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.

December Daily...December 11th

December 11th for us was a very busy day, so I have lots of pages in my album for that day. We went to a Breakfast with Santa with some friends, so the first page is Avery's picture with Santa. I couldn't believe she actually sat on his lap...never thought that would happen. For this page I printed a 6x8 photo, and then used a scallop border punch on the edge. I attached the photo to the red polka dot patterned paper with zig zag stitching. On the photo I added my journaling in Photoshop (using the 20% opacity text box that Ali Edwards had a tutorial about on her website). I also added in some of the Christmas Cut-ups from Katie Pertiet (which I got from Designer Digitals last year).

Here's a closeup of the journaling. You can also see the felt present that I added with the number 11 on it. I also attached a safety pin (from Tim Holtz).

On the back of this page is an 8x8 photo of Avery rock climbing, which the kids started doing after their visit with Santa (the Breakfast with Santa took place at a Fitness Center). Sorry about the glare on the photo.

Here's a better look at the left side page:

And the right side:

On the back I did some hand journaling and added a photo of Avery ice skating that Abe had taken with his I-phone.

Then I had just a few more photos that I wanted to include, so I just attached two 4x6 photos back to back and punched holes for the rings. I added a border on both photos with white pen. Here's a rare photo of the three of us (we never seem to be able to get a good photo of our family, so I'm glad we were able to get this one).

And then here are the two preggos, ready to pop! Holly's due in January, and I have just about a week and a half left until my due date. Every time we've gotten together (and had our cameras available) during our pregnancy we've been sure to take a picture of our growing bellies. I'm pretty sure this is the last photo we'll get to take before I give birth, but maybe not! Who knows how long I'll go and if we might get together again before then...

Phew! That's a lot for just one day. I'm working on days 12 and 13 now. Hope to have them up tomorrow.

December Daily...December 9th and 10th

Here we are at Day 9. By this point I'm starting to lose a little bit of my mojo. It's definitely difficult to keep this up every day, but I'm determined to do it, and I do like how the album is coming together so far.

On the 9th, I hadn't taken a picture all day, and by the time I was finished making the cinnamon rolls that I decided to bake, it was after dinner and dark outside. So by the time I finally decided to actually take any pictures, it meant that I had no daylight left for a nice photo. Since I absolutely hate the way my pictures look indoors with the flash on, I decided to just use the pics without the flash. They're not great either...they have that yellowy look to them and are slightly blurred. I really need to learn more about how to take photos to avoid these issues {sigh}. Someday.

So anyway, the not-so-great photos are adding to my lack of motivation. But, trudge on I must. I happened to see this post on Ali Edward's blog of a page she recently did for Hero Arts, and I decided that the layout would work perfectly for the photos I had. I went ahead and pretty much copied the layout to a T, so I could hopefully get over the hump.

So, here's my page for December 9th. There's a lot that I like about it, but one major thing I disike - I stitched the border around the outside of the photos way too far in, and I just hate the placement of it. I wish I could take it off, but unfortunately stitching can't be undone, so I'll learn to live with it :). I do, however, like the zig-zag stitching between the photos and the patterned paper. I made a tag out of polka dot felt I had on hand and added a "Countdown to Christmas" sticker to it, where I circled the number 9.

The journaling around the photos reads:

"I've been craving homemade cinnamon rolls lately so I decided to make Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls today. Unfortunately they didn't live up to my expectations because the dough didn't rise like it should have. Guess I'll have to try again!"

Getting that page done did get me over the hump, because I also was able to whip out the page for December 10th last night as well. I just used the back of the page from the 9th, which is patterned paper from Jillibean Soup. This picture was taken at the Widlights at the Zoo (and if I'm being honest, it wasn't taken on the 10th - we went to the zoo back in November when it was a little bit warmer, but I feel like it's part of the holiday celebrations, so it should be included in the album. I didn't have any other photos for the day, so this was a good add-in).

