Skip to content

Category: Christmas

December Daily, Days 1-9

My December Daily 2019 album is sooooo close to being done, which makes me one happy scrapbooker. This is my fourth year doing this project, and it remains one of my favorites. As many of you know, the goal of this project is to tell one story, every day, for the first 25 days of December, (though I know some of you go all the way to 31, and I have no idea how you have the stamina…). I love to see our traditions documented year after year, and seeing how our lives change through the lens of the holiday season.

This year, I used a myriad of products in my album including:

I chose to use the 6×8 size this year, as I have done the past two years, since I find that size both small enough to be easily manageable for daily storytelling, and large enough to have space for more “crafty” elements. Completing this project in this size also reminded me of how much I like smaller albums, which I am excited to return to in the new year.

Day one is one of the more crafty pages in my album, and was inspired by the Product Play 3 class offered by Ali Edwards this year. The star wreath took FOREVER to make, but I’m so happy with the way it turned out, and used a lot of products that I had been hoarding for years. It is followed by a fun flip up with loads of pictures, and the journaling for the day.

Day two was a simple story about Henry’s current favorite playground. It has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas, but it captures what we did that day. I like that this simple layout follows the fancier on from the first day.

Day three uses my least favorite pocket page, but one I force myself to use every year anyway so I don’t waste them! This year, I used the front to showcase some of the shows we’ve been watching, and some of the books and podcasts I’ve been listening to lately. The back is dedicated to the wonder that is Baby Yoda, from the TV show, The Mandalorian.

Day four is the hexagon pocket page from the Product Play three class that I made as a foundation page. This was super fun to make, and inspired me to use my fuse tool more. I still plan to print a full page picture to place behind it.

Day five is a simple around-the-house story about how Henry has discovered how to make toys out of just about anything. His current loves are taking the tissues out of the box, and using a serving spoon to bang on a mixing bowl. Gotta love the toddler life. For the journaling on this page, I cut down a larger page protector and used an avery index tab on the top.

On day six we went to see the lights at Microsoft. Tom had been incredibly busy at work that week, and we were desperately trying to get ready for our trip to Virginia, so this was a nice respite. I cut down a page protector to make the 4×6 size, and used a silkscreen card I made as a foundation page to add a bit of an interactive element to this layout.

Day seven was a travel day from Seattle to Washington DC, so the layout is super simple. I went back and added Henry’s ticket into the album for ephemera and visual texture.

Day eight is all about our day in Washington DC. We visited the Museum of African American History and Culture during the day, and in the evening, we walked to see the National Tree. I created the pocket for the museum map using one of the large shipping tags from the December Daily main kit, and attached some star-patterned transparency using washi and my tiny attacher. I then added some pattern paper, chipboard and a photo to the back of the tag to compliment the picture of the tree. I also added a stamp at the bottom to create a triangle effect to the elements on the tag, to echo the triangular shape of the tree on the opposite page.

We spent Day nine with our dear friend, Laura, who braved the horrible weather in DC to go to lunch, and explore the Natural History Museum with us. I used the wreath page to hold three stories from the day, and punched pieces of a map of DC to show where those stories took place. I used the transparency with ephemera to break up the layout a bit. Later that evening we took the train from DC down to Richmond, VA, but it was such a disaster we forgot to take pictures.

I will have more posts about the rest of my album over the next few weeks, but I’m recovering from hand surgery, that’s all my bum paw can take at the moment. Happy Friday!

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases .

Leave a Comment

New Zealand: Arthur’s Pass National Park

Many abject apologies for the total lack of blogging recently.  We had some server difficulties which made it impossible to access pictures for about a month. Things are back online now, and there should be more frequent updates!

After leaving Abel Tasman National Park on Christmas Eve, we drove south through the interior and finally along the west coast…..and drove, and drove, and drove.  The south island is far less populated that the north island, and this is evidenced by the total lack of traffic, the overabundance of sheep and cattle, and the one lane bridges, (more on these next time).  Our destination was Arthur’s Pass National Park. The weather was volatile, as usual, but we did get some partial clearing and a rainbow or two along the way.

After turning away from the coast, and heading back towards the center of the island, we were aiming straight for the Southern Alps.  This is the mountain range that runs the length of the south island.  It is large, remote, wild, virtually uninhabited and has very few passes over it.  As you may have guessed, Arthur’s Pass is one of them.  Eventually, we started our climb up through the mountains.  It was late in the day, and a mist and fog was laced through the valleys and snaked around the peaks.  We started looking for Gollum to poke his head around the next jagged rock outcropping looking for the One Ring.

We finally arrived at the tiny village of Arthur’s Pass, and tried to seek out a Christmas Eve service.  As it turns out, the tiny chapel in town only has services on Sunday mornings, and Christmas is no exception.  So no Christmas carols for us.  This was  a pretty big blow for me.  I had never been away from family before on Christmas, and never missed the Christmas Eve church service.  To me, it’s an integral part of Christmas, and I wasn’t going to get it this year.  There were tears and I threw a pretty big pity party for myself.  Luckily, I have an amazing husband, who not only dealt with the pity party, but had a BACKUP PLAN.  The backup plan, aside from heroically offering to drive another hour back to civilization after we had already set up camp and night had fallen, was to bust out dinner and the laptop.  While I moped, Tom chopped vegetables for pasta sauce.  Now remember, we were camping, so making nice food is a bit harder.  We had a very yummy dinner of pasta with fresh veggies, which helped lighten the mood.  To top it all off, Tom had loaded a bunch of Christmas movies onto the laptop that we brought with us, and we watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Charlie Brown’s Christmas. As silly as it sounds, eating yummy food and watching fun movies really did make Christmas Eve special.

