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Catalyst One Hundred and Twenty-Five is: Write a love letter. Thoughts: There are many places that inspire me. Beaches, mountains and redwood trees. Places with childhood memories. Places with college memories. Places I haven’t been to yet. Places where people I love live. I am grateful for all of them. Thinking about them brings a smile to my lips and fills my heart with joy. But, for me, none of these places can surpass the place that I love most of all: Home. I am a homebody. I love being in my warm, cozy house. There are things that drive me insane like the crumbs my little one leaves in his trail. The tiny legos strewn all over the living room. The scrap table that never seems to stay neat. The dishes that pile up. The books that are constantly teetering on the edge of falling. The mountains of mail. And more. Yet, despite all that, I love being at home. Sitting in my corner, snuggling under the blankets with my cup of coffee and my children. For the last few days, my parents have been visiting and we all sat on the very long couch in our living room. Mom reading the Turkish newspaper, dad dozing off or playing with Nathaniel, David playing with mom’s ipad, and me working on my photos. I loved looking down the couch and seeing so many of the people I love. Feeling safe and cozy. But most of all feeling deeply grateful. Remembering that there’s truly no place like home.
Even though I had a very productive day (or maybe because of that) I didn’t do a very good job of taking photos today. I got this one of Nathaniel eating his toys.
Since we had shots of David with his grandparents, I wanted some of Nathaniel, too but he would not cooperate. This was the very best I could do.
He would not stop playing with my dad’s phone. He thought it was the greatest thing ever. And David was playing with the ipad so they were both happy.
My parents are leaving tomorrow. I am really sad. I know that I will now get more stuff done but I’ve really enjoyed having them here and will be sorry to see them go, especially since I don’t know when I will be seeing them again. I am a little behind on the December Daily. More coming tomorrow. Three Things I’m Grateful For: Three Things David’s Grateful For: One of the holiday traditions both my son and I look forward to each year is the advent calendar. He loves having something to open every day in December and I love watching his anticipation each day. I’ll admit that for the last two years, we’ve been using calendars that are simple and have a piece of chocolate behind each door. This year, I wanted to do something different. Something more personal. I know he likes the little treat every day and I am happy to still give that to him but I wanted to make sure he doesn’t grow up thinking that opening an advent calendar just means getting chocolate. So I decided to make a tag with pockets for each day. In each pocket, I put a card with a little message. Every night, he will take out the appropriate card and do whatever’s on it. Here’s what one tag looks like:
My tags are constructed very simply. Since there are 25 days, I decided to pick 5 different color schemes for the tags and pockets and I repeated each five times. Here are the basic steps I followed for each tag: 1. Take manila tag, adhere to background paper, cut. That’s it. Simple as pie. Here’s how they look altogether.
If you look carefully, you can see that the color combinations repeat but because I embellished each slightly differently, they don’t look exactly the same. Here is a closer look at each tag:
All of the papers and embellishments are from The Girls’ Paperie. Almost everything is from the Tinsel and Twig line but there are a few items from the Toil and Trouble line. For the insides, I made a 2×2 square which says “celebrate the season” in tiny font. (You can download it here.) I then printed them out and punched out the squares. I stapled ribbon to the back of each square.
Finally, I wrote each day’s item on the tag.
Some of the items are purely for him (like the one in the photo) and others are family-related like “give your brother a hug.” And yet others are more community-wide. Like helping a friend at school. Here’s what the tags look like with the papers in them.
I’ll admit that this project was a bit time consuming, but mostly because I spent a lot of time picking the simple embellishments on each tag. I love the fact that I can keep the same system year after year and even use the same squares. Or I can change them around as my kids grow up. I can even put two squares in one pocket so each of my kids can draw one. Flexible, simple, pretty.
And here is the list of all the items on the tags: S=self, F=family, C=community 1. You get a new book today (S) This was originally posted at writeclickscrapbook.com for the holiday season.
