Welcome!





I'm a wife and a stay at home mom to one sweet boy. I love to read, take photos, scrapbook, cook and spend time with my family. This is my place to keep track of it all!







Monday, November 29, 2010

Finished!!






Yay! Finished my December Daily Foundation last night. I'm so excited to have it complete and really quite pleased with how it turned out. I completely changed my mind about the cover, but I think I like it better than the other option.


I've had some requests for me to try to let people know what I've been using along the way so here goes:
For the cover I used some left over chipboard and covered it with Poinsetta Ledger paper from the Making Memories Noel set. The stripe down the side is from a Tim Holtz Seasonal paper pad. I used the December Daily Title circle that Ali Edwards gave as a freebie on her blog and added some Christmas Red Stickles to it. 3 brads from My Mind's Eye under that and done!


I can't believe how full it is already without any pics or additions! The other two I've been working on (for the sis and sis-in-law) are nearly finished too. Just need holes punched. I'm planning on posting my foundation pages tomorrow and Wednesday (I hope). This has been so fun to put together I actually thought about doing a couple more to get a jump on next year. But then I thought, what will I do next year for this kind of fun? I also thought a pre-made DD album would make a really fun birthday gift, but I'd have to be really choosy I think. It would be so hard to do a project this fun and special and have it never put to use. Is that arrogant? :)

Its amazing the sense of accomplishment I'm getting from such a seemingly small thing.I've tried hard not to overdo this thing. Trying to stick with Ali's idea that its much more about documentation than decoration. Trying to remember that I'm new at this and perfection is SO un-necessary.

Ali had a post on her blog today about the time we December Daily-ers will trade to get this project done. I think the whole project with be a exercise in time trading. I think I will look for opportunities to create memories, to journal thoughtfully and take some special pictures. In preparing the foundation I thought a lot about things Brecon might enjoy at this age and things I can do to teach him about traditions, family and the true spirit of the season. At the same time I have tried hard not to mentally stuff the month with meaningless fluff activities and million extra things we probably wouldn't do if I wasn't trying to document our Christmas. I love the idea of telling one story a day. I hope I stick with it. I hope we treasure it.



Thursday, November 25, 2010

the Deadline

I told myself when I started the December Daily project that I wanted my foundation finished by Thanksgiving. I got a later start than I would have liked with a sick kiddo and a sick me and then helped my sister and sister-in-law start on their own (which was really fun!). But, thanks to a helpful family and boy worn out from Turkey day tonight, I got really close to meeting my deadline.

I decided since it's my first DD project (and because I thought it was amazing) that I would follow Ali's album design pretty closely. I'm fairly new at all this scrapping stuff, and certainly not creative or confident enough to come up with things completely from scratch. I'm all about borrowing ideas at this point. So I don't feel too bad for being a little un-original this time around. Ali's album consists of a transparency with a day number followed by a cream cardstock page printed with a December Daily overlay. She's going to either add things directly to the cardstock or use the overlay digitally. I love her designs and the versatility within a framework idea.



Since I had trouble finding transparencies I used some patterned paper too. I finished the "transparency" pages tonight! Here is my stack so far...going to post my foundation pages over the next few days.




I've been playing with all kinds of new techniques and tools, so this has been a really fun project. I'm still deciding on my album cover, but here is what I'm leaning toward at the moment...




My new deadline is for the end of the week :) I'm pretty confident I can get the rest done by then...

Thursday, November 18, 2010

My first blog!

Hello World!

My first attempt at my own blog will probably be of little interest to anyone other than me. :) I'm actually starting this as a way to share my December Daily album with friends, but I hope it will become a spot to share ideas on books, scrapbooking, photography, cooking, and whatever else I decide to take up. It will probably serve the purpose of sharing craft ideas and finds, recipes to try, and books I love. Like a internet journal without the whining or hallmark sentiment that sometimes ends up in them...boo. Thanks for reading, join in the discussion...I promise to have some, sometime.