December Daily Album Christmas 2011

I previously showed a little peek into my very first December Daily album, which I gave to Stephen this past Christmas. The album celebrates the Christmas of 2011, so by now the photos in it are almost two years old, but I finished this album just in time for Christmas 2012. The whole family LOVES this album, and I'm so happy to be sharing highlights of it here.

 I first heard about the concept of documenting each December through daily photos in a mini scrapbook album through Ali Edwards December Daily project.  Even though I have been taking daily December photos since 2008, this is the first year that I actually have created an album around the photos.

My first December Daily album is a 6 x 6 mixed media album containing a combination of clear acrylic, chipboard and page protector pages.  The image above shows the front cover, an acrylic page with a transparency layered over it.  You can see below that the pages alternate randomly between page protectors, chipboard pages and clear acrylic sheets.

 I used a tag on the inside cover.  Part of the challenge of using clear acrylic pages is that you must plan both the front and back of each page, since the page is clear and the back of one page shows right through to the next.

 Before starting each of the calendar pages, I added an introduction page.  The image is of the Christmas wreath on our front door.

 The page for December 1st shows the bus stop with a little layer snow that fell just in time for December to begin.  The pages I've shown so far have been acrylic.

 Back then, our cat Smokey was a new arrival and such a sweet tiny kitten.  On this chipboard page for December 5th, Stephen is helping Merlin get to know Smokey.  Aren't the cute??

Below is a double page spread with a page protector on the left and a chipboard page on the right.  I've documented our every day life in December, not just Christmas-related activities.  On the December 7th page, Evan celebrates his first Black Friday haul.  On the right, I took photos at Parents' Day at the girls' dance class.

Decorating our home for Christmas is one of my favourite parts of the holiday season.  I journaled digitally directly on some of the photos for this album.  On the right, the kids visit with Santa and Mrs. Claus.

One of our traditions during the holidays is making Christmas cookies.  The kids are increasingly taking over the design and creation of our culinary masterpieces.

Even though I included just one page for the days leading up to Christmas, I included more than one page for December 24th and 25th, which were quite rich with activities.  And below is the back cover of the album, which displays our family Christmas photo from that Christmas.  I hope you've enjoyed this little (belated) look at my December Daily project.  Maybe it will give you some ideas for the 2013 Christmas season! 

Christmas Continues with a December Daily Peek

I was thrilled that I managed to finish a December Daily album in time to give it to Stephen for Christmas this year. It documents our previous Christmas - so December 2011 - and I am completely happy with how it turned out. The photo below shows Alicia and Stephen looking it over right after he opened it on Christmas morning.



Here is a look at the album cover. It is a mixed media album with acrylic, chipboard and page protector pages mixed together. I'll admit it - I haven't totally photographed it for posting, but I will get that done in the next few days and have more of the album to post for you soon.



Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Even though this post is about winter, enjoy summer while it's still here!

A (very) Overdue Peek at December 2012

One of the practices I have diligently kept up with since 2008 is taking (at least) one daily photo during the month of December to document the Christmas Season at our house. I've posted at least a few photos, giving you a peek at our December, if not the entire set of photos, every year on my blog.

December 2012 was no exception, and not only did I take a photo every day, I also went back and completed a December Daily album for the previous year and gave it to Stephen for Christmas. The concept of a December Daily album, which I first hear about through the amazing Ali Edwards, is in part what I (eventually) plan to do for each of the years' photos I've taken in December.

This picture is one of my favourites from December 2012. The kids are just about ready for bed on Christmas Eve, and have laid out a giant Santa cookie (which they made and decorated themselves) with chocolate milk for Santa. I will post more about our December, as well as a look at the December Daily album I gave Stephen for Christmas, over the next little while.

Santa Claus is a Girl!

In keeping with the recent Christmas theme I've created here, this is a page I created while at a weekend crop up at my amazing friend Leanne's beautiful home. This photo was taken last Christmas day, as the girls were helping to hand out presents to family while we awaited our scrumptious turkey dinner. They look so grown up now, I can barely believe it. I love the rectangular doily, which - believe it or not - is from Dollarama!


