Real Life Confessions of a Christmas Misspent

This is where I come clean ... remember the post on December 10th where I admitted to being 5 days behind with journalling my Christmas ... well that was it ... I didn't manage another page!  Not a single one.
My JYC album just didn't suit - neither the time available, the photos I had, nor the things that happened!  I barely had time to read the prompts, let alone mull over what to scrap for the day.  At a certain point I realised it would be too draining to have the project hanging over me all through January, so I chose to let go, move on, call it a day!

Instead I decided to take inspiration from Siân's December month in numbers & Alexa's Christmas numbers journalling and capture some of our festive memories in a single page. 

The page is based on the monthly challenge sketch from UKScrappers and uses my January Counterfeit Kit, an X-cut border punch, some of the packaging from Susanne's Christmas packages as well as the most perfect embellishment from inside the packaging!
This is indeed REAL life - not everything works out the way you plan it:

• sometimes you can't find the power lead for the tree lights and have to buy new ones (only to have the missing lead magically reappear)
• sometimes teenagers simply will not cooperate for a photo (or even get out of bed on Christmas morning to open their presents)
• sometimes you get so carried away with the food shopping that you don't need to return to the shops for nearly a week, even though they are only closed for one day!

But there's still a whole load to be thankful for including:

• a son who wants to help with the cooking (if not the washing up)
• a daughter who loves to help decorate the tree (and would be happy for it to be up all year round)

Oh and for the record, a 14lb turkey is about 3 days too big for our family of six (plus the dog)!!

Ten on the Tenth: Not 10 JYC!

This Ten on the Tenth post was supposed to show you my progress so far with my Journal Your Christmas album ... only the progress is somewhat minimal.  I've made the bones of my album and notes about what to write, which pictures to include; I have plenty of embellishments and stickers and tags from the Kaisercraft kit that I won earlier in the year.  BUT although I worked on it at today's full day crop, perhaps there was a little too much jollity, cake eating and secret santa-ing, because I have only completed 5 pages rather than 10!

Dec 1st - Panto, Dec 2nd - Crop Xmas Meal, Dec 3rd - Christmas Cards
Journalling is on the tags behind the photos/in the pockets

Dec 4th - Dreams of Decent Photo Ops, Dec 5th - Advent Calendars

So I'm still 5 pages "behind" (I know, I know, Shimelle reckons you can't get behind with this class, but I have 5 empty pages in my album that need filling NOW)!   I don't quite know why I'm torturing myself by looking around at all the other things that I'm behind with ... but there are a number of other Un-Finished Objects lurking around here:

I haven't made a start on the mdf NOEL that I bought at the NEC at the beginning of November - I wonder if it will be ready for next Christmas?

Then there's the decopatch paper I asked Santa for in 2007 ... used on a pen and a coaster pen-pot, but not yet for the purpose for it was intended for: prettifying my crop box!

Back in 2009 I made a lovely matchbook mini with the help of my friend eClaire ... it's still awaiting any photos!

Then there's the Christmas star album I made at my very first Scrapping Day Retreat towards the end of 2007 ... also devoid of photos!

I've been making a perpetual birthday calendar since January 2010 but because I wanted to include a variety of my best nature shots taken during each calendar month ... it still has several months to go as I've never managed to take the right sort of photos at the right time during June, July, September, October or November!

This is becoming the story of my life!  Are my eyes bigger than my crafting time?  Do you have this many UFOs?

So Many Projects ... So Little Time ...

More haste, less speed - that's what they say.  And they'd be right!  Today is December 1st and I have been so busy and rushed and overwhelmed with all the things that suddenly needed doing that I haven't had a moment today!  Part of the reason is that I am rather snowed under with projects for December.

First off I needed to prepare two blog posts for the CounterfeitKit Challenge Blog - they aren't counterfeiting a kit this month and we Master Forgers have combined forces to do daily posts to keep the creative juices flowing.  I'd prepared the first one ages ago, but the second one didn't get finished until yesterday.  Phew - and then there was a little crafty gift exchange that needed to be sent off today as well!  Not helped by having to pick Child No.3 up from an after school meeting (that overran by half an hour), missing the parcel collection at the village post office and having to drive in the rush hour to drop it off at our sorting office!

Also, I have a place on Cheryl Johnson's (free) "12 Days of Christmas" photography course: it started today but it was the festive self portrait that I was working on last night- today's task will have to wait until the morning!

