Christmas/Holiday album this year? If you are, please post a link in the comments, I'd love to see it! :)