December Daily, day 21–25 and Done!

Days 21 and 22 are together on a spread and days 23 and 24 are together because Christmas is over and I’m behind and I’m ready to celebrate this book being done!

I loved finishing it up today, don’t get me wrong.  I’m just thrilled to have it done and move on to the next thing too…

Cute little transparent insert directly from the mind of Ali Edwards but looks just as good in my book as it does in hers…  lol

Heading up to the hills for our first Christmas at Guh/Umpa’s mountain house, outside Estes Park, Colorado!  It was perfect!!! (pictured below is Lyons, Colorado all decked out for Christmas.  It’s in the foothills, on the way up to the mountains.)

So glad we made time to shoot Dood’s new bow that he got for Christmas because… while we were out there, the snow started and I was in Heaven.  I LOVE SNOW! 

I got a ton of great pictures of my boys!  And a nice, drunk lady got this great picture of the four of us together… Ah, Christmas memories of the nice, drunk lady…

Christmas Eve was nice and warm and relaxing once we got back to the house.  We decided to let the boys open half their gifts on Christmas Eve this year – they were so happy!

Christmas morning we woke up to 8 inches of new snow!  It was perfect!  Scott built a big fire in the fireplace, we opened the rest of the gifts and hung out and played.

It was such a great day – peaceful, detached – but in a good way, relaxing.  I read (finished a really good book that I couldn’t put down) and knit several inches on a pretty sock, hung out with Mama and Daddy.  The boys played with their new toys, so did Scott…  hehehe

Final page of the book is just a simple collage of more pictures taken on the shooting range, in the snow!

When I was all done, I tied it up with a beautiful, Christmas-y ribbon and called it done!

On to more projects:  I’ve ordered a new kit for 2013 Project Life.  I’ve registered for One Little Word 2013 and I’ll be participating in 52 of You, an online introspection/photography class that I’m very excited about.

Also have two pairs of socks 1/2 knit, a sweater 3/4 done and an afghan that requires that I learn how to crochet to finish… 

Lots to do – that’s how I’m happiest.

December Daily Days 16-20

Early Christmas shopping  documented.  We bought Will a real compound bow this year.  We’re all very excited about using it at the mountain house over Christmas!

I kinda liked this layout on the journaling card that is once again, totally Ali Edwards inspired.  It looks like a postcard to me.

Such a sad day for our family and a hard page to put together:

His absence isn’t blindingly painful now, a few days of space between us and his passing.  But now I’m at the point where it sneaks up on me and ambushes me.  Making dinner for the doggy girls and seeing only two bowls, watching where I step when I get out of bed and looking for a little, fuzzy black  dog – so that I don’t step on him, remembering how he would rub up against the side of the bed, like a kitty cat in the mornings.  The only thing that gives me peace is thinking that he’s with Jo again.  And I’ve felt it in my heart, undeniably, several times.

I’m carrying a snapshot of him in my pocket.  I don’t know how long I’ll feel the need to be able to look at him at a moment’s notice.  It might be a while.

He was very grumpy the last year – I think because he was sick.  He was on pain meds, so I don’t think he was in pain – he just didn’t feel great…  When we went on our vacation to Michigan in June, KC sat on me the whole trip and he was so sweet and so good.  I will cherish those memories forever.

Day 18 was all about trying to stay busy.  Will assumed the role of caretaker.  Yep my almost 12-year-old was taking care of me.  He’s such a sweet boy.  Scotty was just confused and wasn’t really sure what to do to help or how to feel.  There were lots of extra hugs and kisses from him too, though.

Another day at home and snow outside.  Lots of healing going on.

School ended up being canceled this week after all.  I had thought about calling it quits a week early and had decided against it…  but circumstances proved to make it necessary.  The boys and I filled our days with Christmas preparation and playing.

Documenting the snow!  We didn’t go out and play in the snow this time…  I’m not sure why.  The boys preferred to watch it from indoors.  I knit until my hands ached.  It was awesome!

I’ve had to order some more page protectors for this little book, because I don’t want to use the EXTRA thick chipboard pages that were included.  The extra page protectors should be here by the time we get back from our Christmas adventure and I can finish my little book.

We’re supposed to get more snow on the 24th and 25th up in the mountains!   It’s going to be perfect – coffee, wine, maybe a fire in the fireplace, knitting, reading, watching Christmas movies!  I can’t wait to get there!

With KC gone, both our baby dogs get to go on family trips now.  (We have an awesome sitter who has been taking care of the little puppies at the house, while we were gone.)  Boo gets separation anxiety  and makes herself sick – so she has to go with us.  And now that we only have two, tootsie-pop can’t stay home by herself.  It’ll be nice having all the family together.

