More pages.

Isn't it funny how you start December feeling sort of on top of things, and then get busier and crazier as the days go by? Or does that just happen to me?

It's not really all that crazy here, but we're both quite busy getting last-minute gifts made and that sort of thing. We're heading to Ohio on the 21st (we decided to stay for Todd's office party on the 20th after all) so everything has to be bought, created, wrapped, and packed by then--it's always a bit of a crunch at the end when you have four or five or six days lopped off of your Christmas prep time.

I sat down for a little while this morning and got the past three days' worth of Christmas journaling done, though.


We went up to Williamsburg on Sunday to get one last gift, and stopped off at Merchants Square downtown to see a performance of "A Christmas Carol" that I'd heard about. It was a one-man (well, one man plus a stage manager named Bob), 15-minute version, performed by an actor named Ed Whitacre on a tiny set built into what looked like a little moving trailer. First he came out and explained the show, sort of like a circus barker...

And then he became Scrooge and acted out the story with the help of some strategically placed props. See that little table he's about to fall asleep on?

With a little flip, the table top comes off and becomes the ghost of Jacob Marley!

The ghost of Christmas Past came out of Scrooge's bathrobe pocket...the ghost of Christmas Present was a puppet that emerged from the picture above the fireplace:

And the ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come was a long skeleton arm that emerged from the backstage door and then pushed out Scrooge's tombstone from within the fireplace.

It was all very clever, very broadly played, with some audience participation to keep the kids interested...I really enjoyed it. Of course, I love the story of "A Christmas Carol," and even though it was a condensed version, it hit all the important bits, especially the part about getting a second chance to start over, as Ed-the-actor runs out of time when the stage manager's stopwatch hits 15 minutes before the end of the show. Ed falls into despair, but Bob the stage manager perks him up with a chorus of "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow" and Ed leaps back into the show just in time to show Scrooge's wonderful awakening on Christmas morning. Very entertaining!

Okay, I'm off to get a few more things crossed off my to do list. See ya!

Here is Day 13, and then Day 10's entry, too...I finally got enough presents wrapped to take a nice picture.


I want to say...in case anybody happens to look at this journal and think it looks too time-consuming to do at Christmastime, it's really not. Or it doesn't have to be. I have a big pile of the papers and embellishments I picked out for this, and I just grab a couple things, slap them down, maybe rub a little ink around the edges, and call it good. It took me less than fifteen minutes to do today's entry, and that included printing out the photo.

Doing a small book (mine is 5x7" this year) and minimal journaling helps keep it fast. Next year, though, I am planning to do a lot more writing, so that will take more time. But it really has helped to make the lead-up to Christmas more special and fun for me. I've never really bought into the rush-rush, drive-yourself-crazy part of Christmas anyway, but I do get my sad or anxious or overwhelmed moments, and this journal helps keep me focused and calm. It was wonderful of Shimelle to come up with this idea and to generously leave the class open every year to those who have taken it before. The camaraderie on the forums with other people from all over the world is an added bonus!

Here's Day 12--pretty stripped down compared to yesterday!

I really want to do some Christmas baking, but I don't know who would eat it. Maybe I'll bake some stuff and send some of it to work with Todd next week...I am dying for mince tarts and fruitcake, but I think I'm the only person who would eat either one. Plus fruits and nuts are SUPER expensive this year, like everything else. Ho hum, what to do?

Meanwhile, my Christmas shopping is almost done, just one more thing to pick up, and the cards are almost all done and sent, too. And it doesn't look like we'll be going to Todd's office party, so no need to dredge up something festive to wear to that. They finally sent out invitations yesterday for a party on the 20th--good planning, that. A lot of people aren't going to be able to make it...should be a dull party, especially since the caterer doesn't have a liquor license. Most of the fun of Todd's office parties stems from the quantities of alcohol imbibed!

Anyway, we'll be en route to Ohio that day, so we won't be going, either. Ah well! So what remains on my Christmas to-do list is making a few last gifts and getting it all wrapped. I'm feeling pretty much on top of things, at least for the moment. How about you?

