Callaloo Soup

December Daily Catch-up: Days 2 to 11

I am so happy to be keeping up with this album! Sadly I don't get to do the pages daily, as most nights I am way too wiped once we get Kieran to bed, and I have dinner. And there were a couple days where I totally forgot to take a photo. But it's all good, and I think this will be a real keepsake one day! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There haven't been a whole lot of Christmas activities happening, just regular everyday life. I'm hoping that will change as we head into the last two weeks before the big day!

Documenting Kieran’s First Christmas

For the last few years I have planned to do a December Daily album, based on Ali Edward’s phenomenal idea. In 2006 I had my album all ready by November 25th, but didn't manage to complete daily pages. In 2007 I got my album finished the around mid December, started journaling but got bored of having to catch up on the days I missed so I stopped. Last year, I again got gung-ho in November and was ahead of the game, but didn’t manage to journal one single day! I think I was too caught up in all the crafting I did, plus I was pregnant and tired. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Things are different this year though. it’s Kieran’s first Christmas and I am excited to record it all. Since he won’t remember a thing, I think that some day in the future he will appreciate having a record of his first holiday season.

 

I quickly pulled my album together on Monday and Tuesday. To keep things as simple as possible I pulled a bunch of Teresa Collins die cut pages and chipboard bracket covers made for the Bind-it-All. Thank goodness for my hoarding tendencies (and thanks to my sister Vernell for having sent them to me sometime last year!)

I only had one sheet of Christmas die cuts, so the rest of the album is made up of pages from the Travel set, the Damask set, the Destination set and the Journal It set.

 

 

The pages and covers come with explicit instructions on how to punch and bind them together, regardless of the page shape and size, so it was pretty easy going to make. I managed to get it bound yesterday while Kieran played quietly for about 15 minutes.

As you can see I basically just alternated the page types then added the numbers. I kept the album very simple, since I really didn't have a lot of time to pull it together. As I am completing each day, I will probably add an extra embellishment or two.

And confession time: I only had up to page 14 done yesterday, but decided to go ahead and bind it, since I worried that if I waited to complete all the pages, the book would just sit there in a pile and never get used.

For the cover I also went to my stash and found a Christmas themed monthly scrapbooking kit from last year. I’m also using other bits and pieces like the numbers and labels from my stash, and letter stickers from my “Write” basket (where I keep all my journaling supplies). I’m also using Thicker number stickers in a variety of colours to change things up from the red numbers.

Here is Day 1!

 

 

I doubt I will get to post my pages every day. I’ll be happy just to get them done! But I will definitely share more pages throughout the month, and also in the flickr group.

I’m really excited to keep up with the journal this month!

Just the Ticket!

There are certain things that just make me happy. Some are very simple (chocolate), others more difficult to pull off (travel). This layout that I did for the October Write.Click.Scrapbook gallery, tries to capture some of my favourite things.

 

It might be difficult to read the labels, so here they are, along with some links to favourite related websites.

Scrapping - well duh!

Write.Click.Scrapbook

Studio Calico

Banana Frog

Photography

Shutter Sisters

PetaPixel

Design Aglow

Crafting

Craft Gossip

Allsorts

Cheeky Magpie

Travel

Gadling

Blogs - double duh!

Soule Mama

Simple Mom

decor8

Flowers

Daffodil

Gerbera

Hibiscus

Chocolate - dark only please

Bernachon

Richart

Okay everybody, hit me up with some links to your favourite places please. It's not like I have enough things to do online right?

Over The Next Three Weeks

• This blog will come to life again - yes, we are reconnected to the outside world again. It's been over a week in fact, but things have been crazy since the move (see below)
• More scrapping will be done
• and crafting
• and sewing
• and taking of photos

We survived the move with only a few casualties: Kieran's chest-of-drawers and our coffee table were chipped, Lucas' computer fell, but lived to see another day. The main casualty was I think my creativity. And energy to do anything more than just make it through the days. And the nights.

Ah the nights! Kieran's top front teeth started coming through just after the move, and to put it mildly it was bad. We pretty much didn't sleep for two weeks. We also think that the move, which meant he was no longer sleeping as close to us as before, was a factor in all this. 

But things will change from now on. I feel somewhat less like a zombie, and have even started to have ideas pop into my head again. Plus my new creative space is almost squared away, and as you know, that makes a huge difference. There are less boxes of random stuff surrounding me, and we even have curtains up in the bedrooms!

So I don't know if you missed me, but I am back at last! Oh and that layout? It's part of the new November Gallery on Write.Click.Scrapbook all about Family Stories.

