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Christmas 07

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I have lots of photos to share, but haven’t had time to edit all of them. I continue to be frustrated with the color calibration on my computer. It’s not too bad when I print, but photos get pretty washed out when I save them for the web.

We had a great Christmas. Two in fact. One on Christmas Day when Matt, Tracy, and I opened a few gifts in the morning. At four, Tracy’s family arrived and the party began. Here’s a layout I did of the new family band!

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Journaling reads:  "Tom surprised Jill with an accordian for her anniversary. She was once an award-winning accordian player, and she hasn’t l0st her touch. Tom, Jill, and Greg created a special program for our family Christmas celebration. It couldn’t have been more fun."

Sarah and Adam arrived on the 29th when we had our "real" (more stuff) Christmas. It’s been nice to have everyone around, although both Sarah and I are not feeling up to par. Everyone except me has one more day off. I have to wrap my mind around going back to work tomorrow. Just not ready yet.

It was a "techie" Christmas for me. Much to my surprise I got a hot shoe flash for my camera. The learning curve is not as smooth as I wish, but I’m already getting better.

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One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to improve my photography skills, so now I have more equipment to play with. One way I’m planning to improve is by doing the Project 365. The link takes you to an article that explains all the benefits of taking a photo a day. I’ve tried in 2007 and some months been pretty successful. I also printed out their Photo Resolutions for 2007 to help keep me on track.

Speaking of the New Year, I chose a new word for 2008. I adopted this from Ali Edwards last year and found focusing on a single word very helpful. This year I chose commit. There are a few goals I’ve set year after year that never seem to be met completely–like the Photo-a-Day.

Paper Source’s motto:  "Do something creative every day" is another goal I work toward but never seem to meet. I’ve joined a huge group of folks at Big Picture Scrapbooking for the free Get a LOAD of  This class. Our goal is to scrap 31 layouts in 31 days. That should get me off to a good start. Here’s today’s:

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Another unstated goal is to start doing some digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking. This layout has a photo I applied "soft light" to as the background paper. Not too easy to see on the scan, but I’m pleased with how it came out.

I had two big projects I hoped to finish over vacation, but neither are started. Hoping to work on them tonight. I did finish reading Bridge of Sighs, Richard Russo’s new book and our book group choice for January. Loved it, but it’s long!

Happy New Year!

Changing Weather

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Just one week ago, there was this:

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Enough snow to cancel school.

Yesterday there was this:

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A balmy 50 degrees.

Today, Christmas Eve, enough new snow to make everything white again.

Santa Claus

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Christmas Writing Challenge #3: Me + The Big Guy in a Red Suit

Writing Prompt: Write about your relationship with Santa Claus.

    Most families, it seems, have their unique Old St. Nick relationships.  Write about the specifics of Santa Claus in your family. How did you feel about him? When did you discover the truth, and how did you feel about it?

I definitely believed in Santa Claus. We left a plate of homemade cookies and a glass of milk out for him every year. Our Christmas stockings were knee socks hung on the ends of our beds. No gift from Santa in your stocking was wrapped; he didn’t have time for that. Interestingly, I don’t think I ever had an opportunity to visit Santa and sit on his lap. If I did, I certainly don’t remember it. There were never presents under our tree until Christmas morning. I remember being so excited on Christmas Eve that I couldn’t go to sleep and I would lay there and try to wish myself asleep. I knew Santa wouldn’t come until I was fast asleep, and I knew that once I went to sleep, time would fly. My brother and I emptied our stockings in our rooms and then woke up my parents. Whoever woke up first showed up in the other’s room–stocking in tow. When did I learn the truth? No idea, but it must not have been traumatic.

