One guilt less

Being ten persons in our family there have been quite a lot of papers collected during our family´s almost 30 years and all these papers has been a guilty conscience for many years. But the last days I have been sorting all these things and that resulted in all these binders full of offical documents, drawings and you name it!

Now there is actually a chance that we might look at these, the chance of doing that when everything is just lying in a total mess in boxes is not that big. There is still one box full of cards and letters, which is not so easaly stored in binders. Found some really funny things, like the note someone wrote telling us that we were ruin there summer break when we asked them to clean there rooms... It´s such a lovely thing looking back at when the children where younger.

Among all these papers I also found these...

I got these when I was a child/youth. Someone has croched them and you where suppost to put them between the cup and the saucer when you where having a party. I never drank coffey befor I joined the church and after I have yet another reason not to drink it so these have never been used.

But someone has put in a lot of work making them and what does a scrapbooker think when she stands there with these lovely things in her hand...? They are perfekt for my albums, aren´t they, REAL doilies?! And they are specially perfect for a Christmas album don´t you think?! Be sure to see one or two of them there.

My first page

I´ve done my first page for my Christmas album! It´s from yesterday, observing two things, that it was the first Sunday of Advent and that we at church had the yearly tradition that all the children where the ones singing and talking at the sacrament meeting. They were so wonderful and there was such a lovely spirit.

Ready for Advent

I´ve just fixed the advent candles for tomorrow and this year it looks like this. Miss E just told me it looks nice, so that feel good.

These number plates I bought two years ago, after Christmas and last year when I should use them I couldn´t find them... And last December I bought a new Advent candleholder, for thin candles, which was so very nice and guess what, this year I can´t find that one...
Well, it´s the story of my life! But now I can enjoy these plates and hopefully during the next year I will find the candleholder so I can enjoy that next Advent. Life (and my own weaknesses) have tought me patience and that there will always be another time, and if there shouldn´t, well, I´ll survive anyway.

I do wish you all a most lovely Advent time and hope you will enjoy it and not kill yourselves by overdoing.

Pink

How about a pink layout today, far away from Christmas? As you may know, I´m not a fan of bright pink, but lighter pink is nice. I bought three of this pink ledger from Pink Paislee (suitable, don´t you think?) because I wanted one to use myself, have one for Miss I (she´s the one of my at-home-girls that scrapbook) and have the other to cut up for other projects.

This is a layout about Miss I´s 12th birthday, which for us in the church is one of those big birthdays, since you at that age go from the children´s organisation to the youth´s, and they are always happy to do that.

Happy Friday!

Last ones

Thought that I´d show you the last of my favorite pages from former years Christmas albums.

First what I think is my favorite from 2008. It´s very simple but I love the photo, the tabed page and everything.

The next is my favorite page from 2010. Besides the fact that it´s my sweet boy on the photo I also love the paper and the adorable journaling spot from Webster´s pages. I also like the letters that I made myself. The photo was taken at the Lucia celebration at school.

Just a few days left and I will start my album for this year, yay!

Small pockets

Let´s go down memory lane again today and see more of my former December albums.

I like divided pockets a lot. Here I got two different happenings the same day that I wanted to document and what better way of doing it that this?

 And here´s the back.

This one I wanted you to be able to see through, which is very nice but also require  that you do it nice on both sides. Here´s the back of it. The journaling tags and the letter stickers I stuck on the outside of the  pocket.

I will definetly use these in this years album too.

Here´s another way I used them last year.

Christmas cleaning is in full swing here. Great fun... Well, the result is nice anyway!

More Christmas album favorites

Here are some favorite pages from last years Christmas album.

Love the background paper on the left side and I love the homemaker-figure on the right side. I thought about having one of those for my Little book of lists but I changed my mind, she didn´t really fit in there.

Sometimes it can be too much red and green, but having it on kraft cardstock it didn´t get overwhelming. Loving letter stickers, as I do, I´m very fond of this title and the tree is nice. Envelopes is always lovely, of course.

Anything I wasn´t pleased with? Well, the numbers were too boring and didn´t fit in on all my pages. That´s the problem with premade things and thats why I don´t want to do a lot of stuff in advance this year.

A little book of lists

I don´t think I´ve ever made two post the same day here at the blog, but I just had to show you a small booklet I just made to have as a home for my to-do-lists at Christmas time. I will use it for my lists while I´m working on them and after Christmas they will have a new home in my album and I can use this book for new lists next year.

I used some old chipboard  flowers/stars to embellish the outside. I´ve hade them for years and never found a home for them, until now.

 

On the left is my list for the Christmas presents where I can tick off when I´m ready with the present/s for specific persons and on the right my list for other things I should buy.

These pages is both kitchen related. The left one is for the list of all the kinds of foods we want to have on our table at Christmas and on the right it´s all about yummi things like cookies and sweets we want to make.

Down memory lane

How about looking back at some old Christmas album entries!

I really love this little album that I made in 2008. Love the tabs and the size and everything. Here´s more of it.

Isn´t the fact that you can only choose one way of doing things the worst part of any project?! You have to drop all the other lovely ideers you have. I´d love to use these lovely tabed pages again but they don´t fit with what I´m doing this year or with what I hope I will do NEXT Christmas. Life sure is hard...

I did it!

At least, that´s what I think. I´m done with my new take on Shimelles sketch with the big pocket and I really like it. Here are som pictures of it.

