I finally got some time to catch up on my pages.Day nine was going to David’s school and watching the arts and electives culmination. I got a copy of the program.

I love adding these into my journals.

David performed two Beatles songs: If I Fell and Here Comes the Sun.

and he made this beautiful lantern which depicts scenes from his short story. I love love loved it.

I was grumpy about going to this culmination after a terribly long Friday and realized I would have missed so much had I not gone!

Day Seven is all about the cookie decorating party we had at work! I added a page with my photo of my decorated cookie.

a shot of some of the awesome decorations for the back:

I like adding these random pages into the album:

and then in the original day seven page, I put a shot of the whole table and did some journaling. We had this one edible stocking where you could write your name so I snagged one and added that to my page, too.

so grateful for my job!

Here’s day five! Every Sunday I go to the farmer’s market to get the boys’ their berries for the week. It is one of my favorite things to do so I wanted to make sure to put it here.

And the little photo on top is from my friend Evelyn’s party. She’s a parent at my son’s school, an amazing writer and she runs the Young Adult book club I go to. Love her!

That’s it for day five 🙂

 

Here’s day three. Today is all about Breakfast with Santa which we’ve now done for six years.

The night before was a birthday party Nathaniel attended for his best friend and they sent him home with a lot of balloons.

On the back is our Santa Photo (doesn’t he look so happy?! – not!) and some journaling about what they discussed.

and then some breakfast photos with me and the kids and jake and the kids and then our photobooth photos.

And of course the journaling 🙂

Happy Day Three!

Here’s day one! Yesterday was a full day. I started with dropping Nathaniel off and going to David’s school for my regular Thursday volunteer spot. On Thursday mornings, two other parents and I discuss books with 11 3rd and 4th graders. We arrived early and were able to check out the Book Fair for a few minutes and David went to class and I went to reroute the Lit Club kids (we usually meet at the library but it was closed due to Book Fair.) This week’s meeting was our final one for Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy. After the discussion, they went back to class and the three of us walked to the library to do the notes we leave for each kid in their binder. That plus discussing the next two weeks took up most of the time I had left before I was scheduled to work at the Book Fair. I then moved on to learn how to use the cash register and spent the next three hours working there. When I finally left David’s school, I feverishly checked all my email and drove back home in time for a meeting. Two meetings later, I picked up Nathaniel and then rushed back home for another meeting. I had a hair appointment after that so I asked Jake to pick up David and left.

I won’t bore you with the details but the next hour was a mad insane rush of trying to see if Jake could make it to the shuttle stop before David got there (spoiler alert: he didn’t!) and finding another parent who was there so she could hang on to David until Jake could get there. All of this remotely while I was getting my hair done. Fun times. Once David was safely home, I dialed into my final meeting of the day (from the hairdresser no less) and made it back home around 9pm where I pretty much went right to bed. Don’t you feel tired just reading that?

Alas, I decided to make my first day about the morning at school since it was all about volunteering with my kids and how much it means to me. I had more than one photo so I made a little flap and put the Book Fair photo first.

When you open it, you can see the second photo with the two other parents sitting on the floor with me and adding post-its to each kid’s binder. And I wrote my journaling on the other side.

 

and that’s it for day one! 🙂 Here’s to hoping Day Two is considerably less crazy.

 

It’s almost time for the most magical time of the year. My favorite.  I am not a fan of winter in general.  I don’t celebrate any of the other national holidays with vigor. I don’t care for Valentine’s Day, Halloween or even Thanksgiving, really. I don’t mind any of them (well I am not a fan of all the scary stuff around Halloween.) I just don’t feel the need to go all out. I don’t feel motivated to make a big deal.

But that’s not true for Christmastime.

I am a bonafide fan of December. I’ve always loved the New Year. I’ve always loved twinkling lights. I’ve always loved Christmas Trees. There were bits and pieces of this season that I’ve cherished over my lifetime. But I firmly believe that this lovely little project has contributed widely to my love of the holiday season. Here are the things this little album has added into my life:

• It’s made me more intentional: More things happen because I plan them.
• It’s made me take more photos: I make a point to bring my camera, to pause to capture the moments.
• It’s made me more reflective: I take the time to journal my thoughts, print the photos, and put everything together every single night. This means I reflect daily.
• It’s made me more grateful: Reflecting daily almost always translates to huge amounts of gratitude.
• It’s made me more creative: I am guaranteed to spend some time doing something artsy/crafty every day in December.

How can you not love this project?

I always put my pre-pages together before the month but this year I found myself struggling with the idea. I was thinking maybe it’s better if I just wait until December and do it daily. Then I remembered how hard decision-making can be when you have too many choices and reminded myself that this helps narrow things down and make this project considerably more manageable. So I compromised and kept my pages pretty bare. This gives me a starting point but also gives me flexibility. (I’ve put in some pretty magazine pages in place of photos for now so it’s easier to see the page content.)

I’ve been doing a monthlong December project since 2007 which means this will be my tenth December album. Here’s to many many more.