A Very Merry Christmas

We had a quiet, cozy Christmas at home this year with just our little family.  It was a sweet time, but we were all pretty tired!! :) 

It started with being up late the night before.  I had most of the Christmas gifts wrapped and ready to go, but our 7 year old was so excited about Santa, she wouldn't go to sleep.  Finally we had everything ready and crawled into bed.  We awoke a short time later, 1:30am, to an even more excited 7 year old who realized Santa had indeed visited!  She continued to wake me up in intervals throughout the night.  I'm not sure she ever went back to sleep!  We finally opened our gifts and all chaos, excitement and fun ensued! 

We then had a Christmas brunch with egg casserole and fruit salad.  The kids played while we tried to pick up the leftover "wrappings".  Later, after an afternoon nap for my youngest, we all snuggled up under a cozy blanket and watched "A Christmas Story" while munching on popcorn.  Dinner was leftovers from our Christmas Eve meal and then everyone to bed early after a wonderful day of sweet memories! 

I just love Christmas and I'm always sad to see it come and go so quickly.  I do enjoy looking forward to the new year though, and the fresh start that it always brings.  I've been thinking about my "One Word" for 2011 and I'm excited to share it soon!

I hope you and yours had a wonderful Christmas and I wish you all the best in the coming new year!

Happy Creating,
Jennifer

Traditions

I'm so enjoying this special time of the year and all of the fun holiday traditions that come along with it! We have several favorites that we continue each Christmas season!

One thing the kids look forward to is our Christmas Elf, Alfie, coming back to our home from the North Pole (Elf on the Shelf)! Each night he reports back to Santa how the behavior has been around here and then returns to a new "spot" each day. The kids race around to see where he's hiding each morning! They've even enjoyed talking to him and sending notes back to Santa with him. So cute!

The kids also look forward to rediscovering our Little People Nativity Set.  It comes out once a year with the holiday decor and it is like a brand new toy!   They have so much fun playing with it!  Its wonderful because it is a set that is kid friendly and can be handled and enjoyed without the worry of it getting broken.

Another special tradition is our basket of Christmas books! Much like our Nativity Set, we keep these packed up with the holiday decorations so they only come out once a year. The kids love looking through them again and remembering their favorites! We have several including The Sweet Smell of Christmas by Patricia M. Scarry, Merry Creature Christmas by Dandi Daley Mackall, and God Gave Us Christmas by Lisa T. Bergren. We love to cozy up under a warm blanket and read together!

Each night at dinner we try to read an Advent Devotion from this sweet little book, Getting Ready for Christmas.  It is perfect for the kids, short but gives us a verse to discuss and an activity to do as a family.


Our family also enjoys a fun family holiday movie night! We break out the popcorn, cuddle up next to the twinkling lights and watch favorites like Elf or the Polar Express. This year we plan to check out The Search for Santa Paws and Disney's A Christmas Carol.

At least one evening during the season we love to grab some hot chocolate and drive around to see all of the Christmas lights and other decorations in our neighborhood and those surrounding us. We listen to holiday music on the radio or a CD and enjoy the view!  Each year I treat myself to a new Christmas CD.  This year my favorites are Glee: the Christmas Album and Chris Tomlin's Glory In the Highest: Christmas Songs of Worship.

Another thing I try to do every year is put a new picture ornament on the tree for both of the kids.  It is so neat to pull out the collection of ornaments each Christmas and see how the kids have changed!  This will also be a great gift for the kids to have for their own Christmas trees someday!

These are a few of the things we do to celebrate this season.  I'd love to hear all about your favorite Christmas traditions! :)  I hope you are enjoying the holidays and treasuring the memories!

December Daily

I’m so excited it is December 1st!!! For the past 3 Christmas Seasons I’ve followed Ali Edwards and her December Daily Project. The basic idea is to create a mini album/journal to document the season quickly and easily. At the end of the month (I end mine on Christmas Day) I have a special keepsake album that chronicles all of our fun and festive holiday happenings as well as meaningful traditions, thoughts about the season and any other special moments I want to remember and document. This album really gets to the heart of what the season means to me and my family.

The key is to keep it simple!!! I actually created the foundation of my album (bare bones so to speak) over the past few weeks. Now I am all ready to begin adding content starting today, Dec. 1st, but you can also create you album as you go. Each day I take a picture and write a short note documenting a special moment, tradition, event, memory, etc. to add to my album/journal. Keeping it short, sweet and simple makes it doable in the chaos of the busy season. I have to say it is such a treat to look back on the years past and see what has changed (or stayed the same) and revisit those special moments with my loved ones!