Then of course there's Journal Your Christmas which also started today - I haven't even read the prompt!!!  But my album is ready nearly finished ... (I haven't touched it since returning from my Bloggers' Weekend away ooops)

And there's more - I was rushing to get to work this morning but I couldn't locate my handbag.  Yesterday had involved several trips out with Child No.3 and I'd left it on the back seat of our nippy little car ... that Hubby had taken to work!  Arghhhh!  So I grabbed a spare credit card to pay for fuel for the nearly empty car he'd left behind.  After my 4 hour shift at the theatre, which is hectically busy preparing for pantomime season, I drove to the supermarket to fill up the enormous tank of our larger car, queued to pay and realised ... I do not know the PIN number for this card!
OMG  It was soooooo embarrassing!  Luckily the enormous queue was behind me so I only had to make eye contact with the cashier:  Take your time - are you sure you don't know the number?  No, in fact I'm not sure I ever have known it.  The card I normally use is in my handbag in the back of Hubby's car.  Any other cards?  No, they're in my handbag in the back of Hubby's car.  Any other method of payment?  No, my purse and cheque book are in my handbag in the back of Hubby's car.  Any form of ID?  No, my driver's licence is in my handbag in the back of Hubby's car.
Luckily the supermarket has a form for people like me ... headed "Idiot" ... so I filled it in and promised to return within seven days to pay.

If the next few days are as mad as this one has been, I'm not sure I'd find the time to go, so I returned to the garage this evening just to be on the safe side!  Of course, that was after picking up Child No.3, posting my parcel, fitting in a meal and attending the dress rehearsal of the panto which opens tomorrow night.

I'm certainly glad that this day is behind me!

Xmas Preparations

A few days ago I posted that I had things to prepare before Christmas ... shopping, cards, puddings ...
but there was another thing that I had to get done before December started:  my prep for my third year of Journal Your Christmas!

I was lucky enough to win a prize from the Kaisercraft blog earlier this year and what better stash to use for a December journal than their Silly Season Range?!  A lovely mix of red, white, green and pink papers with matching rub-ons, die-cuts, gems as well as stamps and journalling tags.

This year I decided to base my album on tags and wanted to use manilla envelopes to make pockets behind the pages from the pad of paper.  I thought it was 6"x6" but after a page or two of preparation when nothing quite worked I realised that the pad is actually 6½" square (!)  That's a new one on me!

For each page of the album I sealed two envelopes and sliced ⅛" off one short end to open up each envelope again.  I layered the envelopes onto the back of one piece of patterned paper and covered them with a second sheet.  Semi-circles cut out with a 2" punch give me access to the pockets:

By varying the placement of the envelopes I have varied where the pockets appear - left, middle or right along the top of the page, or top, middle or bottom of the side.

I have joined the pages together with strips of white card punched with my X-cut border punch ... I think I may yet have to sew the spine to the cover if the pages start to sag ... I'll have to see what happens once all the tags are in place, let alone photos, journalling spots and embellies!

If I was starting this project from scratch (don't you just love hindsight!) I'd have prepared the spine before sticking each pair of patterned pages together - no border punching would have been necessary as the edges would have been concealed.

As you can see, I'm not done yet - and the cover needs to be made too.  I'm going to a Blogger's Retreat next weekend ... meeting several fellow bloggers, including, Mel, Julie, Alexa and Lizzie for the very first time ... so I'm hoping to put the finishing touches to this then. 

In the meantime, here's a sneaky peek at some more Christmas preparation I've been doing!

ETA - revealed here!

P.S. That's ATDML's  Thirsty Thursday K for Kaisercraft, JYC Kit and manilla Kraft all sorted!

In With The New

I resolve ... to get the final pages of my Christmas Journal uploaded and out of the way!  Don't get me wrong, I've loved doing this, but 37 pages ... I want to move onto something new and exciting - the decorations are down, the snow has long gone and I am not feeling at all Christmassy anymore!  So here goes - thank you for sticking with me this far:

Today's prompt, naturally, was all about resolutions ... I'm keeping them so far :D  Searching out the Christmas waistcoat photos from my Sunday Storytelling gave me the ideal picture for "Innocence" for Day 2.

I found a half-used (?) Thank You note left around after a trip to the post box today - perfect for today's page. Day 35 in the Christmas House was about Reminders: mine for next year from this Christmas are basically to get organised in November so that December is less fraught!

 

Depending on your point of view the 5th, or possibly the 6th is the final day for taking down the Christmas decorations ... neither would do for us as we were celebrating our eldest's forthcoming birthday before he returned to university and a) we did't have time to pack them away and b) I didn't want the house to look bare!  This last page also earned me some team points for the last week's challenge over on UKS, not the full set, because I couldn't use any new stash on the page - this whole project has been so cheap to make with zero embellishments and it has made a dent in my Christmas papers too.

I have to admit that I did start de-decorating once everyone had gone home and we'd tidied away the buffet and bottles; I managed quite a lot before midnight ... superstitious .. me?

Out With The Old

Here are the last few pages from the 2010 part of my Christmas Journal. 

I used an earlier prompt for this one - the most perfect and popular gift got a good airing today ... tasted good, but looked ... not as beautiful as the subject of the next day's page: I should have been quicker with the camera though as there were only a few chocs left to photograph ... and one of them disappeared while I was fetching the camera! 

