The first was about a photo I saw in the Anthropologie catalog that made me instantly want to go to the store and buy the dress. Since I hate shopping and never ever feel such an instinct, I listened to it. And since the store here had it in stock, I took it as a sign. And then the XS fit me perfectly and I was just suddenly proud of all the hard work I’ve done in the last year. I felt deeply grateful. I had spent all day chasing after a lost package so this was just the perfect way to end my crappy day.
The second page is about how Nathaniel visited the fire station yesterday. He went with his class so I didn’t have any photos but when we got home he put on the gift form the fire station and we took some photos. A little journaling and we were done.
And that’s it for day seven. I love the variety of stories in one little book.
The next page in my book was a photo I loved so I just added some stickers to remind myself of my message.
I took a photo of our tree but I already have one later in the book from last year. This year it’s more blue lights so I wanted this one, too. I loved the way it looked on this page so I just couldn’t resist putting it down on there with a sticker.
and here it is as a spread.
and on the back, I put photos from yesterday night. I hosted book club at my house so I put up the photo of my table and chairs prepped and a photo of our book. Some thoughts and my page was done:
And that’s it for day six. Trying to take it easy this year and not stress myself out about this project in any way so I can savor the season.
And here we are for day five. Super-simple page today:
Living with boys is all about a lot of noise and laughter. Here’s a series of photos that’s quite typical in our house:
1. Nathaniel shoots David
2. David falls down (dead! Nathaniel screams)
3. Nathaniel’s shooting me as David shoots him
4. Nathaniel falls down
5. They both get up and immediately shoot each other
6. Mommy says that’s enough noise so both boys grab a Christmas brochure and sit on the couch to read (and pick toys!)
And here we are for day two. This one has a bunch of flaps.
The top layer is an ornament I made for My Mind’s Eye. Coming later this week:
if you open the flap and pull back to the whole page, you see the kids reading a book together on the right and photos from building gingerbread houses on the left:
and then if you lift up the little photo on the bottom left you see some journaling and our gingerbread house:
this is from the night of gingerbread decorating we went yesterday.
Ok I will start by saying I took these photos four times! The light here is not so great and it was hard to photograph them. So there we go:
For the last three years, I’ve always begun my first page with “and so it begins.” It’s my personal tradition and I wasn’t breaking it this year:
the back of the page is a reminder to keep my word at the forefront of my mind:
So then the real day one start with the first surprise of Christmas which was the advent calendars. Lego Starwars for David and Playmobil Santa’s Workshop for Nathaniel. Neither kid expected it and they were very surprised. I put only the first photo in the front of the kids opening their gifts.
and the back is all the other ones I took with numbers showing order of time. And a few words from me.
and that’s it for day one. simple. but a delightful moment captured and documented nonetheless.
As December approaches, I wanted to get ready with my album. My goal this year was to do my version of the Shabby Travel Journals that Mary Ann Moss makes. I signed up for her Remains of the Day class a few months ago, watched the videos and spent a while (much longer than I’d hoped) putting my book together.
Here’s how it looks now. As we get closer to December, I will talk more about some of my decisions and plans this year. I apologize in advance that many of the photos are not 100% clear. My lens is for portrait shots and has a shallow depth of field so it’s not the best to take these kinds of photos. My book has about 80 pages so, after a while, I got bored and just wanted to get it done. 🙂
I also added a movie in the end so you can see it a bit better. Feel free to ask any questions you might have. You are forewarned, there are a LOT of photos in this post:
Here’s the cover. It will likely change a bit but I kept it simple for now.
Here it is without the ribbon:
and the back:
the book has 2 signatures. Each signature has 10 pages that go across so it’s a total of 40 pages per signature and 80 in the whole book. I checked the last 3 years and I average about 75-80 pages each year.
Here’s the first page:
I didn’t put any numbers this year. Wanted to leave it more free form. Some of the pages are photos I took in the previous years. You can see one on the right side of the this next photo.
here are more pages:
here’s one with an overlay. You can’t see it but that’s a pocket so I can put something under the overlay.
and here’s another photo on the left and an overlay flap on the right.
more pages:
middle of the first signature:
more photos and pages:
and the end of the first signature:
beginning of the second signature:
more of the same kinds of pages with photos and overlays:
some of the pages were coming apart due to my bad stitching so I taped them:
middle of second signature:
and more pages:
and here it is on the table:
And here’s the video I promised. I apologize in advance for my yucky computer fan that would not quiet down:
And there you go. I have mixed feelings about this book but I am grateful that I finally got to try to make one of these shabby journals. Let’s see how it works.