Fun extra documentation that I like to include in the back of my little book includes a gift list and menus and grocery lists.

It’s fun to read all that stuff  later.

We’re half packed and ready to leave for Christmas in the mountains.  I’m letting my honey sleep in – cause he never does anymore and it’s weird that it’s 10 and he isn’t up.  Maybe he needed it.  We’ll take off soon.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!!

14 Years and 2 Months

Over way too soon, my sweet, favorite, one-and-only boy dog!  I miss you terribly, Kace.

December Daily, pages 8-9 and 12-15

Day 8, documenting our annual Christmas family get-together in Fort Collins, Colorado.  This year we met at Sonny Lubick’s Steakhouse in Old town and I can’t recommend it highly enough.  Everything I had was delicious.  The atmosphere was just the right amount of fancy without being pretentious, the service was good.  We had a great time.

I had already collected a couple Starbucks wraps.  I knew I wanted to use one again, just didn’t know how yet, until…  Ali Edwards posted this idea on her blog and I stole it!

So, I think this is a gorgeous picture of old town Fort Collins, Colorado.  And it’s pretty enough that I’ll remember how magical it looked.  But in all honesty, the picture doesn’t do it justice.  It looked like a fairy tale.  It was amazing!  They did an awesome job decorating!

Day 9.  At home again and using a simple collage of Christmas images and a picture of a very special early Christmas gift from my mother.

My Mom had that ring rebuilt for me this year.  It was one of the first things she bought herself at her very first job, at the grown-up age of 17.  She decided to give the ring to me this year.  I will cherish it.

Bee had spent the whole day in his pajamas.  Being home schoolers, we can do that sometimes…  He was thoughtful and quiet, looking at the ornaments on the tree.

 

Day 13 – a pretty elaborate layout.  (I love these kinds when I have the time to do it.)  Completely lifted from Ali again, but so beautiful that I don’t mind.

Love heat embossing and I only ever do it in December Daily – not sure why…  This one was embossed on vellum.

With the last bit of snowflake Hambly transparency to my name on the back of the vellum…  Surely someone will fill that void in the market very soon…

I don’t know why he was so silly and happy – we were about to have a spelling test…  Whatever.  I’ll take it!

Day 14 – had way more than just one picture that I wanted to use, so I made a fold-out thingy and filled it with pictures from our home school group Christmas party at the park, that happened last Friday.  The boys had a ball!  Thank you, Katherine and Jennifer for putting the whole thing together.

The wooden letters in an altered page protector was from Ali again, who said she saw it on Twitter…  So thank you, someone, who shall remain nameless for now…  it was a very cool idea!  (Ali sewed her letters in and I was just too lazy to get my sewing machine out.)

Lots of Washi tape.  I LOVE that stuff!

Back side of the fold-out thingy:

All caught up!  Day 15, documenting our favorite doggy sister coming for a visit.  Boo’s biological sister, Heidi Holly, who happens to live two doors down, came to visit Friday and Saturday.  Oh, she’s the second sweetest goldendoodle in the world!!!  My baby Boo had so much fun with her.

We miss her already and can’t wait for another visit!

That’s it for now.  I’m keeping up with Project Life too, but at the moment, it’s a little repetitive and I really should be knitting…

Have a great week!

December Daily 2012, Days 1-7, 10 and 11

The intro page is all Ali Edwards.  I just copied it, using the December Daily kit from Studio Calico.

This too is all Ali Edwards.  If you like it, you really should check out her blog.  She’s been my favorite scrapbook artist from day 1! (almost 10 years ago.)  Here’s the link to her site:  http://aliedwards.com/

I love transparent pages and I was so sad to hear that Hambly went out of business.  There really is nowhere that compares – that I’ve found as of yet.  If you know of a company doing artsy transparencies, please leave a comment and let me know.

Got the collage idea from Cathy Zielske, also one of my favorite scrapbook artists.  Check out her blog here:  http://cathyzielske.typepad.com/

The envelope full of Christmas love letters – that was all me, thank you very much!

Even though my puppy/Christmas lights pictures didn’t turn out as I wanted, I’m still using them.  They went through all that 5 minutes of torture and I’m going to make it worth it!

Including the Christmas gift list again this year:

Trying to be interestingly creative with a 4 x 6 inch page…

Bought the digital templates from Ali for the formatted pages and did some Photoshop work:

Days 8 and 9 are still under construction because I ordered enlarged prints.

