Days of December: Calendar & hand journaling pages

I decided at the last second that it would be fun to include - at the end of my Days of December book a couple of extra pages. I included a page that showed our calendar for the month. I took a screen shot of my iCal on my Mac (I redacted that because I knew no one really wanted to read that!). I felt it showed a glimpse of our real life. Also ... I really like to see my family's handwriting (particularly the kids - since their handwriting changes more). Since this is a digital book, I just created a blank page that I intend to have the family write on. I'm going to have them write whatever they feel like. Anything they write will reflect them the way they are now and will be a treasure down the road! I'm almost done with my book ... I only have the cover and spine to finalize!

For these pages I used: 
Karla Dudley: Heart of the Holidays
Mye de Leon: Vintage Christmas
Katie Pertiet's Linen Buttons Polar Mountain

Days of December: intro page to my album

This is almost it. I'm finishing up the final touches to my Days of December album for 2012. The page I'm sharing with you tonight is the intro page to my book. I've got just a couple more pages to show you, but I've got a few finishing touches I need to complete on them first. Soon!

For this page I used:

Tiffany Tillman's Heart of the Story Template Foundation Pack (altered)

Karla Dudley's Heart of the Holidays

Mye de Leon's Vinatge Christmas

Creashen's Oh Joy Alpha

Days of December: Family Portraits

For the last several years I've made a point of snapping a family photo as we head out the door for a New Years Eve party. (We started that after we did our big kitchen remodel two years ago and we actually had room to get a family picture in the kitchen. LOL!). Before that we'd make a point of getting a photo of the four of us (five if you count the dog - Maggie!) at some point during the holiday season - lots of times in front of the tree.

I thought it would be fun to put a bunch of our family pictures side by side on these pages. It's fun for me to see how much the kids have grown over the years!

For these pages I used:

Karla Dudley's Heart of the Holiday (paper)

Katie Pertiet With You Word Art

Jenni Bowlin Studios Mercantile Labels

Days of December: Favorite TV Shows & Movies

We have watched so much Big Bang Theory this month. It's been kinda crazy. (If you haven't watched Big Bang Theory, check it out ... it's absolutely hilarious!) My son got a couple of seasons of the show for his birthday and we've been pretty focused. It's been fun - and such a big part of our month that I wanted to document it. We didn't even have time to watch many Christmas shows ... just a couple of Christmas movies (Elf and Home Alone). And then, my daughter became crazed with the movie Pitch Perfect. I haven't seen it yet (I'm sure I'll watch it with her soon), but my son gave her the movie for Christmas and within just a couple of days she watched it seven - yes SEVEN - times (sometimes by herself for our holiday car rides, with her cousins on both sides of the family ... lots of times).

Anyway this is regular life so I want to remember it!

For these pages I used:
Simply Tiffany Studios Heart of the Holidays Template Foundation Pack
Katie Pertiet Fa La La Paper Pack and Simple Spots 3
Pattie Knox (popcorn)
LivE Designs Needs + Wants Date Stamps
Fonts: Century Gothic and Channel

Days of December: a 2nd part to our early gift opening

This is partially a re-do/partially a new set of pages for my Days of December album. I had initially paired up the photos of the kids by the tree with my Christmas tree page but I decided I wanted to show my ornaments and decorations alongside my tree so I had to make some changes. I like this better. It makes more sense to me for placement in my book. (Details, details ... I know!)

This is a second set of pages for our early gift opening with just the 4 of us at home. It was a fun night. I like the large photo because it's such a normal everyday photo. It shows my messy table (that's reality) ... it shows my daughter being dramatic and funny ... it shows my son just being cool in his shorts and t-shirt (the style of clothes he wears every single day regardless of the weather). Normal stuff. Love it!

Days of December ... it's coming together quickly.

For these pages I used:
Simply Tiffany Studios: Heart of the Story Template Foundation Pack
Karla Dudley: Heart of the Holidays
Mye de Leon: Vintage Christmas
LivE Designs: Needs+Wants Date Stamps
Fonts: Century Gothic & Channel

Days of December: New Year's Eve - Party like it's 2013!

These will be the last pages that will be in my Days of December album. It was New Year's Eve ... that's it for December. (I still have pages to create, but chronologically these will be the last pages!)

For these pages I used:
Tiffany Tillman: Heart of the Holidays Template 8
Karla Dudley: Heart of the Holidays
Mye de Leon: Vintage Christmas
Cosmo Cricket: Social Club
Katie Pertiet: Linen Buttons
LivE Designs: Needs+Wants Date Stamps
Fonts: Century Gothic & Channel

Days of December: My Daughter's "Just Because" Christmas party

My daughter wanted to throw a party "just because." Just because she wanted to have some of her friends over. Just because it was Christmas. Just because she wanted to have fun. She's so sweet. I sure do love that girl!

She hosted her party after Christmas but before New Year's Eve. Lots of girls were traveling with their families for the holidays but there were 4 girls in town who could come over for the evening. A perfect number of kids. They had a blast!

FYI ... the other day, before her party, she came up to me and told me how much she loved me and how much she appreciated that we let her have "just because" parties. Awww! I love that! I told her she and her friends are awesome, she can have lots of parties!

For these pages I used:
Tiffany Tillman: Heart of the Holidays Template 17
Karla Dudley: Heart of the Holidays
Mye de Leon: Vintage Christmas
LivE Designs: Needs+Wants Date Stamps
Fonts: Century Gothic & Channel

Days of December: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I'm finishing up the last few pages for my Days of December album. OK, I still have a fair number of pages left to create, but not TOO many! I've made a big dent already! This is a little bit of a re-do. I had already made the tree page and had paired it with photos of my kids in front of the tree. I decided to change up the order and do a page of some of the details of Christmas decorations around the house and place that by the tree page. (We like to remember what room we decide to put the tree in every year - and besides I always LOVE lighted tree photos!) I thought it would be fun years down the road to be able to look back and see some of the details of how our house look at Christmas time with the decorations sitting about.

Just this Christmas my mom and sister were looking at a heritage album I had created of our growing up years. (It was an album spanning about 20 years.) What were some of the things I was hearing as they looked at the book? Hmmm... look at that catalog Santa Claus ... look at those decorations ... look at that wallpaper ... look at the xxx (a bunch of stuff!). It was a reminder that the little things bring back so many memories. So ... I'm going to make a point of including more "stuff" and "surroundings" in my albums! I want the kids to be able to look back and remember that I always hung their old (little kid) Christmas art projects on the wall every holiday and other little family traditions, as well as some of the little doo-dads (yup, that's the word I'm using!) we have sitting around the house. Little stuff!

For these pages I used:
Karla Dudley's Heart of the Holidays
Mye de Leon's Vintage Christmas
Katie Pertiet's Letterbox Holiday Corners, Buttoned Up Holiday and Christmas Blendables
The fonts were Century Gothic and Channel

Days of December: Christmas with the Unzen Family

I'm plugging away on the final pages of my Days of December album for 2012. I'm enjoying the process.  Today I'm sharing with you pages I created over the last couple of days of our Christmas Day celebration with my husband's side of the family. Aren't the holidays wonderful and busy and fun?!

Here are each of the 2 page spreads side by side:

Here are the closer-up versions:

I created these pages using in large part Design by Dani's Mistletoe collection.

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

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