I've got my page for today done, but yesterday's is still awaiting a picture. The page for today looks a little demented, I think--I was trying to get a lot of things on there that don't match each other, but, oh well!

I went out and did a little holiday shopping today and it's craaaazzzy out there! I'm so glad I did 90% of my shopping online! The mall was jammed at 1:00 in the middle of a weekday afternoon--don't people have jobs anymore? Or are they all lazy good-for-nothings like me?

It was about 70 degrees and rainy, too, so all the stores were very overheated and the floors were wet and slippery. I have had the worst head-, tooth-, and jaw-ache this week from the pressure of this weather system going over us. Hopefully, hopefully, tomorrow it will be gone and we'll go back to clear and cold and this 800-pound fat man crushing my face will go back where he came from. 'Cause I'm losing my mojo in a big way right now...I just want to sit and stare out the window!

Catch-up.

I got a little behind on my journal--we've been busy and I've been tired! Here are days 7, 8, and 9. Day 7 has a few things blurred out on the "to do" list for secrecy's sake!

Steamed and pressed.

I hate to iron. Lord, how I hate it!

Wouldn't it be nice if men's shirts came with a tag that said, "WARNING: Although this shirt looks perfectly wonderful hanging on this hangar, it has been constructed in such a way that the minute it is exposed to a washer and dryer, it will immediately curl into a tight, wrinkled ball of Rubik's Cube-ian impossibility. At that point, it will vanish into the depths of your closet, never to emerge until your semi-yearly clean-out at which point it will proceed directly to the nearest charity thrift shop. So don't waste your money!"

Because you can't tell. You just can't tell! We've bought 100% cotton, we've bought cotton/synthetic blends, we've bought cheap shirts, we've bought expensive shirts, and there is absolutely no way to determine which ones will be wonderfully wrinkle-free and which ones will, well, not.

My home economics training was sadly lacking on all counts, but never more than in the ironing department. I had a toy ironing board and a little iron, but somehow that early indoctrination failed to translate into real-world expertise.

I know my mom ironed, and I can remember ironing a few skirts and dresses in high school and college when I absolutely had to (in college, on the floor on a folded towel, as I recall), but I never learned how to iron a man's shirt. I guess that's because my dad's good shirts all originated in the Era of Polyester, also known as the 70's. They were made of the same indestructible substance as his sport jackets and dress pants, which not only never needed ironing, they could simply be hosed off when a stain occurred, as the plastic fibers were impermeable to liquids of all kinds.

Now I have a husband who works a white-collar job that sadly does not require white collars, which could just be sent out to the dry cleaners. His casual-dress job calls for Dockers and casual long-sleeve dress shirts in plaids and dark solids, hardly worth a dry cleaner trip and fee.

So after two weeks of dawdling, I finally ironed the shirts that have been draped across the chest at the end of our bed. And they honestly don't look any better. I try re-tumbling them in the dryer, sometimes with a damp washcloth, but as our dryer is responsible for much of the wrinkling because it's a small stackable, that doesn't really do any good. And it doesn't help those awful buttonhole strips on the front at all. Why do they always, always wrinkle up like the ruffles on a pirate shirt? Some of Todd's shirts don't wrinkle one little bit, except for the buttonhole part. Why???

I always burn myself at least once, too, which doesn't endear me to the job at all. And I can't figure out how to iron sleeves, or that flat part across the upper back.

We've managed to get our wardrobes to the point where they need virtually no ironing, but every now and then a wrinkly shirt sneaks through. I'm always hearing about people who iron sheets and underwear and I cannot fathom the depths of boredom a person would have to sink to to consider that a worthy pastime.

So now Todd's ironed shirts hang neatly in his closet. He's not allowed to wear them ever again.

JYC Dec. 6

I always have a hard time with this topic--journaling about a good Christmas memory and a bad Christmas memory. The fact is, most of my Christmases have been great, and the ones that haven't--well, I don't want to re-visit them in a happy book! Bad memories are a little too personal and complex to share in two square inches of space.

Here's the picture full-size...it seems a shame to print them out at 2x3" but I wouldn't be able to fit anything else on the page if I printed them bigger.

