Our Christmas .... So far!

As the 25th gets closer and I find myself busy with the last minute gift shopping, food shopping, Christmas baking and wrapping I have quickly put together this collage of photos to show what we have been up to as we countdown the days to Christmas!!

Our local garden centre holds a Christmas Charity evening in support of Julia's House and we went along for the 2nd year running. It's a fabulous evening, with lots for the children to do including a reindeer hunt, meeting Santa, Guess the name of the Teddy and the whole venue is beautifully decorated. Hannah hung a star on the tree "For someone special this Christmas".

We decorated our Christmas tree at home on the 10th, carefully hanging the decorations we've collected over the years. We bought H a fairy decoration on her first Christmas and each year we've bought another, now she's older she likes to choose her own.

The advent calender this year is a Hello Kitty one, which gets opened first thing each morning!

This post will be used for my Christmas Journal ... I'm waiting for my photos to be printed before I make more pages!

It's beginning to look a little bit like Christmas

There are signs of Christmas gradually appearing all over our house!!

This is our Christmas Tree all decorated and looking very pretty with it's sparkly lights!!

It just needs some presents under it now!!!

I guess I really should get on with the wrapping!

I haven't got any further with JYC the last few days as I have been busy finishing off some layouts for a magazine deadline!!

If you haven't already please do pop over to the S J Crafts shop and browse the Winter sale section as we have reduced lots of products to make room for new stock coming in January!

JYC 1st & 2nd

Still keeping it super quick and simple!!

Here's 1st December ...

This page is about my plan to record our activities, traditions and preparations for Christmas with lots of photos and making my Christmas Journal to record the memories of this wonderful time of year.

As the season gets busier and just a little bit crazy I will take time out of all the madness and make sure i get "me time" to play with pretty paper and create my journal!

2nd December ... Weather

A record of how different the weather is this year compared to 2009 and 2010.

Christmas 2009 was a true white christmas when we had snow on 25th December in N. Ireland and last year it had already snowed early in December but this year there is no sign of the white stuff!

Front Cover

So, going along with my plan of keeping my Christmas journal very, very simple, I made my cover this morning!

Not very traditional colours and all from scraps .... starting as I mean to go on!

I'm not yet sure if I will use book rings to hold all the pages together or if I will use a 6" x 6" album and page protectors ... that decision is still to be made and may depend on how fat the journal ends up!!

JYC preparations

I'm already to go with my Christmas journal!

I've decided to keep it small this year and to help me acheive my goal to complete a page each day through December I've cut my cardstock into 6" x 6" pages. I've got 20 pages done and plan to add in a few extras as I go along in different sizes or I may use patterned paper for a few.

I've sorted through my papers and made a pile of christmas papers and added in some non Christmassy patterned papers that could also be used. I'm aiming to use up old stash for this project! One of the papers is from 2007!!

I have another pile of plain cardstock scraps which I will use to mat photos, punch/die cut shapes and make borders etc! Again using up the odds and ends so there is an assortment of colours there!

This is my "journaling" pile .... an assortment of strips of paper, journal cards, titles and a few punched tag shapes .... you may spot a few die cuts there too which I've already pushed out from the backing sheet to save time!

I've also sorted out some punches, stamps, inks, stickers, embellishments, alphas etc but for some reason didn't take a pic of them.

All the papers & cardstock are now in clear 12 x 12 bags and I'll pop the rest into a basket so I have everything together.

Shimelle's 1st prompt has arrived in my in box and I've already made a start on my first page!

Let the Christmas Countdown begin!

JYC Starts tomorrow!!

One of the best things about Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas class is that once you've signed up you can join in each year. I initially took this class back in 2008 and have participated each year since then. I haven't managed to complete an album on any of those years. Oh dear! But .... and this is the great bit I do love the pages I have done and I have them all in the same album and together they tell a lot about Christmas in this house over the last few years.

This year I would dearly love to finish a page for each day of December so today I have been busy preparing my pages, cutting my cardstock into 6" x 6" pages and gathering together christmas stash so that I'm all ready. More on my preparations tomorrow!

As you may be aware today is "Strike Day" and H's school was closed so whilst I was busy with my stash she was busy painting her little piggy bank!

Look at the concentration!!

Are you ready for JYC? 

Have you done any preparations or are going to make your page from scratch each day?

Monthly Kit Launch!!

I can't believe this is my first blog post for November!! As a result of getting laryngitis and feeling rather poorly I haven't really felt up to blogging the last week or so but I am feeling much better now and happy to say I'm almost back to 100%.

I have been asked by lots of scrappers if I could sell kits in my shop that are affordable and available without subscribing. So, as I always like to try and help I have been busy selecting some lovely products to create the very first S J Crafts Monthly Kit which goes on sale here from today.

The kit is packed with Echo Park's gorgeous Times & Seasons Papers and matching stickers and alphabet, kraft bazzill cardstock, along with some Tim Holtz tickets, brads and ribbons, all for just £12.99!!



Other sides of papers and close up of stickers!



This is the layout I made with the kit, the only extra thing I added that's not included was some blue shimmer mist to the background and I inked the edges of the papers with distress ink.

Sorry about the flash reflection! I took the photo early this morning!

The kit is limited in numbers and available here.

** Kit now sold out ... watch out for our December Kit coming soon! **

Have a fabulous evening!