Life is in the Details

Days 12, 13, 14 & 15

I'm a bit behind on my pages, since it's the 18th and I'm only done until the 15th.  But Christmas knitting snuck in and stole some time from me and a bad cold at the beginning of the week really kicked my butt for a few days.  I'm plowing through a ton of knitting and will be for the next 7 days, so my pages may simplify a bit to fit everything in.  This week will also be cookie making, and finishing up last minute shopping so I'm glad I've made it this far and hope to catch up on Monday with the past couple days and this weekend's documentation.

So here are the pages from the 12th through the 15th.

This was the beginning of the sick days on Sunday.  I did very little that day and only took that one photo.

Monday I was still sick, but I got some fiber in the mail that I had ordered so I took pictures of the fiber along with some yarn I am planning to use for the remainder of my Christmas knitting.  Yarn and Fiber has become such a huge joy of mine over the past two years, so it had to sneak into this album in different ways.

Tuesday I was still sick, but starting to feel on the verge of human again.  Eloise showed up at the back door with polyfil in her mouth (I guess only a crafter would have random tufts of polyfil in the backyard), so I thought I'd tell the story of how we trade for whatever she finds in the yard.  She brings me things to the door and I reward her with a cookie.  Very effective tool for keeping dogs from eating things that they are not supposed to eat.

It was also the first day we had snow, just a dusting, but the only accumulation thus far this year. Hoping for some more before Christmas!

And then the exciting day that our new washer and dryer were installed! No more leaking washer in the laundry room!

Thursday I went to my knitting group Christmas party at Sharon's house.  Such a nice party, but I forgot my camera!! Luckily I was able to take a couple pictures with Sharon's camera and she emailed them to me. So I'll work on that page tomorrow, along with Friday and today and tomorrow.  Definitely simplifying as it gets closer to the holiday, which is probably how I should always scrap, so it's a good lesson.

Off to see The King's Speech tonight and then more busy-ness tomorrow! Holidays seem to be quite an endurance sport!!

December Daily Days 10 & 11

Just finished up my pages for days 10 and 11.  Yesterday's pages were time consuming because I went to NYC and took tons of pictures that I loved and I wanted to include them all!

But first, Friday's layout which is very simple.  I didn't do much on Friday, a trip to Costco and the post office, but the most exciting thing was making banana pancakes for breakfast, so that's how this layout came to be.

I used the trick Ali Edwards used yesterday to make the white box and lower the opacity to make the text show up a little better.  Love that trick!

I just love the picture that Ana took of the banana pancakes with the bokeh from the Christmas tree behind them.  Here's a closeup of that picture, good enough to eat for sure! And they tasted as good as they look!

Yesterday we went into NYC to see the Donny and Marie Christmas on Broadway show.  The city was the definitely bustling, as it should be this time of year.  It was up around 45 degrees, so warm enough that people were not worried about the cold and everyone was out!

We had hoped to get some John's pizza when we arrived, but we had hit traffic and there was a line at John's so we headed to another smaller pizza place that was packed too, but the line was at least moving fast. We scarfed our pizza and headed to the show that was to start at 2. 

The show was great! It was a small theater so being in row J we were right up in front.  Donny and Marie are such showmen/showpeople (?) and they are so personable, and really get the audience involved.  The show was a little less than 2 hours, shorter than a typical broadway show, which ended up being a good thing because we had time to do a little looking around afterwards.

We started to walk toward the tree, and were taking pictures along the way, but the crowds kept getting more and more packed and we decided to just stop at Magnolia Bakery and then head back home.  We can see the tree another time, it's the same every year afterall.

Here's the layouts I made for yesterday, it got to be a lot of pages because I just loved so many of the photos and I didn't want to exclude any. So I separated the days into sections sort of, with the city sights, then Donny and Marie along with the playbill and tickets in a pocket, and then a few shots of the bakery which is so pretty and decorated for the holiday with silver snowflakes and birds hanging from the ceiling!

The text on the left page is the lyrics to the Rob Thomas song, New York City Christmas. I always think of that song when I walk around NYC at Christmastime.

I used the original transparency that was intended for the 11th.  And inserted a few other photos just by pasting them together and making a mini page.

Look at the crowds of people on the photo on the right, it was just jam packed!!

I love the photo in the second row of this page on the left, it's SO New York City to me.  It came out a bit blurry but I just had to include it anyway.

Here's a close up:

I just LOVE the pretzels and the tree lights behind the cart. I can almost smell the chestnuts!

Here is the Donny and Marie spread, with the illegal photos taken by Ana.  I worried about us being yelled at by the usher since photos were not permitted.  Of course, now I'm very glad she took the pictures!

And finally Magnolia Bakery.  The cupcakes were okay, well they were  good especially for the number these people have to produce daily but  I'm so spoiled now by Flaky Tart cupcakes that nothing compares.  But that store is just beautiful! The colors are just perfect for a cupcake store.

So that's all for now.  Today I am sick and sniffling up a storm.  Maybe I should just glue a tissue to some cardstock and call it a day.  Maybe a photo of nyquil. I'm not going to worry about it until tomorrow. Today we're having pea soup and homemade bread and lounging while it rains outside.  If not for this cold it would be a perfect day!

December Daily Days 8 & 9

Here's some photos of my past couple days of the December Daily. 

On the 8th, I just took some photos of my Christmas decorations outside and filled up the little circle page with the images. It was super simple to do, I just printed the photos wallet size, and they were tiny enough to fit in the circles.