I wanted to do today's prompt (TheYear In Review) as a tag at the end of the year, so I took the opportunity to give my Christmas Word Book pride of place in my album as it now has pride of place in my Mum's living room.

I used the same template as last year's double-sided tag to document a few highlights from each month of 2010.  This was made a whole lot easier this year thanks to my Project 12 album and I spent a happy half hour looking over the double pages for each month while choosing what to write on the tag.

This last page was also used to fit in with a weekly challenge over on UKScrappers - I love multi-tasking!
Check back soon for the final few pages ... just got the cover to do now!

Onwards and Upwords

Here is the latest batch of pages for my JYC album. They are really fast to make once the journalling is typed up and the photos are printed. I haven't been making time to scrap each day like I intended - more like time for journalling a few days worth followed by time another day for the actual scrapping.

The JYC prompt for Day 20 was Unexpected Surprises which suited Day 22 very well for me - I had been told that one of the Chester rhinos was now somewhere along this route, but somehow when I am driving this particular stretch I only have eyes for the road!  So it was lucky (!) that we had a family check-up at the dentist today and the kids spotted it as we were driving back.  It was even luckier that I had my camera with me and could ignore the withering glances from the back seat as I made a U-turn in order to use it!  But then it's a mother's job to embarrass her kids, even if there's nobody watching.
Back on prompt for Day 23 with Stockings:

Finally the festive break begins, the shops close, the lists are completed and we can hunker down for some serious family time :D

All spent up before Christmas I certainly don't venture out to the Sales if I can help it.  After all there's a whole fridge full of food to be eaten and plenty of things to do at home!

Not a creature was stirring!

The one big advantage of teenagers ... they sleep late! After arriving back from their New Year's Eve revels in the wee small hours and creeping into bed (thank you for improved consideration boys!) the house has been peaceful enough for me to do some catch-up scrapping. So here is another week of pages for my JYC album:

Back on prompt with Visitors for Day 15 - not that we really class Mum as a visitor!  Day 16's prompt was Gratitude - and after a week with no heating, I know what we are truly grateful for!

Day 17 was rather taken up with the epic journey to and from North Wales, but I'm back on message with Day 18 for Seasonal Food ... and had a go at composing some candy canes for festive effect!

The 19th was full of family shenanigans and would have made a great start to the holiday week, except that my daughter and husband still had school and work respectively.  I used the next day to try and get on top of the mountain of stuff, still to be done - including posting out the final Christmas cards.

Which tied in nicely with Day 21 when I wrote out the final "To Do" list.  A typical mix of the festive and the fraught ... and just 3 days to do it in!  Eat turkey before Christmas? ... check back tomorrow to find out why!

Happy New Year everyone ... thank you for stopping by and brightening my days with a comment or two!

Jam packed!

Well it didn't take me a whole week to get back from North Wales ... it just felt like it!  The journey normally takes a couple of hours at most ... but thanks to the snow, a jack-knifed lorry and some steep hills it actually took me six hours to get there, although only three of them were spent with the engine running!   I had my camera with me, but there aren't that many ways to photograph dozens of stationary vehicles and by the time we got moving again it was a) dark and b) I was desperate to collect No. 2 Son and return home before we got caught in more snowy jams!

In the meantime here are a few more pages for my JYC album: Wrapping paper first of all ... I buy new every year, and add it to the rolls of sale wrap I bought in January, which combined with the left-over wrap from previous years mean I probably never have to buy any again ... ever!

Now there's a decent sized Christmas tree ... it's been a few years since we saw it for real though!  Check it out (in English) here.

Child No. 3 decided she wasn't fussed about what we put up on the tree today, possibly because there were no brothers around to fight with about decorating rights!

Finally,  I have used the inside of one of the envelopes that my pages are built on - for the programme from tonight's concert.  No photo though as I forgot to take the camera - tsk, tsk what kind of scrapper am I? Just as well that we couldn't actually see my daughter playing thanks to the church layout or I really would have been miffed!

Five Day Fail!

Well despite my best efforts at keeping up with my JYC pages I am well behind, not only in creating the pages, but in sharing them on the blog and forum.  These were completed one day earlier this week and the principle of KISS pages is working well; it's just finding the crafting time that is not!

Day 5 was on topic, but for the 6th, rather than contrast two aspects of Christmas, I used the page to contrast with the previous one and think about Advent Calendars when I was small.

Vaguely back on prompt for the next two days with Day 7, documenting my geeky way of organising the family Christmas fund (well with £961, donated by 10 couples, to spend between 34 individuals, I need all the organisational tools I can get!)  Day 8's sight of the season is a photo across a local field - that's not snow - it's frost - possibly rime, or hoar, or a combination!

Finally Day 9's subject is the increasingly "traditional" Christmas Market which seems to be creeping across from the continent.  We visited these a lot when we lived in Holland and they are gaining in popularity over here now.

I may be failing to keep up; I may be failing to share my pages regularly; I am, however, having a great time creating quick and simple pages :o)