While we were at Leanne's it was Jen's birthday and we had fun with some last minute birthday cupcakes and balloons I picked up in town that afternoon. We didn't manage to get a photo with all of us in it, so our gracious hostess Leanne must have taken this one. Happy Birthday, Jen!

I sure got a lot done while I was at Leanne's. Here's a look at another layout I created that weekend. The photos on this one are from 2006, and Evan is still so small! I'll post more of the layouts I created on that trip sometime soon.

Christmas in July!

OK, so I missed July, too! But my intention was honourable! After taking such an (unplanned) lengthy break from blogging, I thought a winter layout was a great segue from my last post, since it was of our family at Christmas. But alas, I didn't manage to get this posted in July, either.

In any case, it's nice to get back to posting again, something I hope to do on a more frequent basis during the rest of 2013! This is a layout inspired by a sketch I saw on Scrapping Nook.  It's a blustery look at ski camp from last Christmas break, featuring Alicia.

Here's a close up of the title block. I embossed the snowflakes around the edge of the page with clear embossing powder and the Gel-a-tins snowflake stamp set from ages ago.

 Even though I haven't been blogging, I have managed to scrapbook a few pages. Although I posted last in December, it had really been a while since I consistently posted my completed layouts - probably about a year or so - and here is the stack of pages I've done in that time. I may not post them all here - some haven't even been photographed yet - but I hope to get plenty of them up in the next little while.

In keeping with the Christmas theme, here is a little peek at a page I really love. The girls dressed as Santa last Christmas. I'll post the full layout sometime soon.

And to prove that I do realize it is August and not December, here's a look at the kids in our current season. What season is that, you may ask? Not summer, but soccer! Yes, our busy schedule continues, but I still hope to be back here again soon. Thanks for stopping by! I would love it if you left a comment so that I know you were here. See you again soon! :-}

Merry Christmas to All

From everyone at our house, a happy and blessed Christmas
to you and your loved ones. All the very best for 2013!

December Daily 2011 Peek

This year I decided to journal right on the image for my December Daily photos. I was inspired by my friend Lee and the gorgeous December Daily photos and albums she has been putting together in the past few years. Here's a hint at what the finished photos look like.

The photo above says Welcome Home and the text is Nothing says Welcome Home like a wreath on the front door. This was this year's Christmas wreath. The title for this photo is Time for Relaxing and the text says Boxing Day was made for chilling with your family in your Christmas PJs and enjoying your gifts.

I'm well on my way to having all my December photos selected, edited and the text written, and I hope to have a slide show put together before the end of the week. Take a peek back soon for a look at the rest of our December.

Thanks for visiting and have a great week!

Merry Christmas

From our home to yours, wishing you and your family a happy
and blessed Christmas and all the best for 2012.

Christmas Crafting

When Sue stopped by to scrap with me a few weeks ago I managed to finish a Christmas present for my hubby. I love creating the calendars that we use in our home each year. This year I used the My Mind's Eye 2012 Calendar kit. Since Stephen reads my blog I can only give a little peak!

Creating Christmas gifts is a good excuse to squeeze in a little bit of scrapbooking time around the holidays! :-}

This calendar took approximately 2 hours focused time (not including chatting, giggling and watching Crazy, Stupid Love time) to put together and it was easy to find in the craft section of my local HomeSense. Above is the December page. I found with this calendar I did add titles to many of the pages using my own stash, though.

If you are looking for a last-minute gift idea and have tons of photos kicking around, this is good choice. I'll post photos of the rest of the calendar once hubby unwraps it Christmas morning!

Slow Down for a Moment

We interrupt your regularly scheduled holiday hectic-ness for a little fireside puppy love! Love is what this season is all about, after all! Aren't they cute?

OK, you may now return to your regularly scheduled Christmas shopping, baking and general craziness.

Christmas Readiness

It's now less than ten days until Christmas and all is amazingly calm and bright at our house! The past few years I haven't sent out Christmas cards, and I'm still behind on that this year (although I'm intent on getting them in the mail before December ends!) Other than that, I'm feeling quite ready for Christmas!