Journaling reads: "Even though this picture of Avery is super blurry, I still thought it was super cute of her with her hot chocolate"

I cut out a portion of the brochure that we had gotten at the zoo that night and added it to the bottom, along with a few felt snowflakes and the Jenni Bowlin bingo card (where I stamped a circle around the number 10). Easy peasy.

December Daily...December 8th

Today's page took little time at all since I had premade the envelope when I put together the foundation pages for the album. This page is dedicated to Avery's Letter to Santa. I traced "dear Santa" onto the front of the envelope using some chipboard letters from MM. Then I painted with red and green to fill in the letters. After the paint dried I added the faux stitching with white pen around the letters and as a border.

The letter is made up of white cardstock. I added the strip of red cardstock (that I punched with the threading waters border punch), and the green polka dot ribbon at the top, then I stitched across these with red thread. Next I used a few stamps from Art Warehouse, in Cranberry Chalk ink, and then drew lines on the page. Once that was complete Avery and I sat down and she dictated to me what she wanted on her list. My favorite is Girl Toys, "cause I'm a girl" she says.

Then I had her sign her name at the bottom, and took a picture of her doing this and added it to the back of the letter.

And that's it for Day 8!

December Daily... December 5th and 6th

Here we are at day #5. We had a pretty lazy day here at the house on Sunday, so I didn't have anything specifically for that day that I wanted to document. Instead I decided to take some photos of the nursery and write down some of the diy projects I accomplished in there. Here is the front page for the 5th. The red cardstock is cut to 6x7" and the photo is a 4x6. I drew the white line around the edge for a border on the cardstock and photo. Then I attached the photo onto a piece of 6x8 patterned paper and folded it so that it could be lifted to reveal some additional photos (which you'll see below).

Inside are 5 pictures cut to 2x2", and then I just wrote a little bit of journaling describing each photo (see closeups below).

And then here is the back of Day 5. I repeated the white border on the cardstock and photo. Kept this pretty simple, not sure if I'll embellish this anymore or not.

And Day 6 is all about Avery's dance class. I decided to change the photos to black and white, so they didn't clash with the rest of the album. I added a little bit of journaling in Photoshop right on the larger picture. The page is 8x8 and the large photo is 4x6, with the smaller photos below being 2x2. I stitched a red border around the block of photos and added some baker's twine between the large and small photos. I stamped the circle and number 6 using Ali Edwards' December Daily stamp set from Technique Tuesday, and cut it so that it is just a half circle. Then I rounded the corners to complete the page. This is probably one of my favorites in the album so far...clean and simple.

The back of this page repeats the layout of the front:

Oh, and I ended up finishing the back of day 1, which I did not have completed at the time I originally posted that page. So, I thought I would show you what I added there. It's an 8x8 photo of Avery kissing my big preggo belly, which I think is just a really cute picture, and appropriate to the theme of day 1, where I wrote about how we are anticipating the birth of kiddo #2. I trimmed the photo to match the front of the page, and then drew a border in white just to add a little something to it. Quick and easy, and I really like how it turned out.

December Daily....December 4th

My December Daily page for the 4th uses a baseball card holder sheet, cut down to only utilize four slots. I rounded the edges of all the pictures and patterned paper in each slot. The pictures are all from the Christmas party that we went to at the Corbin's house. Usually, we have the party at our house, but this year I just wasn't up to all the work it entails, and Annalisa very sweetly offered to have it at her house instead. The unicorn that Avery is sitting on has been passed around in our White Elephant gift exchange for many years now at this party. It's the one present all the adults try to avoid receiving, but the kids love it!

I tried to get a closeup shot of the card with the title on it, only because I wrote on it with white ink too, but it's not showing up well in the pictures. You can see it better in real life.

Here's the back. I didn't do much embellishing with this page. I did stamp "favorite traditions" on the bottom left photo, using the December Daily Ali Edwards stamp set from Technique Tuesday.

