december daily 2011.

...I'm a little embarrassed to admit this. (don't worry, it's nothing terrible - I'm only "a little" embarrassed :-) I've been slow about posting here because this is post 1001. and I had grand intentions of celebrating post #1000. I guess when I made that fifty for 50 list, I didn't consider the real impact of trying to post daily during november, or how much I post in december, sharing december daily, and holiday fun. so here's my first change to that list... instead of celebrating my 1000th post, I'm going to celebrate my blog's 5th anniversary. next february. when I'm sure things will be much quieter!

whew, it feels so good to get that off my chest! ...and now back to regular posting.

2011 journal...ready to start

one of my favorite things about december is my december journal. started in 2007 with shimelle's fabulous journal your christmas (JYC), I've continued the tradition with a mix of shimelle's prompts and ali edwards' december daily (tell a story each day). 2008 was a hybrid album, 2009 & 2010 were full digital. and for 2011, I decided on another hybrid. just to have the fun of playing with scissors and glue and pretty paper. for reals!

five days into this format, I'm loving it! I downloaded ali's 6x8.5 printables and bought a 7x10 art journal from michaels. I dis-assembled the journal and ran the pages through my printer. one page per day - with room to add "extra stuff" when I get it. once the month is done, I'll reassemble the pages, do something fun with the covers, probably add ribbons to the spiral binding. who knows!

so today's JYC is about advent calendars and I have a new one this year. I've discovered empty nesting and advent calendars can result in 1) way too much chocolate and/or 2) a daily early morning reminder that you're getting old. so I'd planned something new for this year. I'd downloaded ali's advent boxes a few months ago, but it wasn't until last thursday that I hit on the idea of overlaying those boxes on favorite photos (heavily inspired by this photo).

today's page - the tree, three of my favorite ornaments already hanging, and a photo of pulling it all together (it was actually much messier than this!)

I spent way too many happy hours on thursday going through my archive of photos and found 24 favorites. I gathered them into photoshop pages, spent a few more hours matching those advent boxes with the photos, and later, adhered the photos to patterned paper, cut them out, added eyelets and cord. the finished "calendar" is 24 of my favorite mostly holiday photos, ready to hang on a tree.

I love the finished result. beside the tree is a snowman dish full of ornaments waiting to be hung. he's full of happy memories waiting to be relived. ...and I loved the process of creating it. those hours spent sorting through the photos reminded me how beautiful our holidays are...and I'm grateful to have so many of those moments captured.