We decided (OK, maybe I decided!) to try something different in our living room this year - we moved the tree over closer to the window. It was formerly beside the fireplace, in the left in this photo where the poinsettia now is. What do you think? I think this flows much better, and hey - it photographs nicely too! :-}

Are you ready for Christmas? If not, don't panic, there's still a whole weekend ahead of you! Enjoy it, and best of luck with your Christmas to-do list!

A peek at last year's December photos

Here I am once again - I'm taking daily December photos and realize I haven't yet posted the December slide show from last Christmas! I posted 2009's daily images a year late, too! For 2011 I'm hoping to do a bit better, and will assemble 2011's December daily photos in a more timely manner!


The nice thing about my procrastination, though (other than how similar it makes me to my husband!) - looking at last year's Christmas slide show totally gets me into the Christmas spirit! :-} I hope it does for you too!



We've had a wonderful December so far. This weekend we finished shopping for everyone in our home and prepared the box of gifts for shipping to Edmonton. We also built the frame for our ice rink and started to flood it, then squeezed in some family time by the fire.


As a special treat for me, I managed to sneak in a dinner out with some fantastic cousins; I also scrapbooked into the wee hours with Sue - finishing a final Christmas gift in the process. I hope you had a productive and fun weekend too, and I wish you a fantastic and productive creating and capturing Christmas memories.

(The images above are also from 2010's December daily photos)

Here's the slide show of Our December 2010 in Daily Photos

Christmas is On Its Way!

It's almost December; snow is falling; Christmas recitals and parties are filling up the calendar! I know that Christmas is on its way when I hear carols sung being by a choir, and last weekend the kids and I were lucky enough to hear my nephew Kristian sing two beautiful Christmas solos with the Peterborough Singers.
In the photo above, Kristian is singing Believe from Polar Express. At left he sang Good King Wenceslas in a page's costume. Kristian is very talented; he made the Top 16 on the 2011 season of the YTV show The Next Star and has been a finalist at the CNE's Rising Star for the past 3 years running.

You can hear more from Kristian on youtube here and here, or join his Facebook fan page here.

As December approaches I am once again preparing for my December Daily project - taking a photo each day in December. Looking back on my blog I realize that I didn't post a slide show of my 2010 daily photos, so I will put one together and post it soon.

If you have never taken on a daily photo challenge, I highly recommend it for December. Tomorrow is the day to start, so get your camera battery charged! :} Read more about the amazing Ali Edwards who originally coined the phrase December Daily here.

Is it Too Late...?

Is it too late to say Happy New Year? Seriously, I can't believe I haven't posted for 2011 yet. We've had a very hectic (but good!) past few weeks and I haven't been able to find a moment in between to update my blog. In addition to a slide show of 2010's December Daily photos, I have so much to catch up on posting.

Let's see. . . as you can probably tell from the above photo, we were lucky enough to have a somewhat last-minute trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida this month. So yes, I have over 500 photos to go through and edit from that trip. One of my favourites is above. Contrast that with our first trip there three years ago here, and you can really notice how much the kids have grown!

Additionally, I have a mini album and four layouts with WRMK's Be My Valentine collection that I've created for Scrapalicious to show you. Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and this line is so perfect for it!

I've also selected my word of the year for 2011 (unveiling to follow!) and joined Ali Edwards in her One Little Word class at Big Picture Classes, and I am very excited about it; (in fact my friend Leanne and I will be working on our album for this class up in cottage country this weekend). Leanne and I are also taking another BPC class in February from the amazing Karen Grunberg of Creative Therapy. Her theme is embracing perfection, and while registration for this workshop is closed, Karen is offering another online class in February that looks fantastic - it's called Finding Your Way. I'm still thinking whether I can squeeze this one in; I would sure love to!

And for those of you close by, registration for Scrapfest opens Wednesday, February 2nd, (so be ready - helmets optional!); I'm looking forward to chatting with Lee Currie and a wonderful group of scrap-minded women in a Creative Conversation in a few weeks; Donna Downey is coming to The Art House in March (Sue, Lori and I will be there!); Tricia Ladouceur is coming to Scrapalicious in March too, and so very much much more! 2011 is going to be a fun-filled year!