The next morning, we had our own little mini-Christmas with presents that we had painstakingly brought all the way form home to exchange on Christmas morning.  Tom got me a two person travel game that we played throughout the rest of the trip called Mr. Jack Pocket.  I got him a new pair of underwear!  Hey, I knew it would be about half way through the trip when we exchanged gifts, and I wasn’t exactly sure what the laundry situation would be.  It was nice to have a bit of Christmas, even if it was sunny and very far from home.  (The photos of Christmas Eve and Day aren’t fantastic…but they do tell the story!)

After our oh so delicious breakfast of Cadbury “breakfast bars”, we headed out to the ranger station. For long, strenuous hikes, the rangers like for you to register your intentions, so that if you don’t come back, they know where to go looking for you.  The ranger station was open for only 20 minutes due to the fact that it was Christmas Day, so we needed to be prompt.  When researching the hikes for our trip, the one consistently mentioned in the Arthur’s Pass areas was the Avalanche Peak Trail linked with the Scott’s Track to make a loop.  Now, the Avalanche Peak Trail was considered “very challenging” and the Scott’s Track, “moderately challenging”.  Since it was December and we were feeling a bit out of shape, we decided to go out and back on the Scott’s Track.  This was our first experience with the fact that Kiwis TOTALLY understate the difficulty of their trails.

We knew we were in trouble when the “trail” seemed to be more or less a stream bed, complete with rocks, roots and boulders.  In fact, the word “trail” is a bit of an overstatement of the situation actually.  However, it started in lush beautiful forest full of weird looking plants and more fern trees, so at least we had nice scenery to look at as we hoofed it up and up and up.  Eventually we broke the tree line and were rewarded with jaw dropping views of the valley below and the mountains above.  The higher we climbed, the better the views.  We were right in the middle of the island, and had quite dramatic vistas where the mountains dropped off to the east and west, and where they climbed further to the sky towards the south.  Magnificent.


The higher we got, however, the more exposed the trail was, and the wind was really whipping.  There was some rain forecast to come into the pass in the afternoon, and we could literally watch the storm starting to come in from the west coast.  Eventually it got a bit too windy for this red head, and I called for a lunch stop to reassess our situation.  After dining on sandwiches and chicken flavoured chips, (yes, that’s a real thing, and yes, they are delicious), we decided that the summit was just not in the cards for the day.  It was still over a mile away with probably another 1,000 ft of elevation gain, and we could see the rain coming.  I think Tom would have been up for it if I was willing, but he wasn’t too fussed about turning around.  The views had been amazing, and we were ready to call it a day.

After our decent, the rain began, and we took refuge in the town of Arthur’s Pass on the front porch of a convenience store, which conveniently, (hehe), had wifi that we could use to call our parents via Google Voice.  Crazy technology these days!  While we rested our aching feet, we were visited by several curious kea.  These are the indigenous alpine parrot that lives in the Southern Alps of New Zealand.  They are incredibly intelligent, very curious and often quite mischievous.  They have been known to rip open tents, carry off hiking boots and unzip backpacks to get at hiker’s hidden treats.  They’re fun and quite beautiful.  It was fun to watch them fly and climb around.

We spent one last evening in Arthur’s Pass before heading back to the west coast.   Up next, Franz Joseph Glacier, Queenstown, the elusive kiwi bird and even more rain!  Stay tuned!

4 Comments

Kindle!


So one of my favorite Christmas presents this year was Amazon’s Kindle, given to me by my wonderful husband. Now, I’ve wanted an e-reader for some time, but was hesitant for the following reasons:

1. I love BOOKS, real, live books, that have PAGES made of PAPER. So much so that I own

many, many, many of them.

I was concerned that the Kindle wouldn’t feel the same as a
regular book.

2. I like to read in bed, and I wasn’t exactly sure how cuddly the Kindle would be.

3. They’re expensive.

4. I like to share books with my friends. Easier to do with a real book than an e-reader (although the Nook has this functionality now).


Hmm…could this be the same with a Kindle?

I didn’t want to invest in a Kindle, Nook or other e-reader until the benefits, as I saw them, outweighed my concerns. Here are some of the benefits I came up with:

1. It’s cool. Sorry, but it’s true.

2. When I travel, I am often guilty of bringing 4, 5, 6 or more books with me. Often times, at least one is hardback. The Kindle would lighten this load considerably.

3. It would lay flat so I could read while doing other things, mainly knitting, (yes, I do knit and read).
4. Less environmental impact, after a period of time.

5. Some books, such as bestsellers and new hardback books are significantly cheaper at 9.99 per book. Some are even free:


Ok, so Tom knew that I had been going back and fourth on the reader and did a little research of is own to see which of the e-reader options seemed to be the best option. He decided on the Kindle, which is what I got for Christmas. Whee! Since we exchanged presents before we flew back to the east coast for actual Christmas with my family, I was able to use the Kindle while traveling, (which was in the list of benefits, remember?), and I must say I was not disappointed, though I did forget the little bit of time when the flight attendant says something to the effect of “turn off your portable electronic devices”. DOH! The Kindle is electronic, therefore you can’t use it during take off and landing, which is slightly annoying.

So, Amy, what’s it like? Well, it does many things well, like have an awesome display that doesn’t hurt your eyes, it organizes your material alphabetically, and it has a little toggle “mouse”, (as opposed to the Nook’s touch screen), which I find very handy and intuitive. It’s easy to order books, and to read PDFs. Note taking isn’t super easy, neither is bookmarking, but the search and definition features are well developed and easy to use. Bottom line, I LOVE MY KINDLE!!! (and yes, I do read it in bed, just not in the tub….)

Ok, now this is probably the most technological thing I will ever blog about; I’ll leave the rest up to my hubby. And just so we don’t start taking things too seriously, here’s a picture Shaylee’s favorite Christmas present!

1 Comment