P365+1: Album cover pages & intro page

I'm almost there! Only 2 days left of 2012. I hope to order my book on Tuesday so I thought I'd better get going and design the intro page and the book cover, back and spine. Here goes!

Intro page:

Book's front cover:

Book's back cover:

P365+1: Week 52: December 23 - December 29, 2012 + my DD's party

Well, this is almost it for my photo-a-day pages for 2012. Only 2 more days to go. I can't believe it! It sure has been a fun project. I'm now completing my THIRD year of photo-a-day. I love it! I enjoy looking back at these books now already, but I think years down the road it'll be so very fun to look back and see how we lived our lives these days.

Today I'm sharing with you photos from last week (which includes Christmas). Since I already created (and posted) individual Christmas pages for this book, the photos for the 24th and 25th on these pages aren't necessarily Christmas-y. There will be plenty of Christmas photos in this book though!

Last night my daughter had a few of her friends over for a girls party. They had a great time. It was fun listening to them laughing downstairs. So ... I wanted to made an individual page for her party as well.

Like I said ... only 2 more days to go for 2012. Happy early New Years!

Days of December: Christmas with the May Family

We spent 2 days with my side of the family over the Christmas holidays. We celebrated up north at my sister's house (the "resort"). We were were all together Saturday night until about 8pm Christmas Eve night. I got TONS of pictures over the two days so, besides my two "standard" shall we say gift opening pages, I just had to put together 2 more pages to showcase some of the other things we all did while hanging out together. It was a great holiday!

FYI, I'm getting ready to start my photo-a day project for 2013. I'm strongly considering taking a totally new approach to the project this year and doing a Project Life style album so I loosely fashioned these multi-photo pages in a Project Life style pages. I'm trying to test it out to see if it works for me. I really liked that I could add a bunch of random journaling and stories to these multi-photo pages! I guess I'll just wait and see what approach I take. But, since 2013 is only a couple of days away, I'd really better make some decisions don't you think? LOL!

Here are the pages side-by-side as they'll look in the book:

Here are the pages closer up:

For these pages I used a variety of Echo Park Christmas kits. 

Days of December: My family's early gift opening

Hi. Me again! Here's another set of pages for my Days of December album. This one is my family's gift opening. We opened our gifts to each other pretty early this year ... Friday evening ... because we were going to be out of town for the long weekend for the holiday and we didn't want to bring our gifts with us. Also ... we certainly didn't want to wait and open our presents late. That just wouldn't fly with the kids. LOL! I think I'm still going to do another two pages from our evening of opening gifts and hanging out, but then that'll be it. After this it's on to the family gatherings over Christmas Eve and Christmas.

I'm really enjoying creating my Days of December album!

Here's my list of digi supplies for these pages:

Tiffany Tillman Heart of the Holidays 8

Karla Dudley Heart of the Holidays kit

Mye de Leon Vintage Christmas kit

Creashens Oh Joy kit

LivE Designs Needs + Wants Date Stamps

Fonts: Century Gothic and Channel

Days of December: Visiting Bentleyville, Tour of Lights (4 pages!)

We love to visit Bentleyville (a Tour of Lights in Duluth, Minnesota). I think we've been going to Bentleyville for the past 5 or so years in a row already. It's really quite wonderful. Bentleyville started out as a guy (with the last name of Bentley) decorating his yard in Cloquet with Christmas lights. His light display was really popular and eventually he moved to a different house in Carlton, Minnesota to accommodate the crowds. He even bussed people to see his light display. It got so crazy popular that eventually the City of Duluth offered to have him show his beautiful lights in Duluth by the lake. Reading the stats, I believe they had over 150,000 visitors  last year. It's amazing. They will accept donations (which we of course always do). He gets TONS of volunteers and offers free hot chocolate, hot apple cider, popcorn, cookies and even marshmallows to roast over the fire. Santa and Mrs. Claus are even at Bentleyville and the younger kids who visit Santa even get free ski hats. Bentleyville is just such a fun way to ring in the holidays! We usually try to go Thanksgiving weekend but this year we went right before Christmas ... on December 22nd. Later than usual but still amazing!

So ... here are my 4 (yup ... FOUR!) pages for Bentleyville ...

Here are the closer-up, 12x12 views:

Here's a list of the digi supplies I used on these pages:

Tiffany Tillman Heart of the Holidays Templates 8 and 20
Karla Dudley Heart of the Holidays kit
Mye de Leon Vintage Christmas kit
Katie Pertiet Linen Buttons and Buttoned Up Holidays
Amanda Dykan Whimsical Rain (glitter stuff)
Scrap Girls Glitter Tree
LivE Designs Needs+Wants Date Stamps
Fonts: Century Gothic and Channel

Days of December: Winter Wonderland (snowmobiling!)

