as of RIGHT now...

that was a very long "small" break..

it's taken me a few days to get back on track...ever find that as you get older it's not so easy to just pick up where you left off. After 24 hours of marathon shopping and sightseeing I needed sleep...imagine that:) We also got our tree and have spent a couple of days decorating it and such. I've been wrapping gifts, writing out cards..and just spending some time with my daughter before she turns the big 12 tomorrow. Wanting to cherish these last few moments before life becomes a little more interesting with the pre-pubescent young lady. She has two pimples on her nose and it's funny to see her both dismayed and proud of  this big moment...I told her it won't be so wonderful after the 25th or so pimple...then she will just be annoyed like me whenever one pops up:) It's been a really good couple of days but I am excited to get back into the Christmas Journal... speaking of which...

I did complete day 13. Presents are the best part of Christmas (and before you start lecturing me about being so selfish). I LOVE giving presents. Searching for presents. Buying presents. And in this case making a few presents this year. It's my favorite part of the year. Any reason to give small tokens of my appreciation and love to my friends and families. I wrote my entry on my tradition of opening gifts one at a time...I love seeing the faces of those opening gifts. I like to take the time to see and talk about each gift. It takes longer, that's very true, but I can still remember my daughter's face when she has opened certain gifts in the past. Nate's family doesn't do this though. They seperate the presents and then you can open them as fast or slow as you want. No one stops to watch...hal;f the time I don't even know what each person got from one another...it's been a hard tradition to conform to. I'm almost always the last to open my gifts because I'm trying to watch everyone else. But...I'm trying to go with the flow and enjoy the time together. Hopefully one day it will also seem like a tradition to me also (but only at their house...I think I'll keep my one gift at a time philosophy for my own household..shhh)

jen

day 7

well... getting a little worn out with all of this creative stuff I have been doing. I am not usually able to create a layout in a day's time. Most of my layouts take me a LONG time to make so I'm afraid this project is going to sap every last ounce of creativity out of me. So this layout is not nearly as creative as I would have liked. I will probably go back and do more to it later but for now it's all that I am able to come up with. For this one I just made a pocket for a list of the presents I am buying for everyone this year. This goes along with my thought that this journal can also serve a purpose for me next year as a place that I have organized all the details of this year...and with that really long run on sentence I am out of here...to eat, watch a little TV and go to bed early. I have a big weekend plans and I want to be well rested for them:)

jen

P.S. This actually looks much better in real life. I was just looking at it thinking "Hey, I thought this looked a little better than it does here" and I am right. So sorry for the scan...

day 6

For the most part my holidays have all been filled with wonderful memories. I've had the occasional rough patch (as we all have) but for the most part I don't have any "bad" christmas experiences...well, except one. And I remind myself of that experience enough to NOT want to bring it up in my journal. It was a moment that may have been a key turning point in my dad and I's relationship, it reminds me of how inadequate I felt at that age of expressing myself clearly without hurting all those around me, and how much I wish I could take back what I said and make things all better. I can't though because it's still there, in my mind, every Christmas...but like I said...I don't want to wallow in the not-so-perfect Christmas of my past and concentrate more on the wonderful memories of Christmas past. For my journal I made a list of my favorites...just a few because there are so many amazing and beautiful memories of past holidays. These are just the few that popped into my head tonight:) I'd also like to apologize fro the wonky scanner...it's not doing so well lately:( the journaling is as follows:

Christmas favorites:

The beauty of that first time you turn the Christmas tree lights on

The look in my daughter’s eye’s Christmas morning

The feeling I get from finding the “perfect” gift for my loved ones

That perfect gray angora sweater with the hearts my dad bought for me one year when I was about 11 or 12

Walking in the crisp evening air to see all the houses lit up with lights

My mom’s chocolate crinkle cookies

My mom’s fudge (the BEST fudge ever)

Every Christmas spent with my husband and daughter

Seeing friends who come to town

Peppermint mochas from a variety of coffee shops

thanks for looking!!

Another thing....today was a reminder of how grateful and blessed I feel for having my familywith me and safe...my heart goes out to Kati Kim and her children and James Kim's family. I've been following the story for days and it was heartbreaking to hear the about tragic end to this story. I had had so much hope it was all going to turn out to be okay...

jen

advent calendar-day 5

I think that my scanner may finally be on it's last legs...it won't scan straight...so to me these pages look so crooked...in real life they are not crooked so it's a little frustrating. It's also scanning SO slow ....hopefully it gets me through the journal at least:)

I cheated a little and looked ahead only because Tuesdays are one of my busiest days and I won't have ANY time today to work on it. I'm gone from 8:00am to 7:30 ish tonight and then I have dinner to deal with and homework to do so...Tuesdays have to be done early:)

