December Daily - the most wonderful time of the year

 

I love December Daily. I love Project Life. I love having a separate Journal Your Christmas album. I love having 12x12 Christmas pages in my normal album.

But...

I am still working. I have extra Christmas events at 4 different schools to juggle and I quite like sleeping at night.

So this is my compromise. 1 6x4 per day in my PL album. All other photos and extra journaling in an 8x8 JYC album. 12x12s of my favourite pictures, but I can do those at any time.

I haven't had the time to share until now but I have kept up to date with e December Daily / PL pockets so here are the first 2 weeks of December. It's not all Christmassy yet, but there is a lot of festive fun.

Sorry they are uncropped - posted straight off the camera - but I'm sure you understand.

 



 

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My Confirmation

I was confirmed last week in the beautiful surroundings of Guildford Cathedral, along with 73 other candidates. It was a very special and public event, quite daunting for someone who keeps her Christianity pretty private most of the time.

I don't actually know why I wasn't confirmed as a teenager but I've been an increasingly active churchgoer since the kids were born and baptised so I felt it was time to reaffirm my faith.

It was an evening service on a cold, wet night and photography was forbidden during the service itself so I didn't get many pictures of me. But fortunately rehearsal took place on a gloriously sunny afternoon and I had the presence of mind to take some pictures of the venue then.

The cards are from Shimelle's Lovely Project Life edition. I lovedthe gold on the 'Wonderful' card so I added  gold washi tape from Hobbycraft and gold crosses onthe 2 pink cards. I love how it catches the light.

The visible journaling is just names and dates. I has included my testimony behind the 'My Story' card.

Documenting Oliver!

R's week of performance in Oliver! was just amazing. It was produced by the local Am Dram company (an adult group who don't usually have a junior cast) but it was truly professional. Performed in our town's studio theatre, R quickly got used to being called to the stage by tannoy and revealed in the backstage activity. He was genuinely very good in an outstanding cast and I would have been blown away by it even if he hadn't been performing. It's like being a good footballer - you want to play for a good team - and this was a million miles from the children's drama shows he's done previously.

I have ordered a CD of professional show photos -of course-but I was too impatient to wait for them so I made a 12x12 page and a PL spread of the photo I took while helping to chaperone the boys. I also used PL to keep the memorabilia like tickets and flyers.

 

I can't wait to scrap the professional ones of the actual show.

The black and white picture was on the boards in the theatre bar. That's 'proper' theatre! I really was incredibly proud of him. So exciting.



Project Life - Half Term and Hallowe'en

October has been a busy month what with Oliver!, Half Term and Halloween so I ended up with a lot of Project Life.

As I usually do, I picked my colour scheme at the beginning of the month so I could work on cards and layouts throughout the month and still keep to a cohesive look. For October I went with a traditional scheme of orange and green with kraft as my neutral. The papers were cut from Studio Calico's Darling Dear 6x6 paper pad but I also used PL cards from the Seasons mini kit and Kraft edition. All my cards were inked with Vintage Photo Distress Ink and I was happy to discover that it didn't bother me at all to mix rounded and square corners.
I stuck to 3 different alphabet sets, all of them cheapos from Hobbycraft.

I made 1 page for Hallowe'en itself and one for the rest of Half Term as, although we were busy, I didn't take too many photos.

The cobwebs and spider stickers were also from Hobbycraft. I bought them for M to play with, but pinched a few for myself to embellish a picture I took on the walk to school a few weeks ago when the spiders' webs were glistening with dew! I used the same plain letter stickers for the whole layout but I heat embossed them for the 2 orange cards and then doodled a border on them for a different look for Trick or Treat.

I struggled a bit with the collage of photo from the Church Light Party because the colours were so different but then I decided it was meant to be different and mounting it on brown cardstock brought it together enough.
                             
The facing page documented an After Show Party, a play date, riding at my friend's yard and our final effort at the Taj Mahal.

I'll show my Oliver! pages separately.

Project Life October - 93 LIkes!!

I posted my first 2 weeks of October pages on Project life Junkies Facebook Page and I got 93 likes. 93!!! Never had that many for anything before.

