December Daily - December 7

Hi! My girlfriend got in from Ireland on Wednesday, so we've been busy with family and holiday stuff and I haven't had a chance to post! Finally, here's Day 7 for your viewing pleasure:

I decided to highlight my Christmas village collection on the 7th. I have mentioned before that I have several paper bag pages throughout the daily and I'm keeping little trinkets and whatnot in those. This one contains a Starbucks coffee cup sleeve and a little list that I'm listing the pieces of my village on.




I used decorative tape to kind of bind the bag to itself, making it more of a pocket sized opening, rather than a full on bag opening. This seems to keep things in there a little better, instead of them falling out.







I got the Merry & Bright stamp in my last Studio Calico kit and just in time. I also did a little faux stitch border around the edges of the second page just to add more interest. I used my old Zig pen in Blue Jay.




supplies: patterned paper - Cosmo Cricket, Echo Park; stickers - Echo Park, October Afternoon, American Crafts, SEI stamp - Studio Calico, twine - Doodlebug Design, coaster - Red Bird Inkfloss - DMC, other - paper bag, decorative tape, ribbon

I'm only done through December 9, peeps...I'm still taking pictures and keeping track of the days, but I won't have a chance to really work on anything again until January and at that time, I'll post the remainder of my DD in a chunk or two.

I'm really loving how the whole thing is coming together! It makes my heart smile. Here's a couple of shots of how chunky this little book is getting. It will also give you a little insight as to where I take my blog photos! hehe






I will post December 8 when I get another chance.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

December Daily - December 6

I'm back with another December Daily installment. I'm not too too far behind now, though my girlfriend gets in Wednesday night, so I'm sure I'll be very behind for the last 10 days of the project since we have many many plans!

This was another Ellie centered day! I put a bunch of my old Christmas stuffed animals under my tree, knowing full well she'd want to come in and play with them. This day she found "Ugly Antler Bear", which Lisa coined "UAB". I totally stole that anacronym and went with it! I caught Ellie smiling away, giving UAB some cuddles as she watched Mickey's Christmas Carol in my room. I thought what better pictures to help me tell the story of how UAB came into my life.



I used one of the Hambly overlays for the first time. It was a little intimidating because I wasn't (and am still not...) quite sure what to do with them. They definitely look cool, but I think I still have some figuring out to do in future instances.



I used another one of the little cutie envelopes from the Studio Calico December Daily kit, as well as an older Sei tag and some Sticko number stickers circa 2002.








Supplies: patterned paper - Cosmo Cricket; stickers - Echo Park, Jenni Bowlin, Authentique, American Crafts, Sei, Sticko; overlay - Hambly Screen Prints; flag - October Afternoon; other (source unknown) - tape, mini envelope

Tomorrow's a jam packed day, but if I have a minute or two I will try and toss December 7th up here for your viewing pleasure. Thanks for reading and have a great Saturday!

Birthday Dinner - Studio Calico

Hey all...Still working on the past few days of my DD, but should have more up for you tomorrow. Meanwhile, here's a layout I created using the December Studio Calico kit "Brooklyn Flea"

As I may have mentioned before, I take WAY too many pictures of every single event. What's worse, is that I feel a pressing need to scrap them all. I've gotten better over the years and know how to get rid of the really horrible ones (which is still hard, but digital photography has made it easier). Therefore, no more blurry pictures in my layouts or photos of my loved ones making unintentional funny faces. My point being - I'm almost at the end of my stack of my birthday photos from this year. I'm so pleased!

Birthday Dinner




Supplies: patterned paper - My Mind's Eye, Crate Paper; cardstock - My Mind's Eye; spray ink - Smooch Spritz; chipboard letters - American Crafts; buttons - Crate Paper; date stamp - K & Co; tag - Ormolu

Thanks for reading!

December 5

Hi everyone...I've been so busy the past couple of days that I've not only not had a chance to post til now, but I'm already 3 days behind on my DD! Eeeek!

Monday was another multi-page entry. Starting with this first page which highlights a couple of photos of the sweet coloring job my little niecey did with her Santa Claus picture. I used another coaster and misted both that and the journaling with silver Smooch spritz. The flowers are from Recollections and I threw in a couple of October Afternoon stickers, as well as a little red ribbon. As always, the foundation pages are all from Cosmo Cricket.



The tree in the front yard still has some gorgeous fall colors going on, so I highlighted that here. I opted to not mist this journaling block and adhered it with a few staples, as well as the other little red ribbon.



The next page is just filler to cover the back of the photo. I used my fave Jenni Bowlin doilies with some Echo Park brads. More Cosmo Cricket paper and the title block is Echo Park.



