and i'm done with week two...

i'm pretty sure i'm just destined to be about 2 weeks behind on this thing, but i'm okay with it, because at least i'm getting my notes and journaling down on paper each day, and that's what i wanted this album to be about. i'm also kind of loving the process of getting a whole bunch of miniature (well, 8x8) layouts done every few days.

cover re-do: my album was already getting a little too thick for binder rings even after having only done 15 layouts so far, so i made the switch over to an american crafts 8x8 modern album. with this album i also don't have to worry about punching holes in my pages. yay for that!

december 8th: the sights of christmas

for this one i had some fun with paper piecing, stamps & embellishments that i don't always reach for.

december 9th: ornaments

i used this prompt to document the first time we're combining christmas ornaments, i never knew there were so many fire truck and hockey ornaments in existence.

december 10th: wrapping paper

i was inspired by those awesome "what's in your bag" blog entires and diptychs for this one.

december 11th: rfd holiday party

apparently it is impossible to get a good picture at the roseland fire department holiday party, not last year and def not this year, so i documented that with this layout.

december 12th: the christmas tree(s)

i liked the idea of scrapping about our big tree, and including our little charlie brown tree so i landed on big tree & little tree, but then when it came down to putting it down in thickers i liked how it kind of sounded like a kids story or comic book, so i decided to go with "the adventures of big tree & little tree"

december 13th: christmas music

@heyjenrenee sent me a couple of mixes a while ago that she added the track listings to by printing screen captures of the playlists in itunes and i loved the idea. for this one i just printed a couple of my winter/christmas playlists from last year to do the layout about.

december 14th: opening gifts

this one was a struggle, but i like how it turned out. the journaling is about how some sort of gift giving shift has happened and i find myself enjoying the giving of gifts way more than the receiving.

hey! i'm doing this thing!

i decided, with some sweet encouragement from sara berry & heidi, to finally jump on the december daily/journal your christmas bandwagon! my original thought was to use two pages from an 8x8 maya road chipboard binder book as my front and back cover, but with just 9 pages done so far i can already tell that it's going to get a little too thick, so i've ordered an 8x8 american crafts modern album. i'm hoping that i'll be able to carefully peel, trim down and transfer this cover onto the new album when it arrives.

day one: manifesto.

my reasons for needing/wanting to finally dive into this album this year.

day two: snow

i took a super cheese ball approach to this one. i made little evidence markers to photograph my mug & hot chocolate with and wrote a formal apology letter for causing our first early snow. thank goodness for that label tulip coffee (turned hot chocolate) ring stamp from forever a go!

day three: roseland's tree lighting

i forwent the prompt on this one and scrapped what we'd done this day. it was special for me because the boy and i went to the event together, instead of my usual meeting him there because he's on duty for the fire department. it was pretty chilly, but fun to see all the kids freak out when santa came!

day four: advent

(i flipped the prompts for days four & five)

i do love my "olive the other reindeer" pop-up advent calendar, but i decided to adapt this day's prompt to get a little crafty therapy down on paper. getting excited about the christmas countdown has been hard this year with the store closing exactly one week before christmas, but this page gave me a chance to get some of those feelings out of my system on paper and think about all the good things that have come from my time at scraptasia.

day five: the perfect christmas

i decided to make this one a real quickie by fine tuning it down to dream holiday decor with some images i had seen fly past in my google reader over the past couple of weeks.

day six: to do list

(i shuffled days six, seven, eight & nine around also)

it was my original intention to list the gifts i still needed to buy up there in that shopping panel at the top left, but the boy is a peeker, so i stuck to generalities. each panel is it's own little section of to do's (shopping, activities & decor) i feel a little on top of this holiday, but there are still a bunch of things to do, even now, on day 15!

day seven: traditions

this is really my first year combining christmases with the boy (last year we had only been dating for a couple of months) and since it's also our first christmas living together it's been really interesting combining our traditions. for this layout i focused on three of my family's traditions that i want to make sure are included in our new, combined version of christmas.

so, that's my first week of december dai;y/journal your christmas, i'm hoping to be totally caught up over the next couple of days, and then i'll be able to post days eight thru fourteen and then make it a weekly thing! i really am enjoying it so far, promise!