Next page is pretty straight forward:

Used another digital kit from Ali for the journaling card and there’s another transparency behind it.  (a left over bit of a Hambly one…  sniff, sniff.)

That glass of wine is looking really good right now.  Gonna go get that and knit.  Have a great night.  Hope you’re having a fun December and holiday season.

What I learned about making soap…

1.  Use a SMALL loaf pan.  My normal meatloaf pan was too wide.  It worked, I cut the slices of soap in half and they’re still cute.  I’d just rather them be smaller pieces without having to be cut.  I might even buy bar molds next time.  They don’t cost that much.  I found everything I needed at Hobby Lobby.

This is mine:

2.  Next time I will use opaque glycerin, not clear.  I wanted mine to look like hers:  http://brandyscrafts.blogspot.com/2011/12/candy-cane-soap.html  This is hers:

3.  She said that she wrapped hers  in parchment paper.  I couldn’t make parchment paper work to save my life.  Tape won’t stick to it, it won’t stay folded – it was impossible.  So I wrapped mine in a piece of wax paper and covered it with a piece of tissue paper.  (I was worried that the soap would stick to the tissue paper, if I used it alone.)

4.  I was worried about the candy on top and would it leave your hands sticky the first few times you use the soap…  It washes off the first time you use the soap.

5. She says it leaves your hands smelling like peppermint…  Hmmm…  I used twice as much soap scent as she did and I can not smell peppermint at all when my hands are dried.  While I’m washing my hands, I can smell it.  But I will use twice as much scent next time.  This time I used 1/4 teaspoon in each layer…  And in my pink layers, I used 10 drops of red soap dye.

6.  She said she let each layer set up a little before adding the next.  I wouldn’t do that next time… a couple of my layers didn’t adhere well.   By the time you microwave another batch of glycerin the previous layer is cooled enough on top to add another layer.

7.  I love this idea and didn’t really expect it to be perfect the first time.  But I’ve learned a lot and I will try this again and it’ll be way cooler next time!

I hope everyone likes it – it’s really pretty…

It was a lovely night

We met for our annual family reunion/Christmas dinner, hosted by my parents, at Sonny Lubick’s Steakhouse in Fort Collins, Colorado. (which I highly recommend.  Service was awesome, food was delicious.)  And the city of Fort Collins had made the old town area look positively magical!

So this is the collage that everyone will love:

This is the one I love:

YES, I would have used a goofy picture of Scott and me too, IF Lisa had taken one…  and we didn’t think to do one…  Next year, I promise.

They even had gluten free chocolate cake and I’m afraid I’m going to pay for indulging…  It was gluten free, but not sugar free and I ate 2/3 of it and have had a headache all day today…  Please keep your fingers crossed that it’s a fluke and I wake up tomorrow feeling like a million bucks.  Here’s a picture of the cake – it was so good and so fun…

Hope you’re enjoying the season already too!

What We’ve Been Doing

Finished up my November Thankful book.  The pages were a kit from Cathy Zielske.  Made it super easy and fun to put together.

Finished Will’s Christmas socks!

Washed the grays right out…

Baked gluten free, sugar free banana walnut bread – and it was actually good!

A boy Christmas project.  We picked up these pine cones at Guh/Umpa’s mountain house this past summer.  We sprayed them and glittered them and they turned out beautiful!  My young men did awesome!

On a not so happy note, it’s always a bummer when a big, unexpected expense comes up, but it’s even worse right before Christmas.  We were able to take advantage of having to replace the water heater and replace it with one TWICE AS BIG!!!  (had an unexpected truck repair come up too – please don’t let these things come in threes…)

Lots of baking been going on!  Our Bee has made Christmas cookies twice already!  He’s our resident Cookie Monster, after all…

Finishing up the last few weeks of Project Life 2012!  Oh yes,  I’m doing it again in 2013 – going to get the black albums again and the Cherry Edition this time!  Going to be a little more girly looking next year!

The boys opened their first Christmas presents from Aunt Marla and Uncle Eric!  They’re dying for Daddy to find the time to show them how to fly them!

STARTED DECEMBER DAILY!!  (Love you, Ali Edwards!)  I bought the December Daily kit this year to make things a little easier.

Home school.  I had promised the boys that we’d watch the movie when we were done with our Language Arts unit that was based on the book.  We finished the unit yesterday and watched the movie today.  I cried when we read it and I cried again when we watched it…  I’ve become a wimpy girl…

Finished one of Bee’s Christmas fingerless mittens today.  Lots more knitting to get done this month!

It’s a really, really good busy!