More 25 Days of Christmas...

Shelby took her last two finals yesterday and I'm waiting for her to finish up at the University so I can make the two-hour trip to pick her up. She doesn't start her next term until the end of January so she needed to give her dorm room a thorough cleaning since she'll be away for so long (and knowing what a messy girl she is this may take a few hours!) While I'm waiting I thought I'd post days 11 through 18 from my 25 Days of Christmas album...
On day 13 I baked...and baked...and baked. I did something a little different this year and used an envelope as the page...I put the picture and the journaling on the front and tucked all the cookie recipes inside for safe keeping. If this album holds up for a few centuries it'll be fun to think my great great grandchildren can bake the same cookies I did.
On Day 14 I addressed all the Christmas cards and used an extra one for that day's "posting"...journaling is on the back of the card.
On the 17th we went to visit Santa...the year we all got our picture taken with him (except for Shelby who was preparing for finals at the University). I didn't glue the picture to background paper, I just punched holes in it and used it as it's own page...here's the back...

I still have 7 more days to go and this album is so thick I think I'm going to need bigger rings to bind it!

The First 10 Days...

Here are the first 10 days in my 25 Days of Christmas album...

The only reason I have two covers is becuase I got these great vintage luncheon plates at an estate sale and wanted to use one somewhere in this album...it ended up on top of the original cover... Day one was Sebastian's Lego Advent Calendar...which is turning out to be well worth the money...he's getting some really cute little goodies each day!

For day 5, I used some clear sports card holders (from Tom's vast collection) and slipped two vintage tags into the pockets...this is a view of the front of the tags...

and this is a view of the back of the tags...
The journaling for Day 6 is on the back of the Merry bingo card...

We're off to get our Christmas tree at the cutest little tree farm in Lake Elmo...my family ALWAYS had a real tree when I was growing up and Tom's never wanted one but this year he really didn't get a say. I can't wait until the entire house smells of pine!

25 Days of Christmas Journal

I finally finished gathering all my papers, cards, chipboard shapes, etc. for my 25 Days of Christmas journal. Last year was my first year doing it and I liked it so much I'm doing it again this year. You can see that I leave my pages relatively empty as far as embellishments go because I'd rather decorate it based on the happenings of the day...I don't even add my day numbers ahead of time because sometimes I have more than one picture and may use multiple pages for one day. So here it is...I'm ready for December 1st...

This cover is actually a vintage Christmas luncheon plate. I picked up a bunch at an estate sale a few months ago and I'm so glad I found a use for them (or at least one of them).

I usually punch holes in one of the greeting cards we send out to our friends and relatives and use that as a page. I also like to add the little photo postcard type cards my brother and sister send every year so I have pictures of their kids in the journal too since we don't usually get to see them around the holidays...and, it's always fun to look back at that type of thing. If you haven't made one of these journals you should give it a try this year!