So I thought I'd share them here too.

Good riddance to September!

It's been a horribly stressful, tediously boring and very unphotogenic month. The weather was beautiful, but it isn't enough to make me sorry that September is over.

I had very few photos, so I only made 1 double spread but I had lots of journalling:
What's new? This is a double-sided list of what has changed in our lives this academic year.  Because P and I are both teachers and we have 2 school-aged kids September always signals lots of changes. M has started Brownies and a new drama group. R is rehearsing hard for a performance of Oliver. Their school hours have changed and they are both getting more homework. I have started a new GCSE English class, which I was very excited about, until wrangling about my pay took the shine off it.

Life's a Constant Juggling Act. (oops - upside down!) I must admit to earmarking this card for my September PL as soon as I saw it in the Aqua kit. I had intended it as a 'filler' but actually mounted it on the front of a folded 6x4card and journalled about a particularly bad week.  From Sep 21st to 28th I had no hot water for 2 days; M was off school sick for 2 days; I did 18 hours teaching with the probability of only being paid for 15 of them; I caught M's cold and my oven died. The water is fixed and we are both (nearly) better but some of these issues are still ongoing.
Money worries -  I have written on both sides of this card too. As well as the oven and the unpleasantness over my pay we had a £3000 roofing bill this month, for which we had to borrow the money.

Otherwise my few pictures show the kids on their first days back at school, my students celebrating their exam passes, a play date and a school trip and their current obsessions (loom bands and Skylanders, respectively.) I'm glad I took the opportunity to record these things.

I'm pleased I was able to do so much journaling. I did toy with the idea of typing it to fit more onto a small space, but I want to be consistent with using my handwriting for PL. And no-one needs all the depressing details on show, anyway.
Most of the cards are from the Rain kit, which I really like, or Midnight Edition, which is always so versatile.

Back to the grindstone and 2 birthdays to celebrate.

The last week in August is always a bit strange. We are no longer in France and I am back at work, so it definitely isn't part of my holiday PL. On the other hand P and the kids still had a week to go before the start of term so it isn't part of the next school year either. I scrap monthly, ending my albums at the end of a school year, not December. Al and P and R both have their birthdays this week so I decided to create a stand-alone week which is distinct from both August and September's styles.

I enjoyed this opportunity to do something different. Having used the pretty, muted tones of the Coral and Summer PL kits in France, I chose the bright punch of Simple Stories Snap for this LO. The patterned paper and the balloon embellishments come from the Hip Hop Birthday line and the tiny wood veneer stars are Studio Calico. I love the sharp colours. This was also different in that the 6x4 Snap pad did not have rounded corners so I left them square and I journalled white on colour, instead of in black.

I journalled about going back to work but didn't want a picture of that.

We had 16 people over for takeaway curry to celebrate P's birthday. For R we went to the local ice cream parlour and then I took him and his cousins to see Guardians of the Galaxy at the cinema - a real boys' film!

While I was at work the kids went to Holiday Club at church every morning so I used a sticker and a flyer to document that. After some research and soul-searching, they also both decided to take part in the Ice Bucket Challenge.

 

 Did you do this? What do you think about it? There was a lot of controversy on Facebook but in the end we decided it was harmless and a good awareness-raiser. I was concerned about the message of 'You have to do this - you've been nominated' though.

Project Life Goes On Holiday- the last installment

I ran out of photo paper for my little photo printer at the end of the holiday so I had to wait until I got home to finish off my France 2014 Project Life. Unfortunately I had to go straight back to college (on August 26th - feeling resentful about that) so it's only now that I am able to share my pages from the last 2 weeks.

 I had to include a memorial to the late great Robin Williams. He starred in pretty much all my favourite films throughout the 80s and 90s. Oh Captain, my Captain!
The weather turned this week for the worse so we played board games and built indoor dens. We had dinner with new friends and painted. The photo top middle is P's acrylic painting of a colleague's house - his first commission and his best picture so far, in my opinion.

August 15th is a Bank Holiday in France. We went out to a in a local town. The parade itself was followed by a fair so we spent a good couple of hours there then had a Scrabble and pizza evening with the neighbours.                                    

