December Daily® Day 4: A Tale of Two Houses

For Day 4, I used the Christmas card photo's origination day as the day to show it in the album, as well as reflect on Christmas past.

Top card was from our Christmas card in 2010.  On Dec. 4, we were still owners of both homes.  This shot was taken on the first snowfall as well as this year's shot.

My pretty "new-old" house.  The card served as Christmas and change of address.

Spot the typo?  I didn't until they came printed to me.  And then, I thought, so it is written, so it shall be!  Imperfect, like the author. 

This was sort of a base page that I used.  I love this Simple Stories page protector with 2-4" x 4" slots and a 2" x 8" slot.  I altered my journaling card to fit the space.  I included the flap from our envelopes this year as well.

Journaling: On this day, Scott took “the money shot.”  It was, to quote Karen Carpenter, “the first snowfall of the winter.”  He texted me this iPhone shot of our “new-old” house.  Since I needed to send out change of address notices anyway, I made the Christmas card have two purposes.  I love this card from Shutterfly, mainly because I love gold foil on pretty much anything.  Of course the photo was gently treated by Rad Lab, but I really did not have to do much.  I also loved that there was a typo on it, and I sent it out anyway.  Baby steps!  Several years back, I recall coming home and seeing our Gabby Drive home being blanketed with snow.  I grabbed “Bertha” and the tripod and started snapping some nighttime shots.  Thus, the Christmas card (partially shown) was born that year, circa 2010.  

December Daily® Day 3: Freedom

In honor of George Michael, who passed away today, and the freedom I am feeling over break to be creative, a video:

2016 has been a doozy.  A reminder to us all to seize the day.

For this spread, I used a 3 x 8 "4 up" template from Ali.  She actually had a sentiment in one of the photo areas, but I needed the photo space.  Such a versatile template.  I also used her stamp sentiments that I purchased as digital elements.  Each sentiment is its own .png.  They are black, but pretty easy to recolor, as I did here in white.

Here is the flipside.  I spent about half of it journaling and the other half I used for a swatch of the godawful wallpaper that was in our half bath.  Now, I will say the persons who owned the home took impeccable care of it, and had chosen Colonial-era wallpapers.  But this was a hard room to deal with, as indicated in my journaling.  Here's a closer view.  You will have to imagine its repetition in the tiny space.

Journaling:

We moved to a “new-old” house at the end of July.  Scott is in heaven because it has tons of projects to occupy his need for demolition.  It’s been quite a transition for me, and not always in the best way.  The half bath was just scary awful.  Patriotic wallpaper (see below), sky blue tile, mildewing subfloor, horrifying toilet.  I woke up today to find Scott had demoed a good deal of it!  We made a trek to Sherwin Williams to pic up some paint. One thing that is awesome in our very 1970s basement is the pool table.  We frequently play, with Scott beating me 99.9% of the time.  It is, however, a nice use of “couple time,” which we were sorely lacking (can you believe he didn’t want to scrapbook with me?).

December Daily® Day 2

December 2 discusses my attempt at making healthier food choices.  The photo is an actual anju pear that I had at school.  I had fruits and veggies handy, and I was CONSTANTLY eating.  The bottom quote was from Cathy Zielske's 2016 FIT class.  She is taking enrollments for 2017 as well.  Lots of good motivation, although I was on and off that wagon last year.

The text of my journaling:

I am making attempts at making better food choices this month.  Shopping was step #1.  It’s amazing how little you can have in your cupboard when you stop caring what goes in your body. I also signed up for Weight Watchers online to do some tracking. I am writing this on Dec. 25, and my tracking has been missing for a few weeks, but I know that I can get back on track easily.  Getting off track is easier!  Scott has been losing a great deal of weight.  He made his bike into a stationary bike in the basement.  I walk the treadmill at times, but I am giving a lot of serious thought in to joining Jazzercise.  We shall see if I can get back in that groove. 