We did things a bit differently with our kids. We went to Breakfast with Santa. Sarah’s first experience was at two years old, and she found it rather overwhelming. We visited Santa at the mall. We have photos from some of the breakfasts but few, if any, from visits at the mall. That seems very strange now. Perhaps I ought to sort through old albums and be sure. Stocking gifts are wrapped—although rather casually. For years, all the gifts from Santa were wrapped in special giftwrap. We’ve always put presents under our tree way before Christmas (as I finish wrapping), but never the ones from Santa. They were added to the pile after the kids were asleep. Stockings are a big part of Christmas morning, and we still fill them although we are all adults. We do stockings first and then presents. When did my children find out the truth? No idea about that either. But I intend to ask when they come home this year.

Frosty

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The prompt at HS: MS is frosty and it is. There are several school delays in districts south of here.

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Day 2 Writing Challenge

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Here’s Amy’s second writing prompt for Christmas. (Now if I could just keep up with Shimelle’s Journal My Christmas prompts as easily.)

Writing Prompt: When you think of your childhood Christmases, what is the most vivid memory you have?

I found my immediate response to this prompt somewhat surprising as I really hadn’t thought about Christmas at my Aunt Alys’ in years. But those after-Christmas celebrations are among my most vivid Christmas memories. My mother had two brothers and a sister who lived in Toledo, Ohio near my grandparents. After celebrating Christmas at home south of Columbus, we drove to my grandparents and had a second Christmas at my aunt’s. There were thirteen cousins and it was always a noisy event, but to me, one that was truly celebratory. Christmas at our house was a rather quiet event, and this was a huge contrast. In addition, my aunt had an elaborately decorated house with two Christmas trees. One (green) was decorated totally in blue ornaments and sat in the living room. The other (white) was covered in gold ornaments. It was a Martha Stewart house well before Martha’s day. The icing on the cake was the consignment shop my aunt ran from a downstairs room. We (the girls) could go in and try on clothes, shoes, jewelry, furs. . . it added to the aura of elegance. In reality, my mother’s family was not the elegant sort, but that’s how I remember Christmas at Aunt Alys’.

A Writing Challenge

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Amy Sorenson has started a Writing Challenge on her blog. I took one of her BPS journaling courses and loved it. Ever since then I’ve subscribed to her blog and decided I’d join in on some of the challenges. I had no trouble writing to the first prompt.

Writing Prompt: Write about a photo you wish someone had taken

    I think that we have clearer memories of the experiences we have pictures of, because the pictures help us involve another sense (vision) with the memory. But I also think that the majority of people twenty or thirty years ago didn’t think about taking pictures the way we do now (obviously, digital cameras have a huge impact on how many photos we take and what we photograph), so we don’t have very many pictures to help jar our memories. Maybe this writing prompt will help you remember something you’ve forgotten. You might want to give some of the back story before you write about the wished-for photo, like I did here. Happy writing!

I wish someone had taken pictures of my mom. She died when I was twenty, and I don’t think I ever saw a camera in my father’s hands. There are so few photographs of her and the few I’ve found recently were taken by me as a child. They are of poor quality and most of them are very unflattering. One in particular is of her washing dishes. She’s not smiling and she looks so tired. It’s just not the way I remember her. She was always self-conscious about her weight, and she never looks comfortable in the few photographs I have. One exception are some black & white snapshots taken on her wedding day.

Actually, my memories are pretty vague, and Amy is correct—many of my memories are tied to photographs. I’ve never been one to recall past events with much clarity or detail. (Probably one of the reasons I think scrapbooking is so important.) I do know from stories that my mom worked too hard and tried to do too much. My father once sat me down after I had made a comment about all I needed to do and told me that I should back off my list. He said my mother’s expectations of herself were so high that she caused herself a lot of unnecessary pain. It’s taken me a long time to put my To Do list in perspective, but I hope I’ve learned a lesson from that story. And I do try to get my camera in other people’s hands so there is a better record of my presence in our family.

Card

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Here’s this year’s Christmas card. I wish I could say they were all done and in the mail, but it wouldn’t be true. I’m waiting for some more paper to arrive!

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It’s a lift of a card Becky Higgins did for December’s Creating Keepsakes.