Here are a few pages from my December Daily Album 2009:

Cover




Dec. 3rd
Chloe the cat knocking down my Nutcracker display!

 



Dec. 4th
I also like to document the everyday moments.
Photo idea:  take pictures of your Christmas shopping receipts and/or bags of gifts.



Use an envelope for a page.



Inside the envelope you can hold extra pictures and journaling. 
This page is part of our Dec. 9th visit to Santa



Dec. 9th

Dec. 10th

Extra pictures for Dec.10th.
I glued them back to back and inserted them into the book rings as their own page.
See other side below:




I’d love for you to play along this year!! It isn’t too late… Join me today and begin creating an album or journal to remember the season! Don’t make it too difficult!! I just used Christmas papers and embellishments from my scrapbooking stash and haven’t bought anything new to include this year. If you aren’t a scrapbooker, you can find lots of Christmas themed paper, stickers, etc. at your local craft stores (Michaels, Hobby Lobby) and places like Target and Wal-Mart. Another idea is to use found/recycled items like cardboard, holiday wrapping paper, old Christmas cards, tags, etc. and put together you album with book rings. I’ve used several of these items as well and will show you my foundation pages in the next few days! :) Looking forward to some holiday creative fun!!

Be sure to let me know if you are joining in!! :)

Happy Creating!
Jennifer

December...where did you go???

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and a great start to your new year! December sure got away from me. We had a wonderful Christmas, but I was even busier than I expected to be. My whole family also caught a nasty cold that slowed things down for a bit. It was my son's very first and he felt his worst on Christmas day. His first Christmas and he felt so yucky; I felt so bad for him! Aside from being sick we had a great time with family coming into town to visit, a surprise snowy white Christmas Eve, a fun visit from Santa, lots of yummy food and special time together celebrating the birth of our Savior, our blessings and sweet family traditions.

I did keep up with my December Daily Album, although I'm not quite finished with it yet. I'd planned to print pictures and post them along the way, but my printer wouldn't cooperate. I finally gave up and just got all of them printed at the same time last week. I hope to sit down and finish it up soon.

This week I need to finish getting the Christmas decor packed up and put away. Do you ever wonder what to do with all of the Christmas Cards you get from dear friends and family? Ali Edwards has a great post about punching out parts of your cards and making a layout with all of them. I have a Christmas Album that I include my family's Christmas photo card and newsletter in along with that season's pictures. I'm thinking I may try this and stick it in as a closing page for each year.

I found another idea for storing your holiday cards in the book Simple Scrapbooks: 25 Fun and Meaningful Memory Books You Can Make in a Weekend by Stacy Julian. Stacy created an entire album for her holiday cards. She keeps it simple and has a section for each year. Within each section she has a place for her family photo and card from that year, a photo pocket to easily store photos she received from family and friends, and a few pages for favorite cards. She also suggests keeping "Letters to Santa" and a collection of Christmas stamps in this album. Cute ideas!!

What do you do with your Christmas cards each year?

Happy Holidays!

I hope the holiday season finds you well and enjoying all the festivities! Hopefully things are stress-free and relaxing rather than overwhelming and crazy! I love this time of the year, the pretty lights, great music and wonderful smells all put me in a cozy, spend time by the fire type mood.

I wanted to share my latest painting with you. It is called Christmas Traditions and I created it for a Christmas art show that Collage, our visual arts ministry at church, is having.

The show is meant to coordinate with our Pastor's latest series, "When God was One of Us", and leads up to our Christmas Eve service. I wanted to capture some of the special traditions our family has this time of the year. I love to decorate for Christmas so I included the tree and the hearth along with the Nativity Scene. The verse is Isaiah 9:6 and hopefully helps to convey the reason we celebrate Christmas - the most wonderful gift we have received through the birth of our Savior!

It is a mixed media piece with acrylic paint and collaged paper, flowers, and buttons.

If you are in the Plano area, the show is at Chase Oaks Church and can be viewed through the middle of January.

Here are a few pictures of my process...

Sorry this last one posted sideways! Blogger keeps turning them for some reason! I'll try to get that fixed. :)

I hope you each have a very blessed holiday and sweet time with family and loved ones!

Merry Christmas,
Jennifer