December 2nd

I struggled with this page a bit (which makes me nervous about the rest of the month...I hope they don't all take me this long to create!). I decided to cut down the page a little...it was just too much surface to work with, given that I only had one picture. So I cut close to 2" off the width. I mounted the photo onto some white cardstock, and used a Jillibean Soup number sprout for the journaling. I added an American Crafts "Flair" embellishment at the bottom, and wrote the "Deck the Halls" lyrics around the photo in white gel pen. Pretty simple design, which could have taken a very short amount of time, if I hadn't had to "think" about it so much.


Here's the original page:

December 1st

So, here it is! The first page of my December Daily album (sorry for the poor lighting in the picture...I didn't have any natural light tonight to take the photo in).

I printed a 4x5 photo of a box of Christmas decorations, which filled the width of my page (original page is shown below). I then tied a white ribbon (not sure where it's from) around the whole page, and printed and cut out my journaling on white cardstock. I drew a white line around the border of the whole page, and switched out the Jillibean Soup number sprout with a Little Yellow Bicycle cardstock number (the size better suited the page).

The page I started with:
And that's it! Right now the back of the page is just a sheet of Jillibean Soup Christmas paper. I'll probably add a picture of our decorated mantle later (just haven't taken a photo of it yet).

December Daily

Warning...Picture Heavy Post

The 25 Days of Christmas starts tomorrow, and to celebrate the season this year I've decided to document our December activities (at least the first 25 days) in a mini album (inspired by Ali Edward's December Daily album). The idea behind this album is to construct the actual album and the interior pages before the month actually begins. Then each day, take a picture(s), or save some sort of memorabilia from the day and print that out and add it to page you've already designed, along with some journaling for the day. By designing the pages in advance, you're taking away a lot of the work load of completing the pages each day, so hopefully it won't be too time consuming and you'll actually keep up with it. That's what I'm hoping for anyway...we'll see how it goes. I thought I would show what I've come up with for the album so far, and then during December I'll post my completed pages as I finish them.

This is my album. I decided to use the same album that Ali Edwards used, which is here , but I'm sort of regretting that decision. It's a canvas album with 5 canvas pages and 5 plastic protector pages. I've had a very hard time figuring out how to use the interior canvas pages, and also had a hard time with the cover. I like the way the cover turned out for the most part, but I do think a hard surface cover would have been easier.

I painted the cover with MM Spotlight white paint, and then used glimmer mist on the edges. I'm not really happy with the edges...they aren't quite as red as I would like, so I may go over this with some MM Fire Engine Red paint. I traced a snowflake onto this red/white polka dot felt from Creative Imaginations and cut it out, then stitched it onto the canvas (I love how that turned out). I also added a metal bracelet connector (which I found in the jewelry section of Michaels), with some white cardstock underneath that says "December 2009."
Here's a closeup of the snowflake and metal piece. It says "Celebrate Life."

This is page 1. Some Jillibean Soup "Talk Soup" paper and a Jillibean number sprout.

Page 2: Jillibean Soup "Grandma's Christmas Soup" Paper, with the Fiskar's "Threading Water" border punch on the side. I haven't added numbers to all of the pages yet, since I figured I'd want to place them after I've added the photos and journaling. Any numbers that have already been added were placed with temporary adhesive.

Page 3: a baseball card protector sheet from Staples, cut to fit the album. I added some Jillibean red polka dot ribbon to the circle piece (don't know what that's called). The number is a chipboard number from Basic Grey that I painted with MM Cranberry paint and then topped with Glossy Accents.

Page 4: this is one of the plastic page protectors that came with the album. I added a strip of Jillibean Christmas paper on the side and stitched it in. For the number, I used a Cuttlebug postage stamp die on white cardstock.

Page 5: this number is just thrown on the page, but it is another Basic Grey chipboard number that I painted and used Glossy Accents on. The page is one of the canvas pages that came with the album, and I stitched some Jillibean Soup ribbon to the side.

