December 5th-8th

I'm only a few days behind with my December Daily album, but many days behind updating the blog (surprise, surprise!). Before I get to Dec 5th, first I want to share the redo from Dec 3rd. I didn't like the way I had originally used a landscape-oriented photo on the right side, so I changed it to a collage instead (inspired by one of Ali Edward's collages that she posted). I left a few spots blank so that I could fill them with embellishments. I like the way it turned out MUCH better than it was originally, so I'm glad I spent the time to redo it:

Now on to some new days. Dec 5th:

Dec 6th is all about little Grayson, how he is SO very active and keeps me on my toes all day long. I really like how these two pages turned out:

December 7th is all about Avery, and how excited she was for her first day eating lunch at Preschool (it's the little things in life, you know?):

And lastly, December 8th. The sunrise was amazing that morning...

Not too many Christmasy events going on for us these days, but I'm totally ok with that. It's a snapshot of our lives right now and I know I'm going to love looking back on this album. We did have a much more Christmas-oriented weekend, and I hope to get those pages completed soon!

December 1st-4th

December is upon us, yay! Here are the first four days from my December Daily album:

Day 1

This is the first year we are doing the Elf on the Shelf. We watched the show that was on CBS last week, and ever since Avery has been asking when we would be getting an elf. I had always planned for it to arrive on the 1st of December, so she had to wait a few days. She was excited to get the package from Santa. All day long though she kept telling me how the elf couldn't REALLY fly, it wasn't REAL. She said it over and over...I think she was trying to convince herself. I just kept telling her...we'll have to wait and see! She was very surprised the next morning to see that it had moved, and has been excited to go look for it each morning since. I'm not sure if she really believes the elf is magical or not, but it's a fun little tradition nonetheless.

With this page all I had to do was stick the foundation page in the typewriter and type up some quick journaling, then add Avery's photo above it with a strip of washi tape. I also added two more strips of washi tape below with the number sticker, and I stitched the white cardstock onto the page. Done. Very quick and easy....which is the only way I'm going to finish this thing in December.

Day 2:

The 2nd wasn't very exciting...I spent the whole day cleaning and making food for our party the next day. The only picture I could think to include was one of the chocolate covered grapes I was making (probably nicer to look at than a mop and bucket, or toilet bowl cleaner, or laundry pile, don't ya think?).

For this page I already had the background page of stamped/embossed Christmas sentiments done. I added the tag, with typed journaling (and a little bit of stitching), along with some chipboard snowflakes and letters. Again, quick and easy.

Day 3:

I'm not sure about this page yet. It really bothers me that the picture on the right is turned to the side, but that's the only way I could fit it on the page as a 6x8. I don't know...may have to do a collage or something over there instead. Anyway, the journaling was typed on the cardstock and then I added the ornament and number sticker, the joy stamp (which I then embossed), and the ribbon. Another quick page.

Day 4:

Since we didn't actually do much yesterday and I didn't take any photos, I decided to include these pictures from when we went to the zoo lights in November. I like how this page turned out. The four and circle were stamped and embossed, and the "merry & bright" is a sticker from the Echo Park Holly Jolly collection pack. I also added two pieces of washi tape on the smaller photo, and that's about it!

I'm loving how fast the pages are coming together, hopefully things will continue this way. If you made it this far, thanks for looking!

December Daily 2011 Foundation Pages

Christmas is fast approaching (the most wonderful time of the year!), and I'm excited to once again document our holiday events in a December Daily album. You can see my previous albums here, here and here. This year, I wanted to use some non-traditional colors, and make it a fun, bright album. I used mostly Echo Park's Holly Jolly paper line.