I took the picture at a local church the other day...I was driving past and saw that their lampposts looked very Dickensian. Very Tim Holtz-ian, too--he did this gorgeous tag on his blog with a lamppost stamp a few days ago.

I don't have a Tim Holtz fetish, I swear...I simply want every product he has designed and a huge craft room to house it all. Is that a fetish? I certainly seem to be mentioning him a lot lately.

Todd is out searching the rivers for stripers and I am home with my little cold. Not really a full-blown cold, just this sore throat and headache that won't go away. I like being home on chilly evenings--much better than shivering in a kayak on the freezing water. Although the way Todd dresses for the cold, I think he'll be okay. It's like watching a climber suit up for Everest, with all the clothes he lays out!

Hope everybody's having a peaceful weekend!

***I'm dropping back in here...I just found out my brother-in-law Ky's dad passed away this morning. It was not unexpected, he's been very, very sick for several weeks and was at home with hospice care. But it's very sad for Ky and his family, for my sister Jenita, and for my nephew Tanner and niece Kylie who loved their grandpa. This is a stressful time for them all (and my sister has her college final exams this week) and a sad time, too...I know they could all use prayers and good thoughts. Thanks. ***

Day 5.

Here's my journal page, about Advent:


And here's the picture I used, full-size, just because I liked how it came out:


And here's the quote, of which I only had room to use a bit on the page:

"The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before…What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God's [back] fade in the distance. So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon." -Jan L. Richardson, Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas. (Zowie, that's expensive on Amazon!)

I really like that quote. It reminds me of this story in Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, by Connie Willis (which I recommend all the time to anyone who will listen) called "Epiphany," which is about Jesus' second coming and unlike anything I've ever read on the topic before. It's hard to describe, but it has the same shadowy, dark, expectant feeling as the quote.

One of the things I like about this time of year is the early dark and the lights shining through it. The dark seems to fit with that mood of waiting, wondering, expecting.

It's been a quiet week here (in Lake Wobegon...no, no, that's not right...)--I've been turning in early nights, with a book, and nursing a sore throat and headache that seem to come and go and not develop into anything. Also making out Christmas cards, wrapping presents, etc. Todd had jury duty on Monday and a very distasteful incest/rape case (as he said, "Why couldn't I get a nice, easy cocaine possession?") and other than that, he's been waiting for the chance to go night fishing when the tides and winds are right. He went last night and came home with a few more big striped bass, one of which we'll be having for dinner tonight, yum.

And it's coooold! (Yay!) That's it from here.

Day 4.

For each day's prompt in this "Journal Your Christmas" class, Shimelle creates a PDF file with pictures and lots of ideas. She's using various pages from people who've taken her class in previous years, and I was startled to find today that she used my December 4 page from last year as one of her idea samples! Made me smile!

Here's today's page. I used to have big ideas about what a perfect Christmas consisted of, and now I know that all I need to make it perfect is TIME. Which is always at a premium when we're home visiting.

Play it, Sam...

Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz ...

You Are an Ingrid!

You are an Ingrid -- "I am unique"

Ingrids have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me

• * Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
• * Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
• * Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
• * Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
• * Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being an Ingrid

• * my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
• * my ability to establish warm connections with people
• * admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
• * my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
• * being unique and being seen as unique by others
• * having aesthetic sensibilities
• * being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being an Ingrid

• * experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
• * feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
• * feeling guilty when I disappoint people
• * feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me
• * expecting too much from myself and life
• * fearing being abandoned
• * obsessing over resentments
• * longing for what I don't have

Ingrids as Children Often

• * have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games
• * are very sensitive
• * feel that they don't fit in
• * believe they are missing something that other people have
• * attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
• * become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
• * feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

Ingrids as Parents

• * help their children become who they really are
• * support their children's creativity and originality
• * are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
• * are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
• * are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed

Here's day three's page:


And here's the cover:


See ya later!

One more thing.

Here's the December 2 journal page. I'm not feeling it yet, but maybe I'll get into the groove with it soon.


