December Daily 2010

During December I did a little photo shoot with our Christmas Tree at the local park. Just as well I don't get embarrassed easily however we carted it from the car to a spot, put the camera on the tripod and here are a few photos from our afternoon. I didn't get too many with myself in there as by the time I had taken the ones of the kids they were just about over it and I managed a couple with me in but would have preferred some nicer ones. Still, I was pretty happy my kids are mostly obliging to my crazy ideas around Christmas time. Click on the photo to enlarge.

December Daily 2010

My beautiful December Daily album is 99% finished, just need to do the 1st introduction page and it's a wrap. I'm thrilled to pieces with it, the photos, the stories, the memories and the fact that it's digital and printed from home. The book is the 8x8 and when I previously wrote about it some months back I ended up not using the little envelopes with the numbers on for the dates as it didn't end up working as I would miss out on too much of the page and lose photos.

I would love to finish off 2009 December Daily before I start the 2011 December Daily. That's probably achievable if I push the timeline to somewhere between July and October. It's a shame to leave the project half finished. I like what I did for 2010 much better and easier to manage in a very busy month of the year. I will definitely be participating in Ali Edwards December Daily project at the end of the year again.

Christmas Ice Cream

At Christmas time we make healthy ice cream using yoghurt, berries and icing sugar in the shapes of Santa's, Reindeer's and this year we got a new mold in the shape of a gingerbread man. I love the fact that the kids can have a healthy dessert and the shapes make it all the more fun. The molds are silicon and I bought them from Robins Kitchen for about $6 each.

We do make this recipe throughout the year and I just make them into normal ice cube shapes and when they are frozen I get them all out and just put them into a zip lock bag so that after dinner it's just a matter of putting one or two ice cubes into the kids bowls and they can enjoy it. I find it saves room in the freezer as well to have them in the little zip lock bags. This photo is going in the December Daily for 2010.

Day 17

Last night was the first night that it hasn't been raining right on 7pm so I took the kids to one of our favourite Christmas Lights not far from home. James was keen on seeing the electric train set that was set up and Sienna just squealed about absolutely everything as she was so delighted. I'm pleased I got out of my nightie and took them (yes I had already had my shower and was in my nightie after a long week).

December Daily

Here's today's pages of the December Daily. We had scheduled a cricket match with some friends and James made up the invitations with the help of a couple of "rub on's" out of my scrapping supplied. I told him he had to give his match a name like the Ashes which is currently being held at the moment so he called it "Smack Down" cricket. Due to the weather it had to be called off which we were all extremely disappointed about. We are going a bit stir crazy with this rainy weather although we did manage to have a beautiful swim this morning in the pool. Click on the picture to enlarge.

December Daily - Christmas Books

Here's the pages from today using the Christmas Book photos. Click on the photo to enlarge if you want to read the words.

Christmas Activities & December Daily

Yesterday we made some gingerbread biscuits but it was a fairly stressful experience with the kids each starting out by taking as many of the cutters each as they could and explaining to the other one that they had more!!! aaaahhhhh big breath...... I continued on with the activity and we did end up making some biscuits but was too exhausted to bother with any icing. Maybe next time when we are all a bit more relaxed.

Then today we had our good friends over to do our "Edible Christmas Trees" with 7 kids and 3 mums. This activity is a good activity, cheap and fun and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Afterwards we all had a swim followed by a cute little Christmas DVD called "The Flight Before Christmas" which the kids and I saw last year and I ended up buying it this year for them as it's so sweet. We had a very enjoyable day and a bit of quiet time in the afternoon before another swim.

December Daily 2010

Really enjoying doing this and keeping up with it all. Here are another couple of pages. I haven't decided on the final font yet but at least it's all done and I can just change the font on each page before I print it. This was the kids writing out their Christmas cards.

December Daily 2010

I have always admired Ali Edwards December Daily and Molly Irwin's as well and last year attempted to put one together. I got half way through scrapping it and didn't get back to it. I did however take the photos on the day and wrote notes so in 2011 I will have to get back to that project and finish it.

This year I am making it streamlined and simple and have gone with one of Ali's templates and I'm just popping the photos in, doing some journalling and will add a few embellishments at the end. I just need to keep up each day so I don't get behind. I'm usually fine until about the 15th and then things get very hectic. I can see why the books are so great to have all your Christmas traditions and activities photographed and documented. It's the 25 days of December leading up to Christmas and beautiful moments shared with my kids. This is one of the pages from today of James putting together his Christmas Lego. Click on the image to enlarge it.

December Daily Project

Ali Edwards has posted her notes on her December Daily Album for 2010. This is a project she designed a few years ago to record all those Christmas activities from the 1st December through to the 25th December. Last year I attempted my first one and sad to say I have only half completed it. My main problem was I was trying to reinvent the wheel everyday with a new design which doesn't work given that December is the busiest time of the year.

This year I'm doing something more streamlined and simple like what Jody did last year. If you look on her posts in December 2009/January 2010 she shows you her lovely album. The format is photos on the left in a collage, and on the right there will be journalling, the date and a strip of paper on the right. It will all go into my 8x8 album.

The pictures above are the date emblishments that I'm using which is also a little envelope so I can get James to write something on a strip of paper and put it in there. Something in the eyes of a 7 year old but short and sweet. I have also cut my cardstock today so it's ready for printing and have put a green line around as a border. I will be ready to do journalling on the day, stick on the envelope and a bit of paper at the bottom and the right page is done. It will just be a matter of the photos on a small collage for the left hand side.