December Daily So Far

There truly isn't a project that I am more proud of then my collection of December Daily's. You know how people always talk about what they would take besides their loved ones out of the house if it were on fire? This would be what I would be grabbing. They are not the most beautiful pages or mini books I have ever made but they are definitely the most meaningful.  So here is what I have completes for this year so far. Spelling mistakes, you bet! Not the best pictures, of course! But, its the memories made that matter and that's what makes it perfect!

Epic

December Daily Day 2

Today I have some funny Q stories from the day. 

Everyday when we leave school he says "Peace" to his little buddies and flashes a peace sign.
Today he says "Peace.....on earth, goodwill towards men"
I asked  "where did you learn that?"
He responds " Mom, its Christmas, thats what you say now....like in the song" In a very Duh! Mom voice

After we get home from school Q pulls out my camera "To take pictures for the December Daily" and he walks around the house taking pictures and with every snap of the camera he says "Epic!"
I ask "Why are you saying that Q?"
His response "Becasue its gonna be an Epic Christmas Mom!, Epic means the same as cool."
 (Once again he says it in a voice as though he believes I am very out of touch with his lingo)
Mind you the things he was taking pictures are NOT Epic, they are things like our tile floor that desperately needs to be mopped and a close up of the toys spread out all over the Scrapbook room floor.
Then, he comes to take a picture of me and I say "Cheese"
He says " No, no Mom say EPIC!"

Over dinner Q tells the family he is going to share a song he has made up for us.
He shovels in a bite before he stands up and says "I have to stand up for this one"
He starts to wiggle his body like a  cross between a worn=m and one of the Blues Brothers grooving to the music.....

"Stand up,
Hit the lights,
Touch the sky,
Get your credit card,
Everybody goes outside,
Livie stays in here with me,
Oh yeah!"

We were all laughing so hard, as we have no clue where he got this from. To be honest with you I didn't even know he knew what a credit card was. In fact, he still may not but for some reason still said it in his song.


Mind you all of these things are from one day. He is really this funny all the time. I could make a blog of all the funny things he says. Hes a lot of work and very high energy but he is a blast and super funny. We love it!

Its Here!!!

December Daily Day 1

All day I was excited to begin our Daily, but I knew that at the end of the day we would be having dinner with my grandparents from Florida so I waited to take a picture with them. Not smart Mommy, not smart and here is why. Dinner started in a very lovely way. All three kids were wonderful! Behaving well, choosing their own food and able to chat and wait without the dreaded- "I'm bored" Then 3 quarters into dinner Gracie starts to feel sick. She was red as a tomato, hot and just all around yucky. So I quickly bundled everyone all up got our leftovers wrapped up and got out of the door as soon as possible. I never got took a picture. All the way home I drove thinking about how I could remedy this snafu. I thought of going back and taking a picture of the restaurant sign, no to cheesy, I thought about taking a picture of our leftover boxes, kinda weird. I thought about taking a picture from the internet of the inside of the restaurant, but nothing seemed to fit. Then as we got home Gracie started to feel better ( I think she got overheated as the place was super warm!) we all got in our jammies and talked about how it was fun even though we had to leave so abruptly. As we are sitting on the couch Olivia feel asleep like this....

 

So, it just goes to show you that even though there can be a snafu and it wasn't perfect does not mean that it wasn't fun, so fun that it was exhausting.  

(In fact Q just said to me " Mommy, remember that place we ate dinner last night? It was a lot of fun! But, I was really sleepy when we got home" Then I said "and so was everyone else, Buddy")

December Daily Eve


OK, I cant sleep. This might sound really really nerdy.......but....I'm gonna go out on a limb here and tell you its because I cant stop thinking about all the things I want to put in my December Daily for this year. This will be my fourth one. After the first year I thought-this is crazy I will NEVER do this again. But....then my kids loved it so much and I did it again just for them on year 2. Then year 3 hit and I was excited but it was more about creating a legacy for my kids. And now here we are at year 4 and I am honestly giddy at the fact that we have created all these beautiful memories together and now we have the opportunity to create more. How cool is that? Plus I write it all down so no one can ever forget. :) I love it. Its become one of my favorite holiday traditions. I'm so thrilled with it that I even made some as gifts to give to friends in hopes that they to will get into it with me. They are not scrapbookers so we shall see. Any-who here are some pictures of my books in 2009 and 2010 to tide you over until tomorrow. 