Another week. Another Monday. Even though some days are harder than others I really really wish December crawled. I don’t want it to pass quickly as I cherish the season so much and I have so many more things to do before I am ready for 2011. So let’s all slow down this month. I wish that could be so! Nathaniel and I went to David’s class today to help with Monday journaling. It was so much fun to be there and to see all other kids. David was so nice and when he was done with his journaling, he sat with Nathaniel and read him stories and hugged him and kissed him. It was wonderful. He is still writing his book daily so today’s entry was about how we went to his class.
My angel.
Then he got to play with my mom’s ipad. He was in heaven.
The little one ran around and laughed and laughed.
I snapped another photo but the color was really off since we had no light and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t correct it so I converted to black and white.
And that’s it from here. Tonight is our last date night before my parents leave. I will miss them but I am also tired and have a really long todo list so it will be nice to stay home and get some of those done the rest of the week. I hope your monday was great! Three Things I’m Grateful For: Three Things David’s Grateful For:
Journaling Reads: Tim Holtz Products used: Details: For day five, I had another pajama page so I wanted to craft on it. Made a little toadstool.
For the back, used a photo of david with my parents. It’s super rare they’re here for December so I wanted to make sure to remember it.
Still trying to keep it simple. And that’s day five.
Maybe because I took so many yesterday, I took very few photos today. I snapped this one of Nathaniel early this morning. He’s still sucking away. But also still cute as a pie.
Then we put him down for a nap, I exercised, read a bunch and he still didn’t nap so we took him back out. Our neighbor’s daughter came to hang out with David and they all watched Toy Story 2. I tried to put Nathaniel down again and finally he fell asleep so while Jake worked, the rest of us went out to lunch. When we came back Jake was working on the couch and the baby was playing.
I gave him some snacks while Dad and David played some cards and dominoes.
And now we’re all lounging around. Rainy Sundays are exactly for that, aren’t they? Three Things I’m Grateful For: Three Things David’s Grateful For: This was for an old Crate Paper sketch. Something a bit funky for me.
Journaling Reads: For day four, I had the menorah candles from the day before and I didn’t want too many days to pass before I told the story so I did two pages.
I always love taking photos of the changing leaves since their colors turn stunning shades of red.
And then on page two I put the story of the Breakfast with Santa. I wanted this photo to take the full page since it’s my favorite.
And on the back, I made a collage of all the other things we did there and wrote some journaling about how the morning went.
Simple. And that’s day four.
David made this ornament this morning. He loves making these. Nathaniel decided 4am was a perfectly good time to wake up. He wept and wept so we all finally gave up and Jake woke up with him and I slept a bit more. Then we all went to see Santa. David loved it right away. But Nathaniel…..not so much.
Then we had some pancakes and oranges and juice. David was a happy camper.
And then we went off to the crafts room to make some ornaments.
Nathaniel colored.
And David made some snowflakes.
We then went out to see the ducks which Nathaniel loved (so did David.)
I tried to snap some photos with my parents but the little boy was no in an accommodating mood.
So I gave up and just took them with only David.
Who was, of course, very well behaved and kind.
Then we all went out to lunch and did some shopping and came back home so I could work on my december daily and rest a bit. The plan was to go to the Google Holiday party tonight but we are both completely pooped so I don’t think we’re going to make it. Here’s to hoping Nathaniel decides to actually sleep in tomorrow. Three Things I’m Grateful For: Three Things David’s Grateful For: Continuing with the theme of crafting+photos+stories, I made another fun page. I used my snowflake border punch and punched out some flakes and then cut them. Then I used twine to hang them like a clothesline. Then I covered them with pearl enamel and then I covered them with antique linen distress stickles and then added a pearl in the middle. The number 3 and three little stickers from The Girls’ Paperie and we’re all set.
here’s another angle so you can see a bit better.
For the back, I used the photo of the three of us from yesterday.
And there you are. Day three. Keeping it simple. Not a lot of stories so far but I know there will be many and I know there are days without photos too so I can use my stories then. I am not too worried about being specific to the day we actually did the events. This album is for the holidays so as long as it’s sometime during December, it’s all good. |
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