Finally, just a simple little page showing Ellie coloring her Santa Claus picture. Mister Huey Holly Berry spray ink, some more Recollections flowers, and a couple of stickers from October Afternoon (and I think....it's older) Daisy D's.





Thanks everyone so much for reading and all of your positive comments and encouragement!

December Daily - December 4

Sunday the winter weather here in North Texas finally creeped in! It was cold and cloudy and rainy. And it’s stayed that way since. But I’m sure by Saturday we’ll be back to beach weather. No…I jest, I jest.

It was another stay at home and be lazy kind of day. I find that I have a focus for each day of what I want to capture and then one or two other little nice things creep in and I have to include those too. The plan for December 4 was to get pictures of the family Christmas tree and highlight some of the ornaments that have special meaning to me. But….Parrish also made German pancakes, which I hadn’t had in years and Ellie came to my room for a visit and became mesmerized by A Christmas Story, so I couldn’t let those things go unnoticed.

I really like how the whole mini is coming together. I love all the little chunky embellishments and the oddly sized pages. I really liked adding little things to the paperbag and sticking a picture of Ellie on the back. It all makes me pretty happy.

The first “page” is part of a brown paper bag. When I was building the foundation, I had already put the vintage “Merry Christmas” tag onto the bag, so I just jazzed it up a big with another pink and red felt flower, another button from Pebbles, some ribbon and a piece of a border sticker.




I carried the ribbon all the way around and put Ellie watching A Christmas Story on top of that. Pretty simple. Inside the bag I plan to just stick random holiday stuff I pick up here and there. So far, I have the sales pitch from a Bath & Body Works coupon. I love the idea of looking at this book years from now and seeing how different our ads were now compared to then.




The next page, I finally got around to using one of the big coasters by Red Bird Ink that were included in the SC DD kit. I sprayed it with Mr. Huey’s Holly Berry AND some silver Smooch Spritz. I added a couple of Echo Park chipboard elements as well as my journaling about the photo on the opposite page (journaling sprayed with the Mr. Huey’s, as well). I found some old tape in my stash and used it to make a kind of arrow pointing towards the photograph in an attempt to tie the two together. This is also the page I tabbed using a couple of tab stickers from Cosmo Cricket which I placed back to back and using my fave October Afternoon mini market stickers for the numbers. The foundation is still the Cosmo Cricket Dear Mr. Claus paper.




On the back – some photos of my sister and I and her delicious German pancakes. I kept this one pretty simple, still sprayed the journaling and throwing in a chunk of the paper from the November SC kit. I think this one is by My Mind’s Eye. I used some of the Authentique word stickers that came with the SC DD kit as well as another Echo Park chipboard sticker. I love these chipboard stickers, btw. I already had a set of them before I got my kit and I’ve been using them like crazy. The whole Season’s Greetings line by Echo Park is amazing.




Final page – here I highlighted my favorite ornaments on the family Christmas tree. I took all of these pictures with my IPhone and Instagramed them, because I love those crazy little old timey filters. I used the Earlybird filter on all of these. The little sticker down in the bottom corner is an old Daisy D’s with a very old Basic Grey “4” on top. Then I combined my final Pebbles button, a couple of chipboard elements and a brad all by Echo Park and stuck some cutie word stickers on top of that from October Afternoon’s Holiday Style line. You might also notice that I’ve already tabbed that page with a 5, since December 5 starts on the flipside.






Overall I’m really enjoying this project! I’ll be back tomorrow with more. Have a great day!

December Daily - December 3

Saturday was just a quick page, because frankly, I needed a break after the amount of stuff I had wanted to include from Friday. It was a pretty low key day anyway, so just a quick picture that my sister took of Ellie’s tree and a couple of shots I took of them getting the decorations out.







Supplies: stickers - SEI, October Afternoon, Echo Park, American Crafts, Authentique, Basic Grey; Flower - Jillibean Designs; Patterned Paper - Cosmo Cricket; Echo Park

Back tomorrow with December 4!

December Daily - December 2

Friday was such a busy day! After work, I met up with my family for dinner and fun night at Six Flags’ Holiday in the Park. I also included a family tradition that was started up again when I came home. We have a toy that is kind of like “Elf on the Shelf” for us (though we started it long before any of us had heard of Elf on a Shelf) where we randomly put “Toby” our wonder toy somewhere unexpected. I came home Friday night to find Toby taking a snooze in my bed, so of course, he and his story had to be included. I printed the title on a regular old office-ink jet printer-transparency. I attached it with a couple of staples and a paper clip before attaching the day 2 tab to the transparency itself. The number sticker is from Echo Park and the tab – another one of my SEI oldies from several years ago.