All About Design

The October Write.Click.Scrapbook gallery is up and features the team's design secrets. Here's my page, based on a grid layout. 

 

Take the time to read the post introducing the gallery, and then have fun browsing the layouts!

Giveaway Alert!

I'm giving away this awesome kit today at Craft Gossip, compliments of Shabby Chic Crafts. If, like me, you make a December Daily album to record the holidays, this is a great kit! Hop on over there to find out how to enter!

Hello September

For some parents, this is the most wonderful time of year, as their kids go back to school. I have three years left before I have to start thinking about that, but in France, this time of year, known as La Rentrée, is the restart of pretty much everything, adult activities included.

Table Tennis starts again for Lucas, and Scrap Club for me. Well they do in theory, as they both happen on the same night. We will most likely alternate so we can each attend every two weeks. We have yet to run a test to see how Kieran will adapt to having only Papa at his bedtime, as I'm usually the one to put him down after his last nursing. We also have to test how he reacts to being bottle fed, as we've only tried it once so far. I'm pretty postive about it though, he has been a very adaptable baby so far.

It's also the start of a new gallery over at Write.Click.Scrapbook. Our theme is Back to School and this is the layout I did

 

That's my sister and I headed off to school back in 1979. For more details on the layout click here. Don't forget to check out the rest of the gallery! It is filled with awesome back to school ideas!

Speaking of my sister and I, remember Sister Scrap? We started this blog last year, but then I got pregnant and things slowed down. Way down. Well we are using September as the perfect month to start things back up again. We have a welcome back post and giveway up already, so hop on over to check that out. 

With the restart of Scrap Club I hope to have more time to work on my various projects, so look out for more news on what I will be up to in the coming weeks.

Friday Eye Candy - le troisième

In going through my archives I discovered I have two other posts entitled Friday Eye Candy! One of them was just two weeks ago!

I am managing to get some good creative time in lately. Definitely not scrapping as much as I used to, but pages are getting done!

Here are a few done for Banana Frog

 

I love that large arrow and the alpha! The font is called Pharmacy. I use it a lot. This is the large version:

 

But I also like the original size.

 

I also did my August layout for Write.Click.Scrapbook.  This month's theme is Sweet Summer

 

Go on over and take a gander through the gallery. Seriously amazing work from the team as always.

During my week hosting over there I ran a messy scrapper challenge: Grab 5 to 7 things randomely from your desk or stash and use at least three of them on a page. Here's the page I did

 

I think it took me about 15 minutes and is the quickest page I have ever done!

Some more love for American Crafts (no, I didn't make the DT but I still love them!)

 

 

Not bad huh?

In case you're wondering how I am getting any scrapping done, (so am I actually!) here's how. With so little free time, I have now fully embraced  this philosophy. It's the only way I'd get anything done. Whereas before I was able to work on a page from start to finish in one sitting, I now scrap in bits and pieces. So I spend a lot of time turning ideas over in my head to use for later (and sometimes I even remember to write them down)! A few weeks back I had a block of time that I used to print a bunch of photos, so when I do have a moment I don't have to wonder what photos to work on. I spend a lot less time deciding what to use on a page, I don't second guess myself. Plus I am using up my scrapbook kits! It helps a lot to have pre-packaged stuff I can just pull out and work with. So I alternate my days between looking after Kieran and getting in some creative time. It's a lot different around here now, but it works!

Let's Par-tay!!!

The uber-fab Shimelle is having a rocking blog party this weekend to preview her Go To Press class. The class will be held on Two Peas in a Bucket and starts Monday August 3rd. Over the course of four weeks, Shimelle will show you how to make the most of your printer for scrapbooking, and provide you with 20 PDFs of printables.

So I was pretty excited when Shimelle asked me to play along and use some of her printables to create a project.

I got even more excited when she said that one of the sheets contained cupcake images. I've become quite obsessed by these little morsels of heaven and knew immmediately I'd do a layout about them.

I printed out the sheet and cut out the long journaling card, a cupcake image and and one of the pieces of word art. I added some Stickles glitter glue to the frosting part of the cupcake,

and decided to use the word art piece as my title block. You can see the layered effect this created since I used transparent letter stickers for the title. 

 

I dressed up the rest of the page with buttons, more stickles and beads to mimic the frosting and decorations on cupcakes.

(Note: You can click on the images to see them larger)

This was a ton of fun! Thanks Shimelle for asking me to play. Now don't forget to click over to her blog to see inspiration from a ton of wonderful scrappers and paper crafters!

Friday Eye Candy

Here is the last layout that I worked on last week. Actually it was the first one I did of the three.

 

Yes, another baby page. But seriously, can you blame me?