 

Concidering the problem I had with the bold patterned paper on my last try on this, at first I intended to go  with a green cardstock for the base, but when I was searching for a patterned paper to ground the two photos on the front, I found this applepaper and that would be perfect for a school page so I gave it a try. It would be a victory to be able to do something with a bold patterned paper that I could be pleased with.

I also decided to use a transparency for the pocket, like Shimelle did and this white was visable but still not to dominating. I keeped the embelishments really simple and put the title on the photomat not to make it too buzy on the left where you can see the page through the transparecy.

All in all, I´m very pleased. Glad that I kind of erased my failure with the first page. Maybe that´s a new idee, to go back and take back where you are not satisfied with the result, and make a new try on the same idee.

And I cried again

Yesterday was release day for the last Harry Potter movie DVD and I got it in the mail AND of course I had to watch it. And I cried again, just like I did when I saw it at the theater. I cried at some moving scenes but most of all I cried at the end, feeling again how sad it is that this is the end. I so much love the world of Harry Potter. I think I also cries because I`m so happy that the three friends still are friends many years later. That´s so beautyful.

Pleased and not pleased

Sometimes you´re pleased with what you do and sometimes you´re not!

I thought that Shimelle´s idee with a big pocket for more photos was such a good idee and I thought that would be perfect for Christmas photos. But then I sat down to scrap the photos when  Master E had his birthday party and I thought this was a great idee for all those photos too. But... I wasn´t at all pleased with the result. I certanily don´t plame the idee, no it was all me. Me and bold patterned papers do not go well together... As you can see for your selves here. It was just too much.

Just to comfort myself I did something that really is me and which I also was very pleased with...

This is about how we read the scripures every morning before the children go to school.


But just to show to myself that I´m not totally hopeless I´m already working on a new layout with the big pocket, AND with a bold patterned paper, I think, if I don´t change my mind... Wish me luck!!

Pricut papers

Shimelle talked about different stages of preparing your album and asked us to at least pecut som papers. I had already put some papers together and they are these...

There are some Websters page´s and some Bo Bunny, cut from 12x12 pages. The frames I´ve made myself, you can read about them here.

The album I will use is a 6x6 Modern album, you can see it here.

My little banner

So it´s Christmas at Shimelle´s this weekend and I loved her challenge to make a banner. I´ve made a very tiny little one to fit my 6x6 Christmas album and here it is!

This is actually about the real size of it. "JUL" is our swedish word for Christmas, very convenient to have such a short word! The red and yellow squares and the mittens are from a REALLY old Provo Craft line, it´s like ten years old or something. I adore the mittens and haven´t had the heart to use them earlier (I´m sure you all know that feeling!). The small Christmas tree I cut out by hand and I`m really pleased with it.

I hope you like my little banner too!

Titel page 2011

The titel page for this year made me think, since it will show behind the album´s titel page. But eventually I figured out how I was going to do it and here´s the final result.

I didn´t want too much to be shown behind the album titel page but I didn´t want it to be totally emty either. This is how it looks when you open the album.

You can see the page a little closer up on this picure.

The calender tag is again from a Swedish line. The same paper that I have behind the tag I also put in the little pocket where the holes are, I will put paper there on all the pages. When I had made the whole tag thing and chosen the strip of music paper it looked a little bit to dull and I wanted a little more black to accent the year and the circle on the tag, so I made the thin black strip and put two rub ons by the tag and I was very pleased with that. Black could actually turn out to be an accent colour on all the pages.

Titel page

Since my Christmas album will be for several years I will have one title page for the entire album and title pages for the different years. I have now finished the title page, or rather title pages, since it´s a front and a back page,  for the album. It looks like this.

This is the front page and here is the back...

I like that the page is is a die cut shape so that you will be able to see the titlepage for the year behind it.
The front says Merry Christmas and the back Memories from December.

A long wait

I have now read Austenland by Shannon Hale and all I can say is that it´s gonna be a long wait for the film... I do hope it will go up in the theaters here, otherwise it will be an even longer wait for the DVD. Sigh. Keri Russell and J J Feild are already playing their parts in my head when I read the book.

Madhouse

Madhouse, that´s what Mrs S called our house the other day. She was home for almost a week and Mrs L and all the family has been home for five days, so the house has been full of teenagers and children. And Mrs S is not used to this kind of familylife anymore. But I guess this is just how it used to be every day earlier.

We´ve had a lot of boys being absorbed by the videogames,

girls giggeling

and children being children...

Wednesday was a really busy day with my in-laws being here, we all celebraiting their wedding (since Mrs S and Mrs L couldn´t come ealier), a baby to-come and a bunch of birthdays gone and coming.
We had a small baby shower for Mrs S, with just the girls in our own family

 

and I and my big girls went thrift shop shopping after the celebration. And found some nice things.

Yesterday when everyone thought that someone else was looking after her, this little angel got a few minutes on her own to have some fun with the eggs, which of cause ended up in a total mess...

But how can you get angry with such a small and sweet little darling? We are totally sweet on her and her brother, it´s such a lovely  thing being called Grandma and Grandpa.

Mrs S went home yesterday. It was the first time she and Mr T had been apart for such a long time. I´m so glad she has such a wonderful "home" to come home to. I took one last photo of her before she went, well, it was more of the sweet "bump" actually...

We are all really curiouse of who´s in there.

Today all the others are going home. I´m so glad that we are all such good friends, I truely both love and like my family!