I used some hidden journaling for the Toby story for a couple of reasons. I attached the journaling on the other side of the craft paper with some Hambly washi tape and a couple of staples. Also on this page, a picture of Ellie in a cute little swing ride she got to ride on all by herself! All the chipboard elements and the “Christmas” cut out are from Echo Park. The border sticker and patterned paper on this page are Cosmo Cricket.









I had a lot of journaling to include, so I added a piece of cream colored cardstock (that I sprayed with the same Mr. Huey’s holly berry as Thursday’s page…I see a trend forming throughout this project). The front side is the story of a very eventful and awkward visit to Santaland at Six Flags. I included some stickers from echo Park and October Afternoon, as well as another one of the Pebbles buttons.








The back of this page is the overview of our evening. I included some little pictures, because I like the way they look. I used some border stickers from Cosmo Cricket and more Pebbles buttons to fill out the side of the page.




Finally! The last page for December 2…I can’t believe how much I added to this book just for this day. A bunch of pictures from Holiday in the Park. I was able to use the cute little tickets from the SC kit and really like the way it looks. All the other accents and stickers are from Echo Park, with the exception of the number sticker and the twine. The twine is Doodlebug and if my brain doesn’t fail me, the number sticker is an oldie from Basic Grey. Oldie as in first line they put out back in the early 2000s.






I really like how these pages turned out, even though they took me a lot longer than I would have liked to complete, but it was definitely worth it.

December First

December Daily Day 1




I have to say after completing my first day, I’m definitely a believer. I’m more in
love with this project than ever!

I couldn’t believe how quickly this first page came together and I’m digging the overall style of the page. Kinda like a magazine column. It makes me happy, anyway. As a mentioned several posts ago, when I made the foundation pages, I primarily used Cosmo Cricket papers, but also threw in some Echo Park and some old Daisy D’s from my stash. I did all this before knowing about the existence of the Studio Calico kit, so I will use the album either for another project or for next year’s DD.


I took all these photos on December 1 and did the journaling once I had those taken and printed out. I had anticipated just taking some pictures of my tree and hopefully getting Ellie to look upon it lovingly, but didn’t even think about how my sister, Parrish (Ellie’s mommy) had gotten a super cute advent calendar so she and Ellie could start this Christmas tradition.




I will preface the rest of this with this little tidbit: We have an interesting living situation currently as it is me, Parrish, Ellie, and our mom and dad all living in the same house. It’s not the most desirable of situations, but for the time being anyway, it is the most practical and is surprisingly far better than I thought it would be when I made the decision to move back home this year. I say all that to say this: the big giant blessing out of all of it is getting to see my little musher grow and change every day. How many aunties get that privilege??? Thus, we all got to participate in the Advent calendar activity.

I included in my journaling how Parrish wrote activities for each day on little slips of paper. Of course, Ellie, being only 16 ½ months old, can’t read them, but she did have that little slip of paper clutched in her tiny hand for quite some time after they removed it. Tonight’s activity: listening to Christmas music. But just listening to the music wasn’t enough for the Horton family, oh no…silly dancing had to be involved. Ellie has taken to doing the cutest little squeal when I spin her around, so we danced and spun and acted crazy and we didn’t get any fantastic pictures of it…mostly pictures of me smiling and Ellie clinging onto me for dear life.

I read an article in CK a few months ago describing how to print multiple small pictures on a 4x6 photo sheet using Microsoft Word, so I’ve had fun playing around with that my last few layouts, including this one. The top two pictures were taken using the Instagram app on my IPhone. LOVE it! I had hoped to take all the pictures today using the app, but it didn’t work out how I’d hoped.

Once I had those all sized and printed up the way I wanted them, I journaled and added little caption tags for the photo. Those were printed out, cut out and spritzed with Mr. Huey’s Holly Berry…the special edition spray from the SC December Daily kit. I just happened to pull out the little mini envelopes from the kit and found this tiny Ellie picture fit inside them perfectly, so was thrilled to be able to add that to the layout.



The little sticker at the bottom and the “1” were part of the foundation, so I worked around those. I recently reorganized my stash and have a little drawer of just holiday stuff and found these Making Memories “Happy Holiday” fabric tags in there. They are way old, probably from 2004 or 2005, as is the SEI (are they even still around???) tab sticker I used on the left hand side.



I think I’m going to try and tab most, if not all of my pages, as I go through the
month. I like the idea of being able to see the days add up as I progress through the album. Finally, I filled in a little hole between photos with a cardstock flower sticker and a chipboard “cheer” sticker, both by Echo Park. I also used a couple of the buttons by Pebbles that were also included in the SC kit.





This has been a super long winded post! Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend and Happy December!!!