Christmas Journal 1st Page

Oh what a surprise I am tardy posting this !!

Painting my kitchen, which took SO much longer to do than I anticipated, it is after all only just big enough to swing a tea towel round in and having a sick child at home has put me on the back foot recently.

Here is my first page – nothing too exciting just a story about the boys advent calendars, always the first signs of Christmas in our home.

SORRY – its an atrocious photo !

Uber simple first page

Roll up Roll up . . .

. . . get your freebie journalling cards.

Okay – these are for all the lovers of seasonal “to go coffee” I don’t really drink coffee much at any other time of year, I am a tea drinker by nature but during the holiday season, I do indulge in those funky, flavoured coffees.

So here are a couple of 6×4 landscape journalling cards for you – one with one without lines.

I think that they are quite versatile and would work well as a Project Life insert as well as in your Christmas Journals.

You can find the full size printable HERE

Enjoy – but please be aware of the copyright

Christmas Journal Dates

Ok for those of you participating in some kind of christmas journal project this December, I have started designing some freebies, as always I made the designs to suit myself, but I like to share so if you can use them great. I understand that my colour scheme may not suit everyone.

So here is the day/date designs for this year. I made it really simple and have only done from 1-25 because I like to have Christmas day as my last page. Feel Free to contact me if you would like 26-31 in this colour scheme or if you are interested in having this in just black and white.

I cut out the dates, the design has a very pale grey outline as a cutting guide, then I used my crop-a-dile to punch a half hole centrally in each end so that they look like old fashioned bus tickets.

Actual cut size each ticket is 3x4cm

You can find the printable under the freebies section in December Daily

Hope you like these, please feel free to comment.

countdown

okay its the 1st of November, everywhere around me it feels like the countdown to Christmas has already started. From my perspective I am trying to avoid the inevitable, my usual state of mind at this time of year, I always feel like I am organised but in reality I never am.

I have done a little Christmas shopping, which is rare, attempting to get family members bought for so that I can concentrate on getting the boy’s shopping done (unfortunately they are still adding things to their lists !!)

I am working on getting some December Daily Freebies sorted, I want to complete this again this year as well as keeping up with my project life album.

Really drawn to using these “slightly off traditional” colours for my DD 2012 project, just need to decide on a couple of typefaces now, one block and one cursive I think.

everybodys doing it

Lots of companies are producing their own “scrap it easy” systems with divided page protectors. I am really enjoying my first year of doing project life and think its great that there are alternatives to the original system.

Echo Park’s Photo Freedom

Studi Calico”s Handbook System

They both come in various themed kits with divided protectors and various add ons, inserts, journal cards and papers

The smaller size of the Studio Calico version lends itself really well to the December Daily/Christmas Journal projects too.

Struggling with my December Daily, internet issues, then printer ink problems and now the printer doesn’t like my photo paper.
SO I am at least 11 days behind, I managed to do pages 1 and 4 before I was sabotaged.

I saw this post over on Design Editor and thought I would share, some of these fonts would be really useful in making cards (if you haven’t already) or tags, or to make design elements for your Christmas Journals.

You can find them all HERE

Christmas family photo

Do you strive to get a perfect christmas photo of your family each christmas, No ?

I do, in fact I would settle for an imperfect photo of the fur of us, five if you count the fur baby.

Each year about now when I am hauling the decorations out of the loft for their month long gig, I start musing as to if this will be the year a get that elusive photo.

I don’t want staged, studio, matching outfit shots I just want all of us in the same photo looking at the camera at the same time.

This year I am going to ignore the protesting and the embarrassment(at me using a self timer in a public place) and I am going to get a family shot.

This is what my December Daily album looks like at the moment – not very inspiring is it ? I am going to put a serious amount of work into it today to get up to scratch. Simple is the order of the day and flat embellishments as the binder itself won’t take too many chunky pages.

YAY its December !

I am not really that excited, ok I am ,I love Christmas, well I love the lights and the decorating, the anticipation and the excitement, one of my children is still a believer !

NOT so keen on the gift buying traumas and the budget squeezing and the christmas songs that start playing in October in the shops !

I am looking forward to starting my Christmas journal today, I have found that I lean towards the “documenting my day” style, I always look at Shimelle’s prompts each day as a form of inspiration, especially if I feel I am having a dull day content wise.

My BIG thing this year is to “REMEMBER THE CAMERA” last year I kept forgetting to take it with me every day and I missed out on some great photo ops.

Will post today’s entry later hopefully or tomorrow, more realistic

Well whilst the weather this time last year was A LOT more exciting and a lot more debilitating, I have to say I am just a tiny bit disappointed that we arent expecting any snow this year, not even so much as a sniff of it on the wind, we have plenty of that at the moment though.

Just a small reminder of what it look like last year.

xmas journal Give Away

OK I got there eventually – here is a peek of the papers, journaling cards and number tags that are available with this kit, the numbers go from 1-31 so that you can document the whole of December.

Tomorrow I will be posting a peek at the binder, the dividers and the transparencies !!

Please feel free to comment on this post and tomorrows post to be entered for the give away.
comments accepted until midnight on Saturday GMT and the winner will be drawn randomly and announced on Sunday morning.

Get commenting

Back to it

OK I dug myself out from a pile of work and deadlines to find that I then needed to dig myself out from under another pile, laundry and housework, all done now, well kind of.

Have done about half of my Christmas shopping, I will be finishing it on Monday next week, my goal is to get it done before the kids break up from school, then wrap it all the following Monday. I usually end up wrapping all the gifts on the 23rd or even the 24th and I hate that, it may be seasonal but it is rushed and stresses me out and they look shoddy when I do that.

We are late putting up our decs this year, we normally have them all up by now so I am going to remedy that today and tomorrow too as well as catching up on my DD album, I have done lots on it but not one single page is complete yet , mainly due to me running out of printer ink in the photo printer and not having time to go and get any ! C’est la vie !
Anyhoo, I bought some late yesterday afternoon and managed to score another couple of Christmas Gifts too.
So I spent some time last night printing photos that I have taken since the 1st of December, this morning I am hoping to get some pages finished and some more put together.

I am enjoying getting inspiration from all the other December Daily albums and those taking part in Shimelle’s JYC. My particular favourites are Molly Irwin, only 2008 and 2009 available to see, like me she hasn’t posted any photos of this years album yet, I also like Wilna Furstenberg’s it is so jam packed with “stuff” the complete opposite of the way I create, but definitely inspiring.

OK so I HATE blog posts without a photo so here is one I took at the weekend at our local shopping centre.

Taken looking down onto the Christmas tree and the hanging decorations from the third floor.