Is it too early to start talking Christmas?

I think not 🙂  It seems to sneak up earlier and earlier every year. I saw people posting their “red cup” pictures on Instagram yesterday. Emily and I did some grocery shopping this morning and sure enough, the Halloween stuff that filled the aisles just 2 days ago was NOWHERE to be found, replaced entirely by Christmas. It’s hard NOT to get swept up in the excitement when all of the holiday scrapbooking supplies start popping up in August and September. I totally jumped on board and ordered my December Daily kit the very first day it was available for pre-order. And yes…there was a voice in my head saying “are you crazy? you still haven’t finished LAST year’s album (or the year before that 🙁 )”. I ordered Ali Edwards’ main kit and was very lucky to receive Jasmine Jones’ mini kit as a gift. They arrived a few weeks ago and they are so stunningly perfect!! I’m dying to dig in! But I’ve got some unfinished business to attend to first…

After finishing up my Week in the Life album, I wanted to keep the momentum going, so I jumped into working on December Daily 2014. I’ve got a goal to get it finished by the end of November. I’m pretty much starting from scratch (just 3 days completed out of 25 last year, yikes!!). I’m working with my 2014 December Daily kit and I’ve been so incredibly lucky to get to work with the digital versions of all the December Daily products for this year as well, thanks to my time on Ali Edwards’ Digital Creative Team for 2015 (a pretty amazing compromise for having to hold off on digging into my new kits if you ask me 😉 ). I’m excited to share my album here as it comes together, starting with the first 5 days of December 2014.

Day 1:

By the time December 1st rolled around, the holiday decorations were still stacked in Rubbermaid bins in the kitchen. I cropped the photo to 3×8 and trimmed down a page protector, stitching a strip of journaling down the side. 

There’s lots of Christmas stuff that happens before December officially starts and I wanted to be able to include those things in our album as well.

I used a digital paper from the 2015 main kit cropped to 3×8 and typed up some journaling about what we had done so far and some thoughts about my favourite parts.

We went to see Santa a few days before. I wrote about how Liam was so into it this year. He was in the room, sitting with Santa and talking away before I even realized what was happening! Emily was quite happy to see Santa as long as she didn’t have to touch him 🙂 I printed the photo to be 5″ x 5.5″ and stitched it onto a Becky Higgins Project Life photo overlay (cut down from 4×6…it was from the “Playful” overlays, which I can’t seem to find a link to now). I think I still need to add some sort of tab to this insert, not sure what it’ll be yet.

Our family photo is on the back. I’m not sure who gets more excited about the Christmas trees…me or the kids 🙂 We had 3 little trees set up before December 1st, one in Liam’s room, one in Emily’s room and one in the play area in the basement. I love the way they glow, the way they make everything feel so peaceful and the smiles they bring to these little faces.

And I have a thing for tags. I used a few journaling cards from the One Little Bird digital mini-kit to make tags for journaling.

Day 2:

I scanned the kids letters to Santa before we mailed them and included them here. I resized them to 3×4 and printed them on matte photo paper.

I added some confetti from the 2014 December Daily kit for something fun, and printed another card from the One Little Bird mini kit as a tag, stamping the date and adding more confetti.

I found an image on line of one of our Canada Post mailboxes and created my own 3×4 journaling card to tell the story about mailing our letters. The “2” stamp is from the 2014 kit.

The back holds another card from the One Little Bird mini kit and a digital stamp from the Messy Holiday Circles. As we were leaving the post office that day, all excited to have mailed the letters to Santa, I looked down and realized Emily wasn’t wearing any shoes. I swear she had shoes on when we left the house!! She just took them off in the car on the way to the post office.  There was a lengthy line of people watching us as we walked by, smiling away, remembering how their kids use to take off their shoes in the car too. I know I’ve said it before, but the best part about being their mom is seeing the joy they bring to others… seriously.

Day 3:

We have an Elf named Elife who spends the month of December with us getting into all kinds of mischief. He’ll be making a couple of appearances in this album for sure 🙂

Day 4:

I snapped this photo of the giant Christmas tree in the lobby of the hospital as I was sitting on my lunch break. I thought it was cool that I could see myself in the reflection of the ornaments. I typed my journaling on one of the ornaments about the two things I was most thankful for that day…the most stunning sunrise and the safe arrival of my nephew (!!). Its’ hard to see in this photo, but some of those ornaments are popped up with foam dots for a bit of added dimension. It looks really cool in person!

Big love for the giant gold foiled chipboard letters and numbers in the 2014 kit! This year’s kit includes red ones, and I stocked up on some of the other colours available in the shop.

I printed one of the messy holiday circles really big on some matte photo paper and attached it to one of the chipboard pieces that had been in the 2014 kit to make it sturdy. I’m thinking this would make a really cool cover for a mini album and I’m going to put it on my list to try again one day.

The back includes a photo of the star of the day 🙂

Another One Little Bird mini kit card turned into a little tag, along with some digital word art (from this set).

Day 5:

We do the wrapped Christmas book countdown at our house. This year Liam noticed that his Christmas books were missing. And wouldn’t you know it, he found Elfie under the tree with my wrapping paper and tape and scissors! I need to add some journaling to the little tag here still. The journaling card was printed from Jasmine Jones’ mini kit (slightly modified), with the book titles (so far) typed on and stamps added from the 2014 December Daily stamp set.

So that’s what I’ve got so far! It’s hard to pick a favourite because I really like all of them 🙂

I think I’ll try to post an update with a few days at a time each week. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to ask away! Thanks so much for stopping by today!