Page 6: A kraft envelope from Staples that I stamped, using Art Warehouse Christmas stamps that I bought last year. The number is a cardstock sticker from Little Yellow Bicycle.

Page 7: Jillibean Soup Christmas paper

Page 8: another plastic page protector. The tree was cut out of the Jillibean Soup Christmas paper and adhered to the front of the plastic, and the number 8 is a foam sticker from Creative Imaginations.

Page 9: Jillibean Soup "Talk Soup" paper

Page 10: a canvas page, which I sprayed glimmer mist on and then stitched part of a baseball card page protector sheet to. I'm not too sure about this page yet. I may end up switching this out for something else when the day comes to use it. I'm just not sure I like it.

Page 11: a plain old manilla folder cut to fit the album.

Page 12: Jillibean Soup "Talk Soup" paper. Threading Water border punch.

Page 14: plastic page protector with Jillibean Soup Christmas paper tucked inside.

Page 13 (oops, out of order): a plain acetate sheet that I cut in a rounded shape (hard to see in the picture...it will show up better when I complete the page).

Page 15: another manilla folder.

Page 16: a plastic protector sheet, with some Basic Grey Wassail paper tucked in at the side and stitched in.

Page 17: a canvas page. I painted part of it with MM Spotlight paint. Then made a Christmas tree from buttons and Jillibean Soup ribbon. I stitched some pom pom ribbon on the side.

Page 18: an acetate sheet that I traced a die cut paper on and cut out by hand. Then used some paint around the edges.

Page 19: another baseball card sheet.

Page 20: a plastic protector sheet (hard to see in this photo)

Page 21: a kraft envelope with rub-ons from Art Warehouse (both the santa and the wording below him..."making a list...and checking it twice"). The number 21 is a sticker from Little Yellow Bicycle.

Page 22: Jillibean Soup "Talk Soup" paper

Page 23: misssing a photo - another acetate sheet that I cut into a scallop circle shape.

Page 24: a baseball card protector sheet. The number is a snowman chipboard shape from MM (picked up last year) painted with MM Spotlight paint and Glossy Accents. the number 24 is foam sticker from Creative Imaginations.

Page 25: Basic Grey Wassail paper, with Threading Waters border punch on the side. The number is a stamp (Art Warehouse) that I heat embossed in white.

If you made it this far, thanks for sticking with it! I'm not sure if I'll be able to complete these pages daily, since I don't have a photo printer at home, but I'll try to keep up with the album as much as possible during December, and post photos of the completed pages frequently.

First Haircut

I've been putting off getting Avery's first haircut for a little while now, because I felt pretty confident that she would never sit still in the chair and have some stranger mess with her hair. But we've passed by the kid's hair salon several times recently and Avery's been very interested in going inside (for the sole purpose of playing on the slide they have inside, but interested nonetheless). So we've been talking to her about how they only let little kids who get their hair cut play on the slide etc etc, to try to prepare her. She kept saying "ok" when we'd explain things to her, and given her recent love of suckers and her infatuation with videos (both of which I knew would be part of the gig), I thought it might be the right time to take the plunge.

We had a twenty minute wait or so when we got there, so Avery got plenty of play time on the big slide (and plenty of time to catch the swine flu, as one after another hacking child ran past her to also go down the slide ;)). Finally, it was our turn.

We picked an airplane seat for Avery, even though she wanted to sit on the dog, since this was an actual seat with seatbelt, unlike the dog which she could easily fall off of if not behaving. After some initial kicking and screaming, Avery sat down in the plane once she had her sucker in hand and video on.

From then on she did REALLY well. I couldn't believe how nicely she was sitting there.

I expected a whole lot of drama, and got very little, thank goodness.

A little primping at the end. Doesn't she look so happy? HA! The cut's just a little shorter than we were anticipating, but it looks pretty cute , and is much more manageable, so momma's happy.

Halloween

Here are just a few pictures from Halloween. Avery dressed as Dorothy, and carried around a little basket (one of my old Longaberger baskets worked perfectly) with one of her stuffed animal dogs in it as Toto.