In out final week we had a flying visit from friends on their way home from the South of France.

 

We discovered a great new place with a 1km luge and bungee jumping. P took M on the luge twice for a very reasonable 2.50Euros each. R doesn't enjoy fast rides. Even if we had fancied the 65m bungee it cost 130Euros so we were content to eat ice cream in the sunshine and watch others. P's description of the atmosphere as like that at a public execution was spot on, I think.

 

We were not ready to come home but had no choice so we had a last supper at the pizza place. I love that Dr Seuss quote- it summed up my feelings perfectly. We arrived back in the UK to driving rain which continued for the next 24hrs.

 

M also needs reminding of this message. Her behaviour became increasingly challenging and we have witnessed some terrible 7yr old tantrums. I think I have linked them to an adrenaline rush and inability to cope with the coming down, but I have yet to find a solution.

Project Life is still on Holiday

And so am I. Hurrah.
I'm trying to ignore the fact that I'll be back at work this time in two weeks, although I did have to do some marking yesterday.
We have been super busy and I  have lots of fun things to document. I'm printing direct from my DSLR with my 6x4 hp Printer. For some reason it will read my camera memory card but not a saved image from my PC so I can't use Photoshop or cameraphone pictures. But I'm happy to swap that inconvenience for the enjoyment of scrapping things almost immediately. There are only a couple of cards that I know I'll want to redo when I get home. I'm doing lots more journaling too than normal, probably because the events are so fresh in my mind so I need to keep that up when I get back.

 

 A 12x4 landscape across 2 pockets. This is one I'll have to reprint at home as the colours aren't as defined as I'd like. The embellishments are all on top of the Becky Higgins  transparencies though so it'll be easy to do. 

A random beautiful snap of M.

Goat cuddling and cheese tasting at a local goats' cheese producer.

The first week in August.

P and I ate at the local Michelin-starred restaurant, just the two of us, while our kind friends watched the kids. I've wanted to go there for the past 6 years, but resent paying that sort of price for dishes I know the children won't eat. I wasn't disappointed.

An open-air concert in the sunshine.

Sunset over the village church.

A visit to the national pottery museum.

Barbecue and karaoke with the neighbours. I like the series of single portraits of the 4 of us singing. I'm trying to include more pictures of myself this holiday

More pictures from the pottery museum, including a demo.

Our guests went home so we had a slightly quieter week:

R watching films on my laptop

Another BBQ with other local Ex-Pat friends.  It was never our intention to become part of the Ex-Pat crowd, but they are nice people and this was a very funny night.

A friend M made at the second open air concert.

A game of Jenga

Journalling about the books I've read so far (on going) and about the fact that we have actually made French friends as well as English. We spent all of Sunday speaking French with our village acquaintances.



We had one big day trip this week, to the Zoo. This layout is the result of a lot of selection from the 100 plus pictures I took. I placed the paper-pieced giraffe and lion on top of the page protector so they crossed several pockets.



I made 12x12s of the highlights - for the kids that was the chance to feed the giraffes. The layout was inspired by a colour  combo in 'Esprit Scrapbooking' magazine. I'm short on tools and supplies here so I added interest by tearing the papers and distressing them with white chalk. I 'hung' the title from a piece of Baker's twine.

 The highlight for me was managing to capture these bat pictures. They were shy and extremely fast and I took a lot of rubbish snaps. In the end I waited until the crowd had moved on to watch the otters being fed, set my camera to Sports mode and continuous burst and succeeded in getting these.

The background papers were layered and then doodled. As the story was about taking pictures of bats rather than the bats themselves, I drew attention to the camera print paper by doodling over 3 cameras with black pen. To give the title extra interest, I used the letter stickers as stencils to draw the black 'shadows' before adhering them offset.

I had more photos from the goat farm which I wanted to use, and I didn't want a whole PL page about it so I made this 12x12. The lovely paper had complementary patterns (white/aqua, aqua/white) on each side which gave me the idea of folding back the corners. As I obviously didn't have any farmyard embellishments to hand, I cut the kid out of a 6x4 print and had him peeping out from behind the fold.

 

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