Look at the crappy writing on that sticker. I love Jenni Bowlin stuff, but her journaling stickers are the pits. You HAVE to use a Sharpie, and of course, I can never remember that until I'm already well into my writing and it's all beaded up and nasty-looking. One of those little annoyances!

More stuff.

Just a few more of the Christmas cards I made last week. I moved to a blue/brown color scheme for most of these.



Now I think I'm done. I made 72 Christmas cards and had a really fun time with it. Now it's time to move on to some of my other holiday tasks!

I may end up keeping a few of my favorites...here's what I did with some of them:

JYC2008.

Here's day one of my Journal Your Christmas book. It's a 5x7" Tim Holtz book.

I was really gonna try to break away from the "aged/vintage" look this year, but last year's book was one of my favorite things I've ever done. I think vintage is just "me," especially at Christmas. Besides, I'm addicted to those Tim Holtz distress inks that make everything look old and mussed up (plus they cover a multitude of mistakes!)

More later.

Dropping in...

...to say hurray for December 1 and the start of Shimelle Laine's "Journal Your Christmas" class! I've done it in previous years, and I'm going to try it again, although I'm way behind getting started because of our holiday travels and projects.

But I'm excited to do it again...this little project has sort of rescued Christmas for me, after a number of years of sad memories and bad attitudes on my part.

We had a super time with my brother and sister-in-law and our bright and beautiful nieces over the weekend...I'll post a couple of pictures when I get a chance. Right now I am consumed with getting caught back up with daily life after our five-day weekend! Laundry, groceries, picking up the messiness...all very exciting stuff.

I'll be back!

Black Friday.

That sounds so ominous, doesn't it? Black Friday. OoooooooOOOOOOoooh! Bring out your dead!

Todd is out this morning braving the crowds for a couple of sales, and I am home relaxing before we throw some clothes into a bag and head for my brother's house for the rest of the weekend.

We had a really nice day yesterday, if an unorthodox Thanksgiving. We went to Bass Pro in the morning and I got a new pair of brown clogs, on sale. I seem to have lost my liking for shoes with backs on them, except for sneakers. All my other shoes are either flip-flops or clogs/mules.

Then we came home and had turkey sandwiches (Todd) and German restaurant doggy bag (me) for lunch, I cleaned the kitchen, and then we tackled putting in our new shrubs.

We had put three boxwoods across the front three years ago after we moved in, boxwoods that a friend of Todd's wanted out of his own landscaping, so they were free. One boxwood died last year and we pulled it out, one is two-thirds dead, and the other is okay but not thriving.

So we pulled out the last two and put in three smooth-leafed holly bushes and two abelias, with gray-green leaves and a branchy shape that contrasts well with the compact dark green hollies. The abelias will have small white flowers in the summer.

Then we put in a large rose in front of our little white fence to anchor that corner of the yard, and it looks terrific already. The hollies and abelias are still small and not too distinctive-looking yet, but the rose settled into its corner and looks right at home. It has red leaves that look wonderful in front of the white fence, and it will bloom red all next summer and fall. I'm thinking about running back and getting another one today while the nursery's 50% off sale is still going on.

While Todd dug and planted, I busied myself with chopping down all the brown dead stuff, dead daisies, dead mums, vincas that were blooming until last week when we finally got a killing frost. It was a big task...I am very into my garden from March till June, and then when it gets hot, I completely neglect the thing until late fall. I resolve to do better every year, but I don't seem to.

I got some good ideas from Elaine at The Flower Pot, though, and some inspiration for next spring, and I'm hoping the shrubs will provide some of the structure I need to build in front of and really make the beds look nice.

Anyway, after getting cleaned up, we drove down to Virginia Beach and had a nice dinner out with my friend Bev, at a seafood buffet place that added all the Thanksgiving staples to their spread. It was actually quite good.

On the way home, I called my mom and learned that my dad is in Missouri visiting my grandma right now. She's still in the hospital and not doing great, unfortunately. And her condition seems to fluctuate--one day she's on the upswing, the next day she's worse. So he decided to go ahead and go out and see her. We're all pretty worried about her.

