Journal Your Christmas, Finally!

This was my fifth journal, and frankly, the most difficult one I ever did. As soon as I saw Ali Edward’s set-up for her December Daily, I knew I wanted to give it a try. If I had thought about it more carefully, I would have known it was overly ambitious. I liked doing a 90% digital album (a new experience for me), and I enjoyed using Ali’s templates and overlays. Finally, however, I had to admit I couldn’t complete a two-page spread for even 25 days. So I put a disclaimer in the front of the journal and called it done.

Will I do another journal next year? Probably. I’m always happy to look back at the differences from one holiday to the next and the special events that are unique for a given year. I’ve certainly covered our traditions and customs in earlier journals, so from now on I’ll stick to the new and special events of the season.

I had some nice red chipboard in my stash that I wanted to use as the cover. I couldn’t decide how to decorate it, but finally used one of the KI Memories overlays I had cut for one of the transparency sheets between each layout. I added the Paper Source ribbon and some new American Craft Thickers that came in my last Scrapbook Circle kit.

Here are about half the pages from the journal.  I didn’t take photos of most of the transparency pages which lie between each layout.

On some pages I added an embellishment, but I kept them to a minimum to keep the journal from becoming too fat. Sometimes I used patterned papers from my stash, but most of them are digital papers.

This page comes from one of Shimelle’s prompts about Christmas cards. I make all of mine and took a photo of the basket where I was keeping them and a collage of some of the cards I made this year.

Another page from one of Shimelle’s prompts; this one from an In Focus prompt about the view from your window. I really enjoyed the In Focus prompts and know I will return to them during the year—lots of inspiration and good information about photography which wasn’t part of the first few years I participated in Shimelle’s class.

This page has the transparency over the photo page. I wanted to document all the time I spent in December in physical therapy for my sprained ankle. My very competent, and cute, therapist was happy to pose for the photos.

This page documents an unusual event. On December 15th, Shimelle’s prompt was about unexpected visitors. I had to laugh. We’d been up since 4:00 am that morning because our carbon monoxide dectector went off for the second morning in a row. The second day we decided we should call 911 and in just a few minutes our wonderful firemen arrived. It turns out the dectector had gone bad, but as the firemen said, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Here’s a page I’ll do another year, just a list of all the activities that were on our calendar for the month of December.

I did this layout after friends of ours told us they’d given up hanging stockings and exchanging gifts. Although, we too, need to simplify and pare down our possessions, I am not ready to give up the joy of finding just the right item for stockings or of wrapping gifts for under the tree.

This is one of my favorite layouts because the template allowed me to get so many photos on it. All in all, making the journal was a satisfying experience, and I was very proud of myself not to get caught up in the need to complete every page just because I had the transparencies cut and decorated!