The Finished Album.

So here it is; Year 9 of my Christmas journal done.

Fat as usual, stuffed full of memories.

And I got it done before the end of January.  I just have a few 12x12 pages done to finish my Christmas crafting off and put my festive stash away.

To finish..

I found this lovely 6x6 paper in the Simple Stories paper pad I picked up at a crop and as soon as I saw it, I knew it would make an ideal (and quick!) final page for my journal.

I often find the last page difficult, not quite knowing what to say...I tend to use the pages after New Year to include stories from the season I had not had room to include yet, so I rarely use the prompts, but the last day needs summing up.  This little paper was ideal!

I added layers of papers under the 6x6, a few punched labels (love that EK Success punch!) and banner from my original 25th and Pine kit by Basic Grey.

Just in Time

On the day before I put away my decorations, this hand stamped card and photo arrived at home.  It had been posted by an American crafter friend of mine who used to live near me, but now lives in Eastern Europe.

I included the card as it arrived, just adding some washi tape to the top so it would flip up and I could read the message inside.

I do like an interactive page!

The Treat Kitchen

A shop opened up in town a few weeks before Christmas, it sold mainly boiled sweets in really interesting packaging.

Being an ex-chemistry teacher I LOVED the conical and round bottomed flasks; they did originally had a set of test tubes in a rack for sale too, but these had sold out before I managed to get my photos.

Maybe next year...

Whittling

We visited  friends of ours during December and Kev got to talking about his hobby of crafting with wood. A week or so later, Kathleen gave us a gift, including a small book on whittling for Kevin.  He had never really had a go at wood carving before (turning is his thing), but decided to have a go.

Incredibly, this is the result of his first attempt!!
My boy is so talented; he is wasted in teaching.

Who Are You?

Kev bought us a very silly game to play over the Christmas holidays where you had to clip the picture onto you nose, and play a version of twenty question in order to work out what or who you were.

Lots of laughs for all!!

A Fresh Start

My lovely teacher friend (now retired) married earlier this month, and although it wasn't on the first, I thought her wedding made a perfect theme for the idea of a fresh start.

As they love to travel I used some suitcases cut from Shimelle's Go Now Go papers and a real mix of various papers and embellishments.

New Year's Eve

Most New Year's Eves we stay at home, invite family around and have a huge takeaway.  This year was no different.  With a house full of 11, we ate our dinner and used up the left over crackers for Christmas.

One had one of those curly, acetate fish in it that (supposedly) tells you what you are like or what the future will hold.

As it was so hot in the dining room we all turned out to have a passionate future!!

2016 review

I usually set out my review page in the same way each year, printing off one photo to represent each month with the date added using Photoshop.

For my journalling, I couldn't help but comment on my thoughts about the state of politics this year (being really interested in this subject), so my comments about the photos are very brief.

I added a tree from Basic Grey 25th and Pine along with dots from the glitter Thickers I had been using throughout the journal as baubles. The little word stickers are by Simple Stories and Ali Edwards (Review).

A Fond Memory

My sister had these jelly fruit sweets at her house on Boxing Day, and I couldn't resist snapping their jewel-like loveliness!

As a girl, my grandparents in London always had these at Christmas, and as we went to visit them every other year for the festive season, they really reminded me of them.

This is one of the things I love about my Christmas journal; it really helps me to look back at the tiny things happening either now, or in the past.

Birthday Joy.

Another festive birthday, Kevin's dad celebrates on the 28th, so this always helps us to extend the season.

The page is translucent as I had used a dotted vellum on the 27th, I just had to make sure I Put the photo and embellished parts of the pages back to back.  Using double sided papers helped too!

The title was scripted by me along with some very short journalling.  As they were in the middle of having an extension built, the walls were bare breeze blocks.  Despite this, they still decorated for Christmas, including stapling some old white wall paper and adding starts and snowflakes with sellotape!

The Best Fake Santa Ever

My husband played the part of Father Christmas towards the end of term in the Special School he teacher in.. One of the siblings of the children said he was, "the best fake Santa ever!" What a compliment!

I did manage to get a photo of him in the red suit for my journal.  The title is a mix of Thickers and hand lettering, the other embellishments on the page are lots of different types of very old stash, Santa appears often it seems!

Boxing Day

A lovely day relaxing at my sister's house this year.

I just included candid photos of the family in front of the log burner, watching the flames dancing and of the boys firing missiles of paper and ping pong balls across the lounge.:)

Christmas Day

Christmas seems so long ago now, but here I am showing you my Christmas Day pages.
The 6x6 page that backed the Christmas Eve page gave me extra space for the Christmas day photos. One aspect of Christmas Day I hadn't recorded in earlier journals was that of morning Mass, so I took a cheeky picture of my daughters in front of the crib in church.  I did want my son to be there too, but he had sneaked off.

The other photos are of my sister, brother and me just before dinner, and the table ready for lunch. Funnily enough there were no pictures of gifts, all I seemed to have recorded this year were the family moments.

Christmas Eve

Two pages for this day, I went a little crazy with the embellishments so had little room for the journalling.

I squeezed this onto an additional 6x6" page, all about the film we went to see on Christmas Eve.  "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" was a totally new spin on the world of Harry Potter, set back in the 1920s.  I am looking forward to further installments!

Snapchat Fun!

My brother's birthday falls on the 23rd of December and has always marked the start of Christmas for our family.

We went out for a pub lunch this year, and he and I messed about with the festive filters on Snapchat; ending up with both of us looking like reindeer!

Charlcote Park

A National Trust property nearby was decorated beautifully in December and we visited just before Christmas.  Although the house is Tudor, the styling inside is Victorian, as were the Chritmas decorations.  It did look gorgeous, we had a small mulled wine in the brewery and had a lovely lunch in a local garden centre.

Love Christmas!

The Solstice

For the shortest day this year, I decided to hand-write out my favourite poem by Robert Frost; it seemed ideal for the date, and gave me some practice with my hand-lettering.

I added a small 6x6 page to introduce the poem; the Thickers title is stuck to the outside of the page protector, I took the photo at Charlcote Park and it seemed ideal for the shortest day.

My journalling is about me hearing this read on Radio 4 just before Christmas...lovely!

This is my only wintery page this year as we have had almost no cold weather during December so it has been nice to use wintery some stash.

Line 'em Up!

On our annual meal out with the female generations of the family, we took a detour before eating into The Cosy Club for cocktails.

The photo is of a line of salted-caramel brandy Alexanders...not all for me :)

Ouch!

I do like to include everything into my journal, good or bad, to give a true flavour of what the season was like for us.  I had to take Harry over to a local hospital to have the wires tightened on his brace, and to find out about how his treatment was progressing.

It did lead to a couple of days on painkillers, but he seemed to have recovered ready for the Christmas blowout!