For yesterday's layout, I wasn't really sure what to do because I didn't do anything very exciting, so I just wrote about my errands during the day, a trip to the post office to send out some yarn I destashed, some knitting errors I needed to fix, a few of the tv shows I watched,  and a little bit about the chicken pot pie I whipped out in less than an hour! (Pre baking)  And used some photos of my knitting and pot pie. This is just a reminder to myself that I really like to do the regular day types of layouts, because they show a slice of my life right now. And I am pretty happy with the results.

I used a bunch of Ali Edward's digital word art from Designer Digitals and modified them a bit in photshop to fit into circles so I could use a punch to make little embellishments. I am totally loving the "free transform" command!! Just rediscovered that this morning.  The pages printed out brown, which leads me to believe I either picked the wrong color, or I'm running out of red ink.  I imagine it's the latter since I've been printing a whole lot of red lately.  So I need to pick up some more ink today. 

I accidentally printed out the photo page wallet size the first time around and thought it was so cute, this tiny version of my page.  So I used it as a bit of a preview on the preceeding transparent page.

Not sure yet what today's page will be about, but it's looking to be another ordinary day.  Maybe I'll get ambitious and hang my stockings finally so I can be a bit more festive.

December Daily Day 7

A very quick December Daily assembly today.  I had used a plastic photo folder for day 7 that had places for four photos, so it seemed fitting that I use photos of my four kitties.  I scouted down my cats around my house, and tried to get some decent photos of them.  I just added some text from Ali Edwards Holiday Word Art (the original version) and printed them out.  Then for a little extra I just adhered some ribbon.  It was pretty fast, only took me about 45 minutes to assemble in front of the tv. It's good to have a quick day here and there.

I think today will be another quick day, since I'm just going to take some photos of the decorations around the house and use the red circle page as little frames for the photos.

I'm still caught up, but it's getting harder to keep at this everyday.  I'm determined to keep up, but I have some gift knitting that is suffering.  It's not so much the time it takes to do the pages, but all the surfing the net to see everyone's pages is a time drain.  I need to stay focused on the knitting!!  Hopefully I'll get some done today.

December Daily Days 5 & 6

On Sunday I spent the day relaxing for the most part after our craziness on Saturday, getting the tree, decorating and putting together the Lemaxx village.  Saturday night I made some cinnamon buns and Sunday I just popped them in the oven and made some orange glaze for them.  First time with the orange glaze, and they were like an amazing version of my favorite Pillsbury Orange buns!

So here are the pages for Sunday, pretty simple.

Yesterday I went to Philadephia with Sharon to go visit the Loop yarn store and Spool, the fabric store next door.  They reminded me of Purl Soho, with the yarn store and fabric store next door to each other.  Although I think Purl is now combined into one store.    I just bought some of Brooklyn Tweed's Shelter in the Raspberry Jam colorway.  I had wanted that color when I ordered a sweater quantity online, but they were out.  Now I can make some colorwork mittens with the leftover Nest color from the sweater and the Raspberry Jam! I think they'll be a great combo. 

The store was so cute, very colorful! And had some very nice yarn.  I'd love to go back when my paycheck returns!

Here are the pages from yesterday...

I added a little sample of the Yarn I bought to the backside of the transparency.

I also have the back of Day 6 done.  It is part of Day 7.  I stamped an embellishment to count down that we are 18 days until Christmas. I still have to print out the photos for the plastic sleeve folder that I am using for Day 7.  There are 4 slots, so I think I'm going to use a photo of each of my sweet kitties, so that they can make a cameo in the album. But here is the countdown page for now...

Stay tuned for Day 7 either tonight or tomorrow!

December Daily Day 4

Here's my pages from Day 4! It was a very busy day getting the tree, going out to lunch and then searching high and low for Buffalo Snow (and never finding any!)

I am loving using the templates from Designer Digitals.  It's so easy to include lots of photos! I actually bought the 12x12 pack because I had the first two volumes from two years ago when I did an 8x8 book, but I've been modifying them to suit my 6x8 book this year. 

Originally this page was just a transparency with the little green 4, but I peeled the 4 off, put it on the photo layout and used another transparency to make a pocket for the journaling. 

And here's a closeup of the pocket.  I was surprised how easy it was to sew the plastic. I learned that the trick is to just go slow, but I'll definitely be using this trick again!

Day 5 will hopefully get done today as well! I can't believe I'm still on schedule!!

December Daily Days 1, 2, & 3

I caught up today on my December Daily album after spending the past couple days at my Mom's house with a short detour to my Dad's house yesterday.  Busy week, but it made for good photos.  I also finally received the adhesive and the last of the transparencies I needed from Scrapbook.com to finish up the album structure.  I ordered those on Nov. 19th, had I known it would take so long I would have just made the trip to the local scrapbooking store! Live and learn.  So here are the first of my pages and as of today I'm actually not behind! This may be the last time I'm able to say that. Here are the pages thus far...

For the cover page I used an acrylic album from D. Reeves that I bought a few years ago.  It was always meant to be a December Daily album, because I loved Ali Edward's white version of this album she did in 2008. Unfortunately I don't think these albums are made anymore and when I bought it they only had the clear left. It's too bad because the quality of these are just awesome. But I'm glad I had this one and a few others still hiding in my stash. 

Day 1 - Spent the day up at the Lake with Kim and the kids visiting

Day 2 - Drove over to Dad's for lunch from Mom's house

Day 3 - I was home today and noticed the Thanksgiving decor blending with the Christmas. I'm planning to put all the Thanksgiving away tomorrow to put out the rest of the Christmas decorations. The envelope may move somewhere else. It was originally part of Day 2 but didn't work there, so it's floating right now.

I was worried with my tight budget this year I may not do enough to fill these pages, but so far it may be the most exciting year yet!