Johnson Smiles

Ok, continuing on.... Day 15 The photo I used for the 15th was actually from the night before, but I wanted to include our favorite Christmas commercial.  You know, the one where the Hershey's kisses are bells playing We Wish You a Merry Christmas.   I   remember it from when I was a kid, and I started wondering how long it has actually been on.  A quick search revealed that it has been playing (unaltered!) since 1989!  I thought that that was so cool, and got to thinking about how I wished I could thank Hershey for providing this little bit of nostalgia year after year.  Well, I decided there was no reason why I couldn't, so I found the "contact us" information for their corporate offices and wrote them a little thank you note. And I wonder why I always seem to have too much to do.  It's because I feel the need to do highly important things, like research Christmas commercials and contact chocolate companies!  Anyway, my page ended up using...

I'm playing catch up on getting some of my days posted again.  I've been staying fairly caught up on the project, but did have a few days where I felt stuck in figuring out how to get my stories and photos to mesh with the space in the album. Day 10 For the 10th I wanted to get a picture of each of the trees we have this year, showing off the kids' decorating skills :).  I ended up using washi tape to create a fold out style page, labeling each tree with their initial.  It didn't turn out quite how I envisioned it, but it was one of those pages where I stared and stared at it, and in the end it was just time to move on. Day 11 My story for the 11th was going out to eat with Luke's parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who were all in town for our Christmas celebration the following day.  Quick and simple pages. Day 12 On the 12th I went with a simple sentiment in lieu of journaling.  Day 13 For day 13 I had a ton m...

Just a quick page today highlighting Cora's reaction to a note I left under the tree for her.  This was actually the only photo I had for the day and I'm getting to the point in this project where I have to remind myself to take pictures.  For me, I can always come up with tons of stories to tell each day, but I'm not so good at getting the photos to use to create a page.

I love following along with Ali's December Daily .  I generally use her pages as a jumping off point for my own, sort of like a challenge of how I can make what she did work for the stories I want to tell.  Back on day 5 she used tags from her kit to create gratitude cards.  I loved the idea, but it just didn't fit with my story for the day.  So, I scrapped it and did my own thing. Well, December 8th was just a tough day for me.  Nothing specific, just felt like I was doing more drowning than swimming in the sea of life.  I decided to use this project to shift my perspective and highlight 8 things I'm thankful for. Some were specific to the day and some were more general to where I am in life right now.  You can see how it came together below. The front of the 8 tags. ...and the back.  I used the stamp "the reason why" on the bottom of each card as a reminder to myself that these are the reasons why even the tough days are just a p...

December 1st The first few days of December always seem like I have so many stories to tell that it's hard for me to pick which one to put into my album.  In the past I've started my album the day after Thanksgiving since that is usually when we get our tree and decorate the house.  This year I just used my intro divider page to highlight a few decorating photos and started in on the first.  We had a quiet night at home with NOTHING ( what?! ) on the calendar so I chose to document our family watching Rudolph. The journaling reads: "December is off to a good start around here.  The afternoon brought us a dusting of snow and all the daycare kiddos were gone early.  It was one of those cozy evenings at home with the kids doing homework while I made supper.  Luke bounced between helping me in the kitchen and helping the kids with homework.  Everyone was in to their jammys early so we could end the evening cuddled up on the couch watching...

  I couldn't be more excited about the arrival of December (obviously the best month of the year!;).  Our halls are decked, the elf has arrived, TV Christmas specials are playing, and little eyes are sparkling with excitement.   The arrival of December also marks the beginning of this year's December Daily project.  This will be my 8th year creating an album that documents our December with one story per day for 25 days.   The albums only come out in December and we spent Monday evening going through past years.  Although my photography skills are sub-par, and the writing may not be particularly profound, looking through these albums is pure magic.  Seeing our family grow and traditions evolve over the years is worth every minute of time these albums take.   I try to work on the project each day throughout December.  I find that it helps me to be present in the season, and gives me a perspective of gratitude in a month that can so...