I decided to make my entry a calendar of events and an advent calendar. Borrowing the idea from Erica Hernandez I have tags in the pockets with some type of Christmas activity we are going to do that day. This is one of my ways of "taking Christmas Back"...to make sure that we as a family do something holiday related each day. So that we can stop and enjoy the holiday even if only for a few minutes each day. Thanks for looking...hope everyone has an awesome day:)

jen

day four

this one I did as a double layout. The prompt was about embracing imperfection and our "dream" holiday. Cutting down the tree falls into both of these categories for me. I don't feel like it's really Christmas without the tree but every year we have such a hard time finding days when all three of us are available to go out to the tree farm and pick a tree. It's a source of stress for me because I don't want to wait too long but I also want everyone to be able to participate so it becomes a lesson in patience...I'm still not very good at this lesson. But!...this year I'm trying to go with the flow a little more...and be excited for the holiday even without the tree up yet.  It's a work in progress with me;) We are getting it this weekend though:D

I was reading on someone's blog yesterday that they were enjoying this project because they didn't feel the need to use the newest products. This struck such a cord with me because I feel the same way. I have been quickly producing pages and not even worrying about what product I use. I'm going on the pure pleasure of my vision for the pages. It feels really great:) This transparent overlay was given to my years ago and I never used it but when I came across it I KNEW exactly what I wanted to do with it for this prompt. Such an awesome feeling! Having a great time with this project:)

So tired tonight...think I'll be turning in soon. Hope everyone had a wonderful Monday:)

jen

christmas cards...

are the only part of the holidays I DON'T look forward to. I think I've sent them out once or twice in the past 5 years. My problem stems from not being very organised with my addresses. I write them on scraps of paper...one of the many address books I have around the house...some addresses can only be found on a wedding invite list from 2 years ago...anyway...I'm using today's prompt to help myself get better organized. I have placed an Autumn Leaves library card pocket on my page. I am going to gather ALL of the addresses of our friends and family in this envelope (on the cards that came with the pocket) so that next year I will have all the addresses exactly when I need them. Some of you may be the lucky ones that benefit from my organization this year...be on the lookout for your card:) Of course I have to buy them first:0

HAve a wonderful Sunday:)

jen

day two

I made some funky snowflakes for this prompt. But given that I live in sunny Califonia I thought they were appropriate. Especially given the weather today...it was a beautiful and sunny 67 degrees today. My friends and I were enjoying the wonderful warm rays while hanging in the park earlier. Not even any fog today. Absolutely fricking beautiful:)

Our prompt today was about weather and while I do like the snow (in small doses) my entry today is about how glad I am to live in a state that, for the most part, does not involve any snow. I am just not a snow person. And while I may squeal like a little girl when I see snow, the novelty wears off real quick for me. Like when my feet sink so low in a snow drift that snow gets in my shoes...I don't care for that. Or having to wear gloves...I'm the type of person that hates to be constricted by anything and gloves to me are the worst! Anyway...I feel grateful that snow is an option that I chose to go visit rather than it visiting me.

I am having such an amazing time doing these entries. More than I even thought I would...it's kind of freeing not having to have photos on all my pages.. I can totally see doing these for just my day to day living...

jen

Ali's challenge and my Christmas Journal

This week Ali wanted us to scraplift another scrapbooker. So here is my scraplift of one of Elsie's layouts. AS you can see...my funkiness is not existent....especially because I was freaking out that all of her strips didn't go all the way across. And that she had flowers or stars at the end of ALL of those middle strips...mine is much more geometrical in it's style with a few embellishments thrown on in what I hope is Elsie fashion...I chose Elsie to scraplift beacause she is SO far from my own style. Her style is funky and young and mine all lines up nicely....it's the anal part of me at work...anyway...it was fun to try something new. I won't be repeating it though. I will say that I had fun mixing so many pattern papers...I don't usually have this many on one page:)

Also...today was the first prompt for the Shimelle Christmas Journal class.  I saw Ali do this last year and I LOVED her entries so I decided to give it a try this year:) For the first day we were to make an introduction/dedication page. Mine just states my reason for wanting to do this Christmas Journal along with Shimelle's manifesto

I like how it came out. I am excited to be doing the class if only for the reasoin that I made a promise to myself to spend 15 minutes a day reflecting on what the holiday season means to me.  I'm afraid that I won't be able to keep up. Life will get in the way as usual. But for now I'm being positive:) Today's page was easy...less than an hour and most of that was spent on trying to figure out what to write...

I'm also hoping that this will help me keep to my post a day in December that I was trying for. I always start out saying I'm going to post everyday and well..for those loyal 2-3 readers...you can see that I don't quite meet this goal. Erica made this a goal on her blog today and well...if she can keep it up so can I:)

Hope everyone is going to have a fun weekend. I'm laying low this weekend because next weekend is a big San Francisco trip for Alex's birthday. All day shopping and sight seeing plus staying over night on Saturday. Should be fun but busy:) Plus we may cut our tree down next weekend (I'm shooting for this weekend though...fingers crossed)

jen