Journal Your Christmas Day 4

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I’m just a day behind and this is a slightly different take on Jessica’s prompt. Since I did the journal last year, I want to capture some different aspects of our holidays this year.

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The velvet Thickers from American Craft arrived today in my Studio Calico kit. It’s not often that I put something new to use this quickly!

Chilly

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It’s been too hard to keep up with Her Space:  My Space recently. By the time I get home from work, it’s too late to post for that day, and often too dark to take pictures. But, I’m home today, so here is chilly.  And chilly, it is. I took a personal day to go to an appointment that has now been canceled because of bad weather. We rarely get this kind of snow in early December. But its windy, cold, and snowy here in western New York.

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You can almost see the chimes blowing in the wind.

Journal Your Christmas

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Last year I took Shimelle’s Christmas Journal class and it turned out to be one of my all time favorite projects. When we decorated for Christmas, I put all the Christmas scrapbooks and albums out, and I took time to reread all of last year’s journaling and I wondered what else I could say about Christmas. (See sidebar for last year’s pages.) An unexpected benefit of the class was being able to participate again this year–for free. I couldn’t decide what to do, but tonight decided that every year has its special moments, that I would do the pages that "spoke" to me, and I would keep it really simple. So here are Days 1-3:

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Most of the products are from a Making Memories pack I picked up at Target earlier this year.

Holiday Spirit Boxes

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I found a link for prompts for a Holiday Spirit Box on Ali Edwards’ blog and decided to make a few for friends who have children or grandchildren. I found the little take-out boxes at Michaels and used my Making Memories tag maker for the tags. The delightful little prompts are printed on the green card stock and they fill the little box.

Our tree is up and the house is decorated. The photos are going into the Photo-a-Day blog. November was a wash, but I hope to do better in December. We had 4+ inches of snow last night so it looks like Christmas is coming. Now, however, we are getting freezing rain, so who knows how long the pretty white snow will last.

Lucky Me

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Macbook

The screen on Tracy’s iBook died and he’s been waiting to buy a new MacBook. This weekend he got a great deal with the Educators’ discount, but I’m the one who really lucked out. Since I do more photo work and now some digital scrapbooking, he thought I’d benefit from the faster processor and the extra room on the hard drive. My MacBook is not yet a year old, so I’ve been surprised by how much faster this computer is than my previous one. Resizeing the photos for the last post took no time at all. Opening Parallels so I can run Adobe Photoshop Element 5.0 on Windows takes half the time. Love the Mac, and looking forward to learning how to use Time Machine so I can stop worrying about back-ups and multiple copies of all my documents on my external hard drive.

Family Traditions

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I love family traditions. Cutting down our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving is one we’ve been doing pretty faithfully since Sarah was a toddler. The first time we went out, I was pregnant with Matt, and we pulled Sarah on a sled around the Christmas tree farm. That would be 24 years ago. There were a few years we purchased a pre-cut tree when it was raining too hard to go out. For the last 10 years or so we’ve gone to the same farm, but this is probably our last trip. Although we found a pretty tree (still in the garage, but coming in tonight), good trees were few and far between. We’ll have to find a new spot next year. Last year there were only three of us on the expedition. This year everyone was home. Here are my favorite photos from Saturday’s trip:

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My handsome son-in-law, Adam.

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My lovely daughter, Sarah.

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My good-looking son, Matt.

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And our favorite dog, Sadie, who enjoyed the trip more than anyone.

Sunday Smiles

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I was about to pack it in tonight when I saw this on the A Fancy Word for Simple blog:

"A smile is a curve that sets everything strait."
—–Phyllis Diller

What are you smiling about today?

Couldn’t resist responding:  Only two days of school this week and on Wednesday the whole family will be here. Sarah, Adam, and Matt should all be here by mid-afternoon and will be here until Sunday. We haven’t had this much time together in nearly a year. Can’t wait!