It looked beautiful outside Christmas Eve Day - but it was really really cold out! (Minus 5 degrees I believe.) The kids decided they wanted to go snowmobiling so Scott and Tim went outside and worked for over an hour to get their snowmobiles up and running for the first time this year. Thanks guys! All six of the cousins went out for a ride on the lake and then when the kids came in Sheldin, Karen and Courtney went out for a ride. What fun!

Personally ... I was really happy running out and snapping a few photos and then going back in the warm house!

The supplies for these pages are:

Tiffany Tillman: Heart of the Holidays Template 8
Karla Dudley: Heart of the Holdays
Mye de Leon: Vintage Christmas
Nancie Rowe Janitz: Festive Borders
Katie Pertie: Capped Holiday and Capped Winter
LivE Designs: Needs + Wants Date Stamps
Fonts: Century Gothic & Channel

Days of December - O Christmas Tree & an attempt at a "portrait" of the kids

I've got a bunch of pages started to commemorate our Christmas celebrations over the last couple of days. Now it's time to finalize them. I'm pretty happy to have gotten so many pages started. My hope is to get my Days of December book off to the printer next week some time. I'm crossing my fingers!

I guess I should be thankful that I can scrap in the car. We had four 2-1/2 hour car ride segments between Christmas celebrations so I used that time to put pictures together for this book. I also grabbed a few minutes here and there during the holiday when the family would all be either napping or reading a book (we were gone for 4 days, naps were needed!). Realistically though most of the time was the drive time. Either way ... I've got 7 (seven!) more two page spreads started! (Good thing I'm keeping all these pages pretty simple!)

So ... here's the first ...

FYI ... I had hoped to get a good photo of the kids sitting in front of the Christmas tree. I really like the pictures I did get ... but they were far from serious. The kids were in a goofing off mood (I took the pictures shortly before we opened our gifts). I really like the fun pictures better than what I'd been planning actually!

Here's what I used to create these pages:
Tiffany Tillman's Heart of the Holidays Template 6
Karla Dudley's Heart of the Holidays kit
Mye de Leon's Vintage Christmas kit
Nancie Rowe Janitz's Merry Merry Holiday Brush Set
Katie Pertiet's Christmas Blendables
Paislee Press' Adorned Kit
LivE Designs: Needs + Wants Date Stamps
Font: Century Gothic

P365+1: Week 51: December 16 - December 22, 2012 Catchup!

Ahhh ... Christmas week. Such a fun, busy week! I got lots and lots of photos from the last week that I wanted to include in my book, so here goes ...

We were going up north for the holidays Saturday morning so we shared our gifts with each other Friday night. The kids were more than happy to open their gifts early! Who wouldn't be, right?!

We spent Saturday in Cloquet with Scott's parents. Saturday night, before we headed to the resort, the Johnsons met us in Cloquet for pizza and then our annual visit (and the Johnson's first visit) to Bentleyville, the City of Lights. It was a great time!

Christmas with the May family ...

What a beautiful winter day!

And finally, Christmas with the Unzen family ...

April 2012 Random Moments/Recap Pages

Here's my recap of April photos!

Christmas is almost here. Merry Christmas!! Enjoy your time with family!

Digi Supplies:
Becky Higgins Project Life Template and Amber Edition; Karla Dudley Essential Stitches; Splendid Fiins Calendar and Camera Love Cards, Noted Cards; Echo Park Hybrids Wood, Summer Days and Toyboy; Lori Whitlock Patriotic Picnic; Katie Pertiet tape; Font: Toadfrog

My kids' Birthday Numbers!

Every year for my kids birthdays I do a "numbers" page to highlight some of my favorite photos of the kids from the year. Last night I put together this year's pictures. I always love these pages!

I put the pages together in the family album and then print them individually for the kids' books. Here's a glance at the 2 page spread:

And here are the individual pages for the kids:

For each of their pages I used:

#13 - Katie Pertiet: Game Cards Birthday; Echo Park Hybrid: Birthday Boy; Design by Dani: Hootenany (cupcake); Ed by Gabi: Birthday (balloon); Aja Abney: A Very Merry Birthday (curly ribbon); Lori Barnhart: Starter Kit (border stitching)

#16 - Echo Park Hybrid: Birthday Boy & Boys Life; Design by Dani: Hootenany & Play Date; One Little Bird: Smart Mouth (wordart); Crystal Wilkerson: You are Awesome Wordart; Lori Barnhart: Starter Kit (border stitching)

P365+1: Week 50: December 9 - December 15, 2012

I can't believe it's week 50 already. I've really enjoyed my photo-a-day project again this year. One of the things that is really important to me is that these pages go together really quickly. I want this project to be entirely about the photos and the story and not about embellishing my pages etc. This page took me only about 1/2 hour to complete. I LOVE that! I really need to put some time into what format I want to use next year.

I keep toying with the idea of doing a Project Life style book, but I use the Project Life style for my monthly recap pages in my scrapbook and those pages take me a fair amount of time to put together. For that reason I'm thinking that style may not work for me. (Although I'll keep Project Life style pages on occasion for my "regular" scrapbook pages simply because I love it!)