I decided to make my foundation pages 6"x 8", and I made my own album cover (see below), using just some cardboard with the paper glued to it. I'll probably be going back and using Mod Podge on top, but I haven't gotten that far yet. I did a little bit of stitching on the front cover, and the "Merry Christmas," "Life's Little Moments," "2011" and "december" are all stamps from separate manufacturers. The reindeer sticker is from the Holly Jolly line as well:

For my foundation pages, I wanted to use a couple different templates repeated several times throughout the album (but using different patterned paper and embellishments). I'm hoping this will create a uniform look and also make it a little easier on me to complete the album in December (the last album took me until SEPTEMBER of this year to finish, HA! Slacker! But, I had a newborn to attribute to my tardiness ;) I'm hoping to actually finish this one in December. I'll probably regret putting that down in writing, but oh well! The basic setup for my album will be to have a 6x8 page on the left for journaling and adding embellishments etc., and the 6x8 page on the right will be a full page photo from that day.

The first three photos are using the same design template. I used different PP on each, and stamped the numbers above the PP, using red ink for the number I wanted to highlight:

Below are three more pages using a different design (BTW, I haven't numbered most of the pages...leaving it a bit more flexible, so I can decide while I'm completing the pages each day which design to use). I used Washi tape at the top of the PP on these:

And another design, using the same stamps from the front cover (I'll either use the center area to journal in or just to add the number for the day, including the journaling directly onto the photo for that day in Photoshop):

I left these pages pretty simple, just stamping and embossing a background image, leaving more flexibility for the design on these days:

I probably should have photographed the following three separately, because it looks a bit chaotic with them all side by side like this, but for these pages I intead to add a white journaling strip in the largest section of each page. I left this cardstock off the page for now. The journaling on these pages will most likely be typed, and I'll use these pages for the days that I have a longer story to tell:

And finally, the last template (I have a few pages using the same design, just didn't photograph them all). I plan to add a small photo to the top portion of this page and some journaling typed below.

If you made it this far, thanks for looking! Hope you come back to check out my finished pages in December!

Valentine's Day Cards

I made some cute valentines for Avery to pass out at school, that apparently have already made the rounds on the blogosphere (mostly last year I think?). But I had never seen them, and when Julie posted this link on Facebook, I knew I had to make them for Avery to pass out in class (thanks Julie!). They were so easy to make, and I think they just turned out adorable.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!

December Daily...Dec 14-17

I'm going to try to get this post done while both kiddos are napping, so I may not be able to give a whole lot of detail about each page. These are the pages that I had already completed in the album but just hadn't had the chance to post yet. First up, December 14th:

The film strip is from Designer Digitals (Katie Pertiet). I changed the photos to black and white because there were just too many colors going on in the pictures. The circle journaling spots are from Jillibean Soup.

On the back of this page I cut out another page from the Holidays with Matthew Mead magazine. It fit the size I needed perfectly. I added a strip of ribbon at the top and bottom to cover up some text from the magazine that I didn't want showing.

The next page (December 15), uses a baseball card holder. The top right is a piece of felt, the bottom right is a bingo card from Jenni Bowlin that I used for the date, just circling the number 15. The bottom left is a felt snowflake sticker that I added to the outside of the sheet.

On the back are three pictures from around my house, and then the bottom right I adhered the same felt snowflake on the outside of the sheet, to mirror the one on the front.

On the right side I added in a 4x6 photo, seen below, of our mantle and stockings. On the photo I added a semi-opaque white strip towards the bottom with the words "The stockings were hung by the chimney with care."

For December 16 I used another page from the Holiday with Matthew Mead magazine, and stamped the circle and number 16 in the white space. I thought this title worked well with the pictures I had for this day, which were of Avery and I making Christmas cookies. This was adhered directly on the back of the 4x6 stocking photo. Pretty simple.

The right side of day 16 was all done in photoshop, and printed on an 8x10 photo sheet (trimmed down to 8x8).

My December 17th page includes quite a few pages. This was the day of Avery's Christmas performance at preschool. Since my photos include so many of her classmates though, I've decided not to add those pages to the blog, since I don't feel like spending the time to blur out their faces. Sorry! I will add the last page, though. This is the back of a file folder that I added patterned paper to (from Jillibean Soup). Then I made a pocket by sewing a piece of black felt to it. On the felt I added a felt snowman and snowflake, and a beaded candy cane that Avery made in preschool.

Inside the pocket I included a photo of the wreath ornament that Avery made as a gift for me and her dad at preschool.