December Daily® Day 1: More labor-intensive than it looks

Finally, now, on Christmas, I am affording myself time to assemble my December Daily album. On my first day of December, I had the most random shots.  I decided to use a purchased digital file from Ali Edwards to give them some coherence.  The template is designed for a 6 x 8 page, but I cropped it to 4 x 6.  I also knew I wanted to use some of her digital paper, so I decided to match up the background of "Around Here" with the blue in the patterned paper.  I created the template for the journaling card using a bit of Ali's "December" handwriting along with Traveling Typewriter font.  Looks easy, but Photoshop was being very strange as I was doing this.  I am sure it could have been much easier!  I added an acrylic star from one of Ali's story kits to wrap up the page.  Here is the journaling:

The month starts off with a fairly average day. Between 7 and 7:30 AM, I am getting myself ready to drop Max off at Corpus Christi Junior High and then traveling to “the 602.”  If he has allocated himself enough time, Max is doing his “sensory” play. This December, I am taking a back seat in my classroom. Mr. Murphy, my student teacher, is in charge of most of the teaching. I have just recently become familiar with television shows again, permitting myself that luxury. “Speechless” is a huge favorite of mine, as well as “Blue Bloods” and “This is Us.” Recently, Maureen, Angie, and I have been gathering elf costumes for the Irving Christmas party. I am in charge of hats and shoes.  Thank goodness for Amazon Prime!

Merry Christmas!

A Joyous Card

A friend of mine is fostering two children in hopes of adoption.  We are celebrating.  It's so fantastic.  Here's the card for her shower.

Stamp set: Simon Says Stamp You Matter

Die: You Wafer Die from Simon Says Stamp (coordinates with stamp in set)

Die: Stitched rectangles (I think they are from MFT, but I cannot recall)

Cardstock: Neenah Solar White and Bazzill Kraft

Patterned Paper: Simple Stories #whatever #hahahano

Ink: Ali Edwards Black Butte

Stickers: Starfoam Hearts

Popped up with dimension stickers

Stamps: Papertrey Ink A Cheerful Heart and MFT Essential Sentiments (I think it might be retired)

A close up of the sentiment on front.

Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaaaa, December Daily® Begins!

Although I have been taking and keeping photos for December Daily®, last night was the first night I actually started on the physical album.  Here's what transpired in the wee hours, as that seems to be my most creative time.

The base album looked a little something like this:

Then evolved into this.  Ali Edwards is big on stating intention with scrapbooking.  Many of her projects encourage scrapbookers to start out this way.

I used her December Daily® 2016 freebie .png file, and then put 2016 in the wreath using Hello Typewriter font.  That will be my album font this year.

This is the door to my new home.  I found it fitting to start the album with this for many reasons.  First, and most obvious, it's red--the color of the season.  Next, I had plenty of "white space" to add some subtle creative pieces, as shown in the next pic.  Last, it complements my intention quite well.

Here is the text of "My Reason Why:"

In browsing my 2015 December Daily album, one thing is abundantly clear: a lot can happen in a year.  The Platos at this point in 2016 are so different than the Platos in December 2015.  Good differences.  New struggles.  Just wow.  We moved to 205 Fleetwood Drive in Bloomington at the end of July 2016.  It took until November to sell our home on Gabby.  At present, we have still not closed on the house, so that will make 4 months of two house payments.  That caused an intense amount of stress.  I fell back into the throes of depression, and it hit me hard in September.  Unpacking, therefore, has been quite slow.  Almost a crawl.  I finally got my craft room to be usable, and got my mojo back just recently.  I was not even sure I was going to embark on a December Daily journey this year. I went to The Paper Forest and created a base album in a class there. I have decided to commit to that wonderful creative feeling I had when I worked on this last project year.  I love revisiting all that happened last December.  2016 has been a very strange year.  I imagine that December of this year will follow suit.  So, here we go, 2016. A month of recapping lessons learned and hopes for a new year.  The journey begins.

That probably lends itself to the stickers I used on the bottom left to make much more sense.  All are from Ali's Story Kits of past and present.  I am an addict of her word stickers.  I always find the best paired phrases!

On the back of that 6 x 8 page (which, by the way, the page protectors are way bigger than that), I typed out this Sunday's first reading, as I felt like it spoke for the season of the church year as well as life reminders for me to be joyful and acknowledge what I have been given after patient waiting, as well as what has been with me all along.

I maintained the Santa "Happy Holidays" divider as it was.  On the back, I had the foundation set and just needed a photo.  I chose one of my son in front of our new house's family room fireplace which he decorated himself.  He loves to "doll up" the house for the holidays.  I made it a wee smaller than the mat and stamped the date of the picture.

On both sides of the chipboard dividers, I stamped with one of Ali's stamps.  I thought it was fitting as the season begins.

Yep, that's "all" for now.  That took quite some time.  I had to reacquaint myself with my photo printers (yeah, much ink was wasted on the door picture) and the wifi in my house was being ornery.  More to come!!