The work load at school is so incredible right now, it’s almost impossible to keep up with all I want to do for Christmas. Not a cookie has been baked, but I’ve set aside the weekend for that and to work on this week’s pages for Shimele’s Christmas journal. I have done the journaling each day and I have a few ideas about getting the ideas on paper. The big accomplishment in addition to the school work and superivising the holiday concert was getting all the Christmas cards in the mail. Here’s this year’s card:

I took the photograph one morning before work a year ago. The house looked so beautiful in the newly fallen snow I went back in for my camera. When Tracy saw it, he said, "That should be next year’s Christmas card." And so it is. I also wrote the Christmas letter for folks out of town and put three photos of the wedding on the top. I was really pleased with it. So they’re all in the mail. My goal was the 15th and I made it two days early.

I am loving the Christmas journal prompts and the opportunity to think about what Christmas means and has meant to me. I managed to keep up with the journaling, but it took the weekend to get the pages completed. I have a new goal:  keep up by the week! So here are Day 4-Day 10.

This photograph of my family and one of my daughter’s best friends represents the best of the holiday to me.

Finding this photograph has been one of the best things about this journal. I certainly wouldn’t have been digging through old photos otherwise. I also found a beautiful photograph of my mother on her wedding day. There’s a scrapbook page coming there.

It was hard to choose the photographs for this page. So many images of Christmas to choose from.

No photographs here, but it’s one of my favorite pages–I just love this paisley paper from Basic Grey.

I bought multiple rolls of this paper at Target a couple years ago. This is the last roll and I will miss it next year.

I’ve managed to keep up with the journaling for Shimele’s class, but I’m falling behind on getting them in the album. I just wasn’t happy with the way the pages were looking and I knew what the problem was—I just prefer a nice computer font to my handwriting—and frankly, I find it much easier to write with a word processing program. So I redid pages 1-3. I need to find and print photos for the last three pages. Hopefully they’ll all be posted by the end of the week. Here are the redone pages. I’m much happier.

In July I managed to take a photo a day. I was on vacation so it was relatively easy. I’m hoping to do the same for December since there are so many wonderful photo opportunities. The first three days are posted.

I promised myself 15-30 minutes, but it’s taking a little longer. I thought about doing a 2 page entry and using one of the real Christmas cards, but decided against it–so here we have a photo of this year’s card and the album I made several years ago that includes most of the cards I’ve made in the past.

It took me quite a while to decide on a journal format and some plan for consistency, but once I did, the journaling came easily. I love Shimele’s daily prompts and her artistic suggestions. I decided on an 8 X 8 red album I already had and Basic Grey Blitzen paper that I collected last year and  never used. I wanted one element to be consistent throughout, so designed the round tags with a star and the number of the day. Typically I use the computer for all my journaling, but I wanted this to be as easy as possible so the journaling will get done every day. I have just enough of this light blue lined paper which makes it easy to journal by hand. Still trying to decide how to decorate the front of the album. I’m loving looking at the variety of styles and design ideas by the members of this group. This is going to be a lot of fun.

Day 1:

Day 2:

I’ve spent the last two days scoring our district’s fifth grade NYS Social Studies exams. It was an exhausting job. Teaching is so much easier–and a lot more fun. There was a wonderful article in Sunday’s New York Times about the No Child Left Behind act. I agree with so much of it and wish there was some way to take the pressure off ten year old children who are now being asked to recall and synthesize three years worth of social studies content and then write an essay to answer a document-based question. So many kids did a great job, but there are many who are not yet ready for such challenges. They are left feeling inadequate and their teachers are wondering how they will ever be able to help them "reach the standard." When will the government realize that one standard does not fit all ten year olds? What happened to the true meaning of "developmental?"

I’ve signed up for Shimele’s Christmas Journal class. Just being a part of the yahoo group for this class has been so interesting. I’ve never been a part of anything so international. Very exciting. Today Shimele posted a manifesto for the course. I am so looking forward to completing these prompts and hope that the 15 minutes a day is a realistic amount of time for the journaling. I KNOW it will take me longer to decorate and embellish the page. So here’s the manifesto:

Manifesto: Noun. A declaration of one’s intentions.

Starting December first, I will keep a Christmas journal. In it, I will write something every day to reflect on the holidays of my past, enjoy the holidays of the present, and dream about the holidays of my future. To some, this will be a stack of papers and trivial scribbles, but not to me. I am taking back my Christmas, I am letting it be something I relish and, most importantly, I am giving at least fifteen minutes every day to myself no matter how crazy this season becomes. I hope you will share, encourage and understand as I make something with my own hands, my own words and my own memories.__I may post some or all of my entries here. Other artists are doing this with me, and you can see their work at www.writtendown.com. Or you may join us here. 

Above all: cherish the season.

Times have changed. It’s been awhile since I hit the Black Friday sales early in the morning. There used to be several hundred people roaming about at 5 am. Now there are thousands!! Tracy and I were at Staples this morning before they opened. The line extended way out but it really wasn’t too crazed, and we got what we wanted, even after waiting for the hundred or so people in line to enter the store. The Staples staff had everything very well-organized and everyone was super relaxed and friendly. A great beginning. From there we went to Circuit City—truly a zoo. They had opened an hour earlier and all the surrounding parking lots were full. The lines had to be at least an hour’s wait. Fortunately or not, the item we wanted there was sold out. We encountered the same scene at Target. I went in, Tracy searched for a parking spot, and we communicated via cell phones. By the time I found out the items we wanted were already sold out, he had finally found a place to park. We had better luck at Linens & Things where we bought a full-size Areo Bed at half price. We’ve been wanting one of these but had never seen them at half off before. So it was a 50-50 deal—half the places had what we wanted, half did not. We went to breakfast at Mykonos and were home by 8:15. One lesson learned:  never attempt to do this alone and make sure you have your cell phones.