Hello December!

I am excited to share my page for the December gallery at write.click.scrapbook! This month’s theme was holiday traditions, so of course I had to scrap our favorite one. πŸ™‚

I had lots of fun stamping and embossing on this page! Here are a few details.

Red glitter ZingΒ embossing powderΒ is a must for Christmas pages! πŸ™‚Β I also bought theΒ greenΒ one but haven’t used it yet.
TheseΒ Christmas Blueprints stampsΒ by Tim Holtz are from last year, but I just bought them and I am in love! The Santa is fromΒ this stamp setΒ and it’s just too cute! I bought these stamps with December Daily and Christmas cards in mind. I am glad I got them!
Another purchase I made with Christmas in mind was Ranger Archival Ink inΒ emerald greenΒ andΒ vermillion. I love how smooth the stamped images turned out!
Hope you had a great start to the month!

December Daily – Days 2-7

As promised, I am back to share some December Daily pages. I had started out this project thinking I would be combining my Project Life and December Daily albums in one, but the truth is I love Christmas so much that it deserves its own album! πŸ™‚ So I’m doing a true Dec. Daily album, and I’ll catch up (or not.. ;)) on the ordinary events in my PL album. πŸ™‚ I have been super busy with my last classes and exams, on top of my regular work, so I’m a bit behind, but I am keeping things simple in this album, so I will be catching up soon. Here are days 2-7!

DD 2012 - Day 2

I splurged and bought Kelly Purkey’s December Daily kit – I fell in love with the stamp, and I just couldn’t resist – and I’m so glad I did! For this spread I just used a journaling card from the kit and the stamp for the date. The rest is all photos – I loved them all and wanted to include them. My two favorite people in the whole world!

DD 2012 - Day 2

I thought the confetti journaling card went perfectly with all the Christmas lights/bokeh pictures. πŸ˜‰

DD 2012 - Days 3-5

I included as an insert a prank from our elf.. πŸ˜‰ DH was printing out 200 copies of the program for a concert that would take place on Dec. 16th, and our elf decided to steal the show and printed his own version! πŸ™‚

DD 2012 - Days 3-5 

Gotta have glitter in my album! πŸ™‚ The label is from the Studio Calico 25 Days class (Dec. Daily class) kit; the background paper is by Basic Grey Fact&Fiction, I covered a Studio Calico Wonderland wood veneer tree with Stickles, and layered it on top of some awesome glitter tape. Oh and the date stamp? I recently bought this awesome number stamp and I’m in love!

DD 2012 - Days 6-7

You will start seeing a pattern here.. when I don’t have any Christmas pictures for the day, all you get is an Elf picture. πŸ™‚ So I can also combine multiple days in one page and keep the thickness of the album reasonable. I journaled and stamped on the back of the program (stamps by Ali Edwards, Cute and So Totally Happy sets). On the right, filler cards are made with A Christmas Tradition by Jenn Barrette and Valorie Wibbens.

DD 2012 - Days 6-7

For this spread, I added in a paper bag from Starbucks – I love their designs so much, plus you never go wrong with bunnies! <3 a="a" href="http://scrapflower.com/shoppe/product.php?productid=21109" i="i" left="left" on="on" target="_blank" the="the" used="used">journaling card by creashens
 (slightly recolored), and the bottom two pockets are made using A Very Vintage Christmas by Digital Design Essentials.

DD 2012 - Days 6-7

I had so much fun decorating the back of the paper bag!

DD 2012 - Days 6-7

In all honesty, I botched the first stamping: I stamped “Hey Santa!” (from KP’s DD kit) in red but I didn’t press it down properly so the middle remained blank, so I decided to color the whole bubble red and stamp another sentiment on top of it instead (oh what fun, from the 25 Days class kit). I chose green because it matched the Starbucks logo, and I restamped the Hey Santa in green too (properly this time). πŸ˜‰ I love the result!!

DD 2012 - Days 6-7

I love this page too – I decided to use a journaling card I’d pre-made using Jenn Barrette’s A Month of Memories and I only just realized that it matched the picture on top of it perfectly, with the peppermint sticks! I made the title using Dear Lizzy tile stickers (the package comes with 2 sheets, one with gold letters on white and the other with white stickers on gold) and Dear Lizzy Fox glitter thickers.

That’s all I have for now, hoping to get caught up very soon!

Elf on the Shelf – 2012

Last year I got DH an Elf on the Shelf for his birthday present (which comes shortly before December). It was a huge hit! We don’t have kids, but who said elves are just for kids? We have a lot of fun with our elf. πŸ™‚ We named him Jingle Ginger, and I find him adorable! Like all elves, he’s loves candy and sweets, and ends up in trouble quite often, but he makes up for it with a big heart. πŸ™‚ I won’t be posting pictures daily this year, but rather weekly, and here’s the first few days’ worth of photos. He made his apparition the day after we put up the tree, but DH didn’t spot him for a few days after that. πŸ˜‰

Elf 2012

By the way, I love my Christmas tree! I put it up with my mom, and it’s so pretty!

I had no clue what to get DH for his birthday this year, but when I saw a helicopter at Macy’s on Black Friday for $19.99, I decided to pick it up, since it’s something he’d talked about every now and then. Well…  he couldn’t have been happier! πŸ™‚ Yay me! And Jingle Ginger had fun playing with it too.. πŸ˜‰

Elf 2012

See? He’s behaving so well this year! Not naughty at all! The following day, we found him sound asleep beneath the tree. So sweet!

Elf 2012

Uh-oh… I spoke too soon! He got in the chocolate stash the next day!!