The first two pictures were taken a few days before Halloween, when the weather was really nice. It was quite a bit colder on Halloween day.



Here's a picture on Halloween, with Avery enjoying two suckers...she thought she had died and gone to heaven!

Oh, the Pumpkin Fun Just Never Ends

Today I thought it would be a nice family activity and fun project for Avery to carve our Halloween pumpkins. I thought she'd get a kick out of seeing the gooey insides, and find the carving etc. interesting to watch.

Before we started carving, I made this Pumpkin Pie Milkshake to get us in the pumpkin spirit.

If you like pumpkin pie, you'll like this milkshake. The graham cracker crumbles on top really made the shake. Kinda like a blizzard from DQ. So good!

As you can see from this picture, my "family fun activity" is seriously lacking a "family." I started the project out by myself (which, actually, I found to be just fine...kind of relaxing to be honest), while Abe was setting up some shelves downstairs and Avery was running around down there with him.

I had to pull my hair back once the project started getting down and dirty :)

Then Abe came upstairs and decided to join in on the fun. As you can see Avery is missing from all photos. She stood about ten feet away from the table at all times, no matter how many times I tried to get her to dig out some of the pumpkin guts. She just kept giving me this disgusted look, like "lady, there aint no way I'm coming anywhere near that pile of slime." She's not one to like being messy, so I guess I'm not surprised that she wasn't into pumpkin carving.

Abe eventually got bored with the carving and decided he would rather be finishing his shelving project than cut out the rest of the little holes in the design he picked (which was the Blues Clues dog...since Avery loves dogs so much). So I ended up finishing his pumpkin, along with mine. And of course he left me with the mess :( which actually wasn't all that bad, since I didn't have a two year old helping me with the carving.

Here's our (ahem, MY) finished pumpkins. While the family fun activity was kind of a bust, I think the pumpkins turned out pretty cute.

Pumpkin Patch

On Sunday, we went to Leed's Farm. Leed's grows lots of pumpkins, and rather than have you wander through their 20 acres of fields to find the perfect pumpkin, they pick them for you and lay them out on pallets where you can easily find the perfect one (or three) for your front stoop.



In addition to pumpkins, Leed's has lots and lots of fun rides and farm-type enjoyment for the kiddos (and some for adults too). They have two barns...one with lots of hay to jump in and slides that go into the hay, and the other with barn animals and a corn sandbox. They have zip lines, tractor rides, a pumpkin jumpy thing, and a little train-like ride pulled by a tractor, called the Banana Boat.


Avery was in quite a mood on Sunday (and by quite a mood, I mean she was in a really crabby, sassy kind of mood. In her defense, we discovered last night that she has an ear infection, so maybe this was starting on Sunday and we just didn't know it. Yeah, we'll go with that). From the get-go, she was very clingy, wanting to be carried the entire time, and didn't want to participate in any of the activities (particularly in the barn). The place was absolutely mobbed with people, so it may have been that she was just overwhelmed by the crowds. The one thing she did want to ride was the banana boat. Here she is at the front of the train, right behind the tractor.

When the ride stopped, I tried to get her to smile so I could take her picture. She sat in that car for a good two minutes looking as far away from me as she could, so I couldn't take her picture, until her dad got her out. Stubborn, I tell ya.

As the time passed, and after about six more banana boat rides, Avery's mood seemed to lift a little bit. We went up to the pumpkin jump with Nate and Holly and their kids. Avery appeared to be interested in jumping too, so Abe went on with her. As you can see from the picture, this was a no-go, and they got off right away. Those are Nate and Holly's kids in the background jumping and having fun.

Then I tried to get a nice picture with Abe, Avery and a pumpkin. Avery was not interested.

As we made our way to the car to leave, Avery spotted the painted animals where you can take photos as a cow, horse, etc. The crowds were starting to disappear, so she seemed a bit more comfortable with the place at this point. She ran over with Grace, who always seems to be able to cheer her up. And I finally got a decent picture. Wait....hold on a minute.....is that a...smile?