Here is 2009- I LOVE how it turned out.

 And here is 2010- I don't like this one as much but we cant love them all can we? I just try to remind myself that I had a newborn baby and still was not sleeping very much.

 Thanksgiving

We celebrated our Thanksgiving this year on Friday to better fit our family schedule. So Thursday was spent cooking and preparing for Friday, looking at the Black Friday ads

and then resting so that I could go do this at midnight.....

I am in deed a Black Friday shopper. Not because I want that HUGE TV for a fraction of the cost or that sweater for Grandma for $6. But, mostly because its fun. I did get what I wanted to purchase at a good price but all the fun is in the people watching. Then I went home for a little shut eye so that I could help prepare for our Thanksgiving feast.

I turned my scrapbook room into our Thanksgiving table. So while we are all chatting about what we are thankful for we are surrounded by paper and stickers. What could be better?

 Thanksgiving Place-cards

Making place-cards for Thanksgiving has become somewhat of a tradition for me. For the last 4 years I have made special place-cards for everyone that attends my Thanksgiving. This year I stepped outside my normal just paper place-cards and used some wood! At my local Scrapbook Store they had larger blocks used as photo holders. It inspired me to adapt their project into a Thanksgiving day project with a smaller block. All in all each one cost me less then a $1 to make!

This was another emotional one for me. My Grace is such a doll. There is so much about her to love. I just wanted to make sure she knows that. "Loved" is just my way of telling her.

I used my smooch spray a little differently. I took a small amount and put it in a paper cup. Then I took a tooth pick and splattered it on the page.

I also used the smooch spray to color my gray and white Amy Tangerine letters yellow to match the splatters.

Lastly I printed the pic out in both color and black sepia. I just cut out the leaf and popped it up with some foam tape.

 Emotional Scrapbooking

Lately I have been on a very emotional Scrapbooking binge. It can be very therapeutic for me. Not to mention my children get a sense of the real me. Its not always birthday parties and days at the beach. Sometimes its life's most basic moments that bring out the most emotion in me.

This layout "Stay This Way" is about my need to pause the moment that my children are at right now. I just wish that I had a pause bottom in my pocket I could hit so I could love on them a little longer at each age. I just want to soak it all in before we o move onto the next one.

I hid the journaling in an envelope because most people just don't want or care to read all that emotional gobbily-gook.

And then I used some twine from the Twinery....because whats a layout without twine anyway?

Who needs ribbon on a spool anyway?

I have not been able to get much scrapping done at night as I would like these past few weeks due to sick children needing some extra Mommy time. So, I thought maybe just maybe Olivia could handle Mommy scrapping for a tiny bit of time during the day. It all started out good. She played with her toys in her toy cabinet and then.........

 

She discovered my ribbon bin that I had brought down off the shelf. She squealed with delight upon pushing her little hands in all that silky shiny stuff! I thought oh, harmless, it's just ribbon and I can still use it if its jumbled up a bit and off the spool. But then.....

 

Oh, it makes me giggle to see your in this mess! That large tangled mess was so worth every bit of sanity I regained from scrapping and every bit of joy she had making the mess.

Family

 We had the delightful opportunity to have some family over to our house for the weekend. It was the first time that my children were able to meet some of their cousins for the fist time. It was so cool to see all the kids really enjoy each others company and get to know each other. In fact you would never know that they hadn't met until now. They all seemed to mold together quit nicely. I hope there are many more opportunists to come like this. It was a BLAST! in fact, so much so that we are all a little extra sleepy today.