I also included the reindeer hat that she was wearing in her performance, which was made out of her handprints, and two letters that her teachers sent home. One was Avery's letter to Santa, which was basically some scribbles on a piece of paper, which she told her teachers "these are toys." The second letter was Santa's response to her letter. I thought all of these items were pretty cute and worth holding onto.

So that's my album as up to date as it is right now. I'm itching to finish it, but my guess is the only time I'm really going to have to finish it up is when Avery is in school. My evenings tend to get a little hectic with getting the kids to bed (and we're still trying to figure out our evening routine with Grayson), and I've been hitting the sack right after the kids are down to try to get as much sleep as I can. That being the case, it'll probably take a while for me to complete, but I'll be sure to update the blog as I go.

Baby Grayson

There's been an obvious disruption in my December Daily album posts, but for good reason. We welcomed this little guy into our world on December 28th. He was born at 2:55am, weighing 7 lbs, 14 oz. I've been meaning to get photos up on this blog for the past week, but, well, life took over I guess and I've been spending more time doing laundry and dishes, cleaning up spit-up, and changing dirty diapers than I have on the computer. But, without further ado, here he is:

My water broke around 10:30pm (while I was in bed trying to get some sleep, which is easier said than done when having contractions fairly consistently), we were at the hospital between 11:30 and midnight, and three hours later we had a baby! It was crazy fast, and crazy painful, but I did get the epidural, and once that kicked in things were smooth sailing.

I hate being in the hospital... with all the poking and prodding they do, you can't get any rest. So we were there for all of about a day and a half, and then we went home.

I've been lucky to have my mom and my mother-in-law here since giving birth to help out. So I've been able to get plenty of rest, which has helped tremendously with my recovery (it also helps that Grayson has been sleeping like a champ at night). I'm feeling great this time around, which I definitely couldn't say when I had Avery. Yesterday was my first day being on my own, with no help from the grandmas, and with Abe at work. The day went pretty well. I ventured out for the first time on my own with both of them, to Avery's dance class, without any problems. Yay!

As for Avery, she is definitely the proud big sister. She is adjusting so well to having the baby here.

She thinks everything Grayson does (with the exception of crying) is "so cute," and spends most of her time around him with a big smile on her face.

That's all for now! I'm off to do yet another load of laundry (boys sure are messy).

*I'm hoping to get back to the December Daily album fairly soon. I have a few additional pages finished that I haven't yet posted on the blog, and then I think I need to do about 8 more pages to complete the album. Depending on how the baby cooperates, those eight pages may take me eight months to finish, but I'm really hoping to get it all done much sooner than that!

December Daily...December 12th and 13th

For the 12th, since we didn't do a whole lot, and since we got our first real snowfall of the season, I thought I'd do a page with a picture of the outside of our house. The picture above is the photo I used on the page, with journaling.

And here's what the page looks like. I used the same paper that I used on the front cover of my album, though you can't tell in this picture that it has the tone-on-tone white polka dots. I rounded the corners of the page as well as the bottom two corners of the picture, then stitched the picture with zig-zag stitching. For the title I used Thickers, and for some of the letters I just traced the thickers and hand-stitched the letter, just to change it up a little bit.

For the 13th, I didn't use a photo. The day for me was all about my doctor's appointment and finding out whether or not we'd be having our baby later this week. I was disappointed to find out that the answer is no, we will not be induced since I'm not dilated enough yet. It's the right decision, not to do the induction and to wait until my body and the baby are ready, but I was sure hoping to get a different answer that day! I had a little pity party for myself on the drive home from my appointment, and then I got over it and am now content to wait it out and see when this little guy is ready to join us on his own :)

The paper I used as my background came from the Holiday with Matthew Mead magazine (some really pretty photos in there, I have a few others in mind to try to include in the album as well). I cut the tag out using my Cricut and stitched it on with red thread, then stamped the number 13 before writing out the journaling. Here's a closeup of that:

And that's it. A simple page, but I didn't feel like it needed too much with all that was going on in the background.