Catching up on the journal plus 2008 review.

2008 review journalling reads:

Quite a positive year for us. Kevin finally completed and passed his Masters in Public Administration (MPA) Open University course. He also has successful visits to Nigeria,Thailand and Malaysia. Kitty has really come along with her reading and writing and has continued to enjoy school. In September she moved up into Mrs Bebbington’s year One class. She has started going to Rainbows and passed her level one in swimming. Zoe has had a very eventful year. She won a trophy at Co-Op band for being the most promising newcomer, and has continued to play her clarinet for the Co-Op at numerous concerts including the Crewe Lyceum theatre, Nantwich town square and the Dane Bank theatre. During the summer she started having private Clarinet and music theory lessons with Gwendoline. She has done really well and achieved distinctions in both her Grade One music theory and her clarinet playing exams. The biggest change for her has been moving up to high school. She was fortunate to get a place at her first choice school. There were a lot of leavers parties for her to go to at the end of year six - one of the most memorable being the one at Crewe Vagrants, where they had a talent show. and a very emotional leavers assembly at school. She seems to have settled in well at high school, and has been to Conway with the rest of year seven. I have been very involved with my digital scrapbooking teamwork and have had a few pages published in Scrapbook Inspirations magazine and Digital Artist Magazine (online). I have even been interviewed a couple of times! I got a new car this year to cope with my increased daily driving. I did another photography course in the spring. We also had new windows and fascias on the house this year and now it looks great!

Boxing Day

Christmas Day

Ok so I'm a day late, but Happy Christmas everyone. Here's my journal entry for yesterday...

Nearly Christmas!!!!

Phew, All Caught Up!

Been a hectic few days, DD1 has been playing here and there and I got a bit behind with my journal but I am all caught up now :)

Grateful

Todays journal entry. The photos are some I took during CJ's photography course, naturally the photoshoot fell into mayhem. Journalling reads - It may be chaos, but it's my chaos!

Oooh Inspired!

Finally I got my free heat tool set (from mag subscription). Was doing some blog browsing and re-visited the blog of Dan99 (link is in list of favourite blogger on the right). Totally inspired by his tutorials I had a go at a tag...

Its not at all perfect but its a real start. I see lots of experiments on the horizon :)

Cool effects!

Shimelle's prompt today had some inspiring photography by Beth Retro. So inspiring I had a go myself at creating some lighting effects using CS3. The photo is and old one of DD1 when she was 2 that I scanned.

If you've been here before you might also spot that I made a new blog header with the same techniques!!

Visitors?

Giving

My journal entry for today.

And I have to add... YAY! Alexandra Burke won X Factor wooohoooo :)

More Journal Entries

Deck the Halls

A page about our tree for my Christmas Journal

Wrapping it up

I've used my christmas wrapping paper today to make the small presents.

Tradition

Tradition is such a big part of Christmas, but what makes what we do become a tradition? I suppose you could say that when Christmas just isn’t Christmas without a particular thing then that something must have become a tradition. For me Christmas is not complete without the proper Turkey dinner, which we have at lunchtime so that we can have turkey sandwiches for tea, and we must have crackers to pull, and we have to wear the paper hats from inside. I have to watch ‘A Wonderful Life’ in the run up to Christmas, and of course the tree and the lights outside are a must. And keeping a journal. I guess we make our own traditions, some are unique to us and others are the same as other peoples, but without these things it’s just not ‘our’ Christmas.

More Journalling

Caught up now with my Christmas Journal...

The Countdown...

Page 5 of my journal.
We have a wooden cupboard full of tiny drawers. Each drawer contains a little ornament to hang on the little wooden tree. The girls take it in turns to do this, but both girls get an advent calendar in the post from Nanny Owl, and this year Kev bought me one too. Zoe’s features a cathedral with a market outside, Kitty’shas got lots of ducks on and mine is a night time scene with the stable in the middle.

Winter

Everything from... Cold Winter Days by Gisela B Designs at Scrapbooking-Heaven.de

Dream Christmas

Page 4 of my journal...

Journalling reads:

I dream of a perfect Christmas, filled with fun and laughter, friends and family together and wonderful food. There would of course be snow and singing and music, games and a great film on the telly. Everyone’s presents would be exactly what they always wanted and the day would be totally magical and happy.

Christmas Correspondence

Page 3 of my Journal,

the envelope contains one of this years cards and the journalling reads:

I’ve done it again. I bought cards in the January sales (when I still had some left over from last year) kept them safe in a cupboard all year and then went and bought some new ones. So now I will have some left over, then buy some in the sales and repeat the whole cycle again. I guess the moral of the story is that I like buying cards more than writing them!

Let It Snow

Page 2 of my journal...

Journalling reads:

We have had snow ! Both yesterday and today have seen snow flurries, though it’s soon melted away. I love to watch it fall, and even play in it - but I hate taking the girls to school in it , so my winter weather wish is that Iwould love it to snow for Christmas, but not until the school holidays start !

My Manifesto

Here's my first page for my Christmas Journal...

A link on Shimelle's class forum led me to THIS fantastic site where you can create your own font from your handwriting - and its free. Really useful for journalling as you can size your writing to fit and simply delete any mistakes before you print. It will also be great for digital pages too :)

The journalling reads:

I hereby declare that I will make the time to create a page of memories every day starting on December the first until Twelfth Night.I will try to capture the essence of Christmas in our household through memories of past Christmases, events of this Christmas and hopes of Christmases to come. Some of the events may seem smaller than others but will hopefully remain in our memories with the help of this festive journal- reminding us of our Merry Christmas 2008 !