Elf 2012

Well, what can you do? Elves do love chocolate after all… Day 5 was December 1st, and Jingle Ginger reminded us to get going on our Advent calendar. πŸ™‚

Elf 2012

And then he got in trouble again!! We put lights on the spruce in our front yard, and Jingle Ginger wanted to help, but got all tangled up!

Elf 2012

Do you have an Elf? It has certainly quickly become a favorite tradition at our house! πŸ™‚

Last Adventures With Our Elf

I haven’t posted Elf pictures in quite a while! He’s been busy coming up with new ways to be naughty, but what can I say? We love him, no matter what! πŸ™‚

Day 22

The morning after the day we did our holiday baking, we caught him making snow angels in the flour!

Day 23

Luckily, he had a nice bath the following day. πŸ™‚

Day 24

This morning we woke up to find a picture of Jingle Ginger on all our iPads, iPhone and laptops!

Day 25

JG has all his Christmas shopping planned out – candy, candy and more candy! πŸ˜‰

Day 26

Phew, this one was a pain to make, but oh so funny! I made a mock up Facebook page for Jingle Ginger, with posts from Santa, Rudolph and Frosty. Then I put it up on DH’s computer. πŸ˜‰

Day 27

2 days to Christmas!

Day 28

I didn’t think I’d be able to pull this one off, but I did! πŸ˜‰

Day 28

Jingle Ginger turned us both into Rudolphs! πŸ™‚ I had tried it the day before, but DH was already awake so I couldn’t do it (thus, the lame “2 days to Christmas” backup plan). But this time I succeeded! Too bad I put too few paint on DH’s nose, but I still count it as a success!

Day 29

I am so sad that Jingle Ginger is going back to the North Pole until next year! We’ll miss him!

A Well-Behaved Elf, Finally!

8 Days to Christmas.. Here are the latest Elf pictures!

Day 16

DH and I have recently bought a treadmill, but Jingle Ginger has no intention of using it! πŸ™‚

Day 17

Reading his book with our little moose.

Day 18

This week our Elf has shown his crafty side! πŸ™‚ He did do a bit of a mess initially to cut out his initials…

Day 19

But then he cut out some beautiful snowflakes! He must miss the snow from the North Pole..

Day 20

Isn’t he cute? Perhaps I should ask him if he wants to help me with my hybrid creations!

Day 21

And now he’s made a complete card! An elf after my own heart! <3 This past week he has behaved really well, it looks like we’ll have a smooth sail until Christmas. Or maybe not? πŸ˜‰

More Elf Pictures

As the days pass, our elf is showing more and more his mischievous side! πŸ™‚

Oh my goodness, Jingle Ginger started raiding the gifts under the tree!! He picked this one that happened to be An Elf’s Story… πŸ™‚

Day 12

He spent the day watching his movie!

Day 13

Look at what our naughty elf did next!! He wrapped up the Christmas tree with toilet paper! πŸ˜‰

Day 14

(note: it is really challenging to wrap up such a big tree on your own! And it took me a whole roll to cover it up – way more than I expected! πŸ˜‰ But it looked really pretty! πŸ™‚ )
Today he wrote his name in our Christmas carols book!!

Day 15

I’m starting to run out of ideas here! πŸ™‚ Most of the ideas I have take too much time to do in the morning, so it’s getting complicated… It’s great to have a couple of quick backup ideas to do on days on which you are rushed – the last one above was precisely that. I’d photocopied the book last week, and just kept it ready.

More Elf Pictures

I am having so much fun with our Elf this year! I can see making a whole album just with these pictures. He is totally adorable! πŸ˜‰

He’s turning out to be quite the reckless type! πŸ™‚

Day 7

He was really sweet this day, reminding us to write our Christmas cards…

Day 8

Guess who got a sewing machine as an early Christmas present?!?!!?!!!!!!!! πŸ˜€ And guess who else is loving it? πŸ˜‰ Wow, it looks like he really knows what he’s doing! Maybe he can teach me how to use it!

Day 9

Uh-oh… I spoke too soon… No more sewing for Jingle Ginger!

Day 10

Well, he eventually finished his scarf, and is testing it out in the fridge! I guess it’s too warm here for him, being from the North Pole and all… πŸ˜‰

Day 11

Elf on the Shelf

This year I started a new tradition. In the past few months, I learned about the Elf on the Shelf concept, and decided it was time for us to start it. To make it short, the elf joins your family and every night he goes back to the North Pole to report back to Santa whether you’ve been bad or good. You aren’t allowed to touch him, and each morning you have to go find where he is. After Christmas, he goes back to the North Pole until the following year. Of course this makes sense for children, but who cares if we don’t have any; we are in love with our elf already and it’s lots of fun to think of new things for him to do each day. πŸ™‚ I gave the elf to DH as a birthday present. πŸ™‚ We named him Jingle Ginger and he is just plain adorable!

He loves Christmas carols.

Day 1

Last Saturday we put up the tree, and he seemed to like it!

Day 2

He likes his name!

Day 3

For the past couple of days DH had been wanting us to play this fun board game, since we always play when my mom is here and it’s a lot of fun. It appears that Jingle Ginger wanted us to play too! And we did play that night, of course. πŸ™‚

Day 4

On Dec. 1st he reminded us it was time to start the Advent calendar! πŸ™‚

Day 5

This morning, he started showing his naughty side. He opened up the bag of chocolates and feasted on it! πŸ˜‰

Day 6

Do you have an elf? If you don’t, it’s not too late to start! πŸ™‚