I've used an 8-1/2" x 11" format for my photo-a-day books for the last 3 years and am thinking I'll continue with something like that (and not switch to a 12" x 12" format). I like the idea that the books stand out from my other books on the shelf just by virtue of their size. Blurb (my new favorite printing company for my bound books) doesn't offer an 8-1/2" x 11" size book but they do have 8" x 10". I love Blurb because they don't have page size limitations for their books. Now I think I just need to come up with an 8"  x10" format for next year!

(How's this for a train of consciousness kind of post! Thanks for bearing with me!)

Days of December: The joys of a gingerbread house

My daughter has been talking about making a gingerbread house for a couple of weeks and decided one night (during a big snowstorm) was the time to do it. She talked her dad into taking her out in the storm to buy a kit at Target. (She doesn’t have him wrapped around her little finger now does she? LOL!) When they got home safe and sound she and I plopped down at the dining room table and she proceeded to decorate her house while we chatted and I took pictures, and, much to my daughter's dismay, I helped myself to some of the chocolate chips! Isn’t her house adorable?!

Digi Supplies:
Tiffany Tillman: Heart of the Holidays Class
Karla Dudley: Heart of the Holidays
Mye de Leon: Vintage Christmas
Misty Cato: Santa's Bake Shoppe
LivE Designs: Needs+Wants Date Stamps
Fonts: Century Gothic & Channel

Days of December: Salvation Army Bell Ringers

My husband and son manned the Salvation Army's "big red kettle" at Walgreens for 4 hours yesterday. They had a really fun time and said they will definitely do it again. What a great experience and a wonderful father/son day! (An awesome way to get in the Christmas spirit!)

Note: Much to my son's annoyance, we insisted he wear pants today because, despite the fact that by Minnesota standards it was going to be a fairly warm day (mid 30s), it was forecast to rain all day long (and it did). When they got home they were absolutely freezing so, even though Grant won't admit it, he was happy he didn't wear shorts! 

Digi Supplies:Tiffany Tillman: Heart of the Holidays #3Karla Dudley: Heart of the HolidaysMye de Leon: Vintage ChristmasKatie Pertiet: FaLaLaLivE Designs: Needs+Wants Date StampsFonts: Century Gothic & Channel

Days of December: Donating Lifesaving Blood

You know, these certainly aren't Christmas-y photos, but they are a part of our December and I think they depict a big part of the Christmas spirit (helping others) so I really wanted to include them as a part of my Days of December album.

My journaling reads:

When my son was approaching 16 years old I told him he was now old enough to donate blood. I asked him if he wanted to donate with me and without hesitation he said yes. When the day came, he did great! He found out that donating blood is quick and painless and is an important thing we can do for others. As we sipped on a pop before leaving Memorial Blood Bank we decided we'd go out to dinner -  just the two of us - and that since we're going to make donating blood a mother/son tradition, we'd make a dinner out for just the two of us a part of our new tradition. What a great idea! I sure do love this kid!

NOTE about creating a Days of December album:

I've got to tell you scrappers out there. This Days of December album is going together really quickly.  That's important to me because, first off, who has a lot of free time in December? and secondly, I want to order this book right away in January (the goal is the first week of 2013. I managed that printing goal in 2009 when I created a Days of December album so I think I can do it this time!) I'm taking Tiffany Tillman's Heart of the Holidays class at ReneePearson and that's key for me. Using a set of templates and having everything coordinate is making everything go together so quickly. I love that! So ... for those of you creating a Days of December album ... I hope you're enjoying the process!

The supplies I used are:

Tiffany Tillman: Heart of the Holidays #12

Karla Dudley: Day Dream Believer (recolored expoxy button)

Shabby Princess: Happy Go Lucky

LivE Designs: Needs+Wants Date Stamps

Fonts: Century Gothic & Channel

Celebrating 12-12-12 and ... a new licensed driver in our house

Yesterday was 12-12-12 ... it was a big day for a couple of reasons. I took my son to take his drivers test yesterday and he passed. Way to go Buds! That of course deserved to be commemorated on a page!

AND ... it was 12-12-12. That's big. I hadn't really planned on doing a page about it, but you know, it's not going to happen again for 100 years! I decided to celebrate it by commemorating an ordinary day. Besides ... I saw and read about so many people taking 12 photos for the day, etc. etc. I just had to join in the fun!

Here are some closeups of the individual pages:

For these pages I used some supplies from Katie Pertiet (Letterbox Overlays and Clock Buttons. I used Mye de Leon's Vintage Holidays kit, Karla Dudley's Heart of the Holidays' kit; Tiffany Tillman's Heart of the Holidays Template 6, Echo Park Hybrid's For the Record 2 (number paper), Cosmo Cricket's Boyfriend kit (the key), LivE Design's Needs+Wants Date Stamps and the fonts Century Gothic and Channel.