And that's all for Day 4! I have day 6 complete, but still need to finish up day 5 before I post. Hopefully I can get to that tonight and will be able to post more tomorrow. Thanks for looking!

December Daily...December 2nd and 3rd

For December 2nd, I decided to scrap whatever foundation page I had previously put together, and just went with a 5 x 7 photo. We started putting up our tree on the 2nd, and this photo is of Abe sitting behind it for quite some time trying to figure out why a strand of lights wasn't working. I added an Ali Edwards Title and Journal Photo Overlay , changing the foreground color to white, and erasing the title and line towards the bottom of the overlay. Then I added "December 2" directly on the photo in Photoshop, at the bottom.

Here's the back. Just a white piece of cardstock. I typed out the journaling in Photoshop, again using an Ali Edwards Title and Journal Photo Overlay. This time I changed the foreground color to red. I used Stickles (Candy Cane Red) to go over the "Today" title at the bottom, and stamped "December 2nd" in red (from the Ali Edwards December Daily stamp set at Technique Tuesday). Pretty simple.

On the 3rd, I again didn't use the foundation page I had already set up, and instead focused on just the photos. I took a scrap piece of cardstock and adhered two 4x6 photos one on top of the other, so the page is 6x8 overall. In photoshop, I added Katie Pertiet's Christmas Cut-Ups (I couldn't find these on the Designer Digitals website anymore, but she has a new holiday version out this year which is similar) to look like ribbon between the two photos (I just added five of the same "December Memories" cut-up directly next to each other to make one long line). I then rounded the edges of the page and stitched a border in red. The canvas star is from Jillibean Soup and the number 3 is from Creative Imaginations.

On the back I repeated the "December Memories" cut-ups at the bottom of the photo, and then added the patterned paper below to write my journaling (PP is from Basic Grey).

And that's it!

December Daily...December 1st

And so it begins! Here is my first page in the December Daily album. On the left is the backside of the album cover. I'm feeling like that needs a little something added to it, but we'll see if I end up doing anything there.

I freehanded the outline of this page, and cut it out in black felt. Then I stitched a border around the edge with red thread.

I added some hidden journaling by using a long strip of patterned paper, with white cardstock inside where I typed out and printed my journaling. I added two buttons to the patterned paper before adhering it to the cardstock, so that I could wrap baker's twine around them to hold the top and bottom together.

Inside is a bit of a reflection on how much we have been anticipating this month due to the upcoming birth of our little boy, and my feelings and expectations about it all. I also added one of the ultrasound pictures to the bottom of the journaling page (which I scanned in and added in Photoshop).

So far I haven't added anything to the back of this page, although I have a couple of ideas. More tomorrow...hopefully.

2 Weeks? Aaaaaaah!!!

For those who have requested a recent picture of the baby bump, this one was taken on Thanksgiving:

I went to the doctor on Monday for my 36 week checkup. He made the comment that we could be having this baby in three weeks, if all goes well, to avoid being in the hospital on Christmas day (which we would like to do). He's talking about possibly inducing on the 16th or 17th. But when I looked at the calendar after he left the room, that's really more like 2 1/2 weeks (and now it's pretty close to just 2 weeks). That piece of information sort of hit me like a ton of bricks. It's not that I haven't been looking at the calendar, because I have. But I guess since we weren't even in the month of December yet, and my due date is the 25th, it felt like I still had a month. Well, not anymore! I still have lots to do, not necessarily to prepare for the baby, because most of that is done, but mostly to prepare for Christmas. If none of it got done, it would be fine, we would just figure it out later, but that doesn't change my new-found sense of urgency to get some things crossed off my list!

At the appointment the doctor checked me and I am only 50% effaced and not dilated at all (but the baby is head down, so that's good). He said my cervix needs to catch up in order to even do the induction when he's talking about doing it. So it's possible the baby's birth date could be a little later than currently anticipated I guess, if my cervix doesn't cooperate. We'll just have to wait and see!