Stay tuned for all of this and more, coming soon.

Oh, and a huge, belated but heartfelt Happy 2011 to you all. Cheers!

From Everyone at Our House...

Wishing you a blessed Christmas and a joyous, peaceful 2011.

Family Fun in the Snow

Sometimes a picture really is worth 1000 words!

Believe in the Magic

When Jen, Nancy and Sue were here a few weeks ago, we had an interesting conversation about patterned paper. I was surprised that I'm not the only one who still loves most of the patterned paper I own - Jen and Sue admitted to the same thing. Even papers that I bought four, five years ago still appeal to me.

I think it's because I buy papers not because they are the latest trend, but because I really like them. I still want to use them, and would buy them again today. Are you the same?

Our discussion brought this layout to mind. It's one of the first non-CM pages I created with some of the first patterned papers I bought in late 2005, at my first-ever crop at the wonderful, welcoming Scrapping Nook.

I so loved Daisy D's, who made the blue paper. Isn't it lovely? I would still buy it today, wouldn't you? I miss Daisy D's.

The burgundy script paper is 7 Gypsies and is timelessness makes it so appealing. The Christmas embellishment was by Li'l Davis, miss them too. It says "Christmas - believe in the magic". The paper behind the photo is Basic Grey Sublime, so classic. The frame and photo corner are Rusty Pickle, before the days of Ranger Crackle Paint. The title is a mix of Basic Grey's original font, Doodlebug white on white and those MM felt alpha stickers when they first came out. I still love all of these products.

Our girls were only two years old in this photo, and this was probably the first exchange they had with Santa that they can remember. The journaling talks about how very excited Alicia was when Santa reached out and touched her cheek. She held her cheek and said in amazement "He touched my cheek!" over and over. So sweet; it was such a timeless moment. Five Christmases later, I'm so glad I captured it.

I hope you're having a great week!

Documenting December

Often when I'm documenting December in pictures, the photos I take don't have anything to do with Christmas.

I'm so much more conscious of the simple, everyday moments the kids experience when I'm watching them with my camera in hand. In 2010, I hoped to take a photo every day, and while I won't have 365 daily pics at the end of the year, I will have captured so many details of our life, like Alicia's love for Bear.

Documenting our family's life via words here and works of art through scrapbooking helps me to believe that what I see through the lens today will be remembered joyfully in the future by so many people who are important to us - most of all, our kids. The mistakes I make in capturing (ahem, or rather, not quite capturing) one day's shot adds knowledge that allows me to capture the next shot with more accuracy and aliveness. I am still learning, but I'm a better photographer today because of so much practice.

I loved Karen Grunberg's recent guest post on Shutter Sisters, entitled The Daily Practice. In it, she speaks about the value of daily photography practice. Take a moment and read it; it rings so true to me.

This is my third year of making daily December photos happen, and so far, so good - I'm 7 for 7! I love the feeling of daily photography as a habit. Hopefully 2011 will be the year that I make Project 365 a reality!

Last December in Daily Photos

In writing my last post, I realized that while I did post a Christmas overview last year, I never did go back and post the slide show I mentioned creating with the daily photos I took. Since we're already in a Christmas mood at our house now, I guess there's no better time than the present for a peek at last Christmas.
Of course, I took far more than one photo a day last December. It's only December 2nd, and I've already taken more than one photo a day this year! So the slide show below summarizes our holiday season, but there are many more fun photos which will be (eventually) documented in our family's scrapbooks.

If you're not already in the holiday spirit, I hope that these images get you there! Click on any slide to view the show in a bigger window.

Deck the Halls

December is here and it's starting to feel like Christmas at our house. We've decorated the tree, hung the garland and started receiving Christmas cards already. I'm looking forward to documenting our December once again this year. Did you take a photo today? Christmas is definitely on its way!

If you are looking for ways to record your family's every day activities and celebrations this year, visit Ali Edwards' blog to see her wonderful December Daily album tradition, and Shimelle's website for her Journal Your Christmas class, as well as a great Christmas printable. Both are beautiful ways to remember this wonderful season with your family.