But it was a nice day, and we thought about our blessings, as well as all the people we care about so much and couldn't be with that day. It would be wonderful to be able to just zap myself to Missouri and sit with my grandma, or to Ohio to spend the day with my mom who enjoyed a very quiet holiday, or to enjoy the delicious dinner my father-in-law cooked for the Ferrante-Mozeleski Thanksgiving. But I also felt very grateful last night for my warm comfortable home, my sweet husband who was poring over the ads and planning his Friday attack, the delicious dinner we had with our old friend, and my hot cup of chai tea.

Well, I'm off to pack my bags. Have a good weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Aren't you glad you don't have to go out and shoot your own turkey?

We were going to go to Washington DC for a couple of days, but decided to forgo that trip and spend some time and money getting things done at home. We hit a nursery sale today and got a bunch of shrubs for the front yard at 50% off--score!

Tomorrow we're going to stop by a couple of early sales, then come home and plant our shrubs, and then go out for dinner with my friend Beverly.

Then Friday we'll head out for a couple of days with my brother's family, and Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. I can't wait to see my cute nieces.

I hope everybody has a fun weekend with family and friends--and don't forget to count your blessings!

Birdhouses.

I was at Michael's yesterday and found these little papier-mache birdhouse ornaments on the clearance rack.

Last night I sat down while Todd snoozed in front of the fireplace and I covered then with Basic Grey Wassail papers. Then I added some Melissa Frances stickers, a few notions and a liberal dose of Martha Stewart mica glitter, and of course, Stickles glitter glue.

I can't decide whether to attach ribbon loops to the top or just leave them as is, but here's where they sit until I decide...


I put some fresh pyracantha berries and leaves in my little pitcher, and added some rosemary and lavender sprigs. Smells good.

Over and out.

Stitched in Time.

I doubt that she needs my paltry publicity, but Alicia Paulson of Posie Gets Cozy has a book called Stitched in Time that just came out a couple of weeks ago, and I picked it up, I confess, in order to fill out an Amazon order and get the free shipping. I'm glad I did, because it's really a sweet book. It has lots of simple sewing projects for gifts, home decor, and holidays, most with the theme of capturing a memory in a non-scrapbook-related way. She makes a lot of use of those fabric sheets you can run through your inkjet printer and print photos on--one of my favorite projects is a very simple pillow made of sixteen 4" black-and-white photos stitched together in a patchwork. It's eye-catching with a black piping around the edge.

She also spotlights a softie designed from a child's drawing, a stuffed heart garland, a felted wool tote, a laundry bag, a growth chart, a patchwork quilt made from baby clothes, and lots of other projects. The projects are sort of like what you'd see in a Martha Stewart magazine, but more colorful, more old-fashioned, more for real people who don't live in mansions in the Hamptons.

What's especially wonderful about the book is Alicia's warm writing style and her fantastic photos. You can tell she put her whole heart into the book. She has written thoughtfully about her memories, as she does in her blog. One paragraph about some pillowcases she sewed for her father shortly before his death, and his response to them, was so lovely it made me cry a tiny bit.

I just got the book, so I haven't tried any of the projects and can't speak to the accuracy of the patterns or directions, but I see a number of things I'd like to try and think I can make, even with my extremely limited sewing skills. Plus, it's just a very pleasant book to curl up with. I recommend it! And Alicia, I think a cookbook should be next on your list.

More cards.

These are some more cards I made earlier this week. I was browsing through all my supplies and found some tags I decided to play with. The first card is my favorite--I may have to keep it for myself! All the sentiments are ancient rub-ons from a Deja Views set, and the little faux postage stickers are from Artchix Studio. Gotta use up those leftovers! I looooove the faux postage images, they are so sweet.




These are really so much prettier in real life...I guess I need to set up a good place to photograph stuff so you can see the details better, like all the pros at Two Peas do. (Yeah, I'll get right on that.) These are all Stickled up, so they're much more glittery than they look here. I am loving the Stickles--all the prettiness of glitter without the dreadful mess.

And this one is a total departure!

I had a little stack of lime green cards to use up, and this pretty sheet of old Chatterbox paper that went with them, plus some very old Bazzill Christmas stickers, so I did six cards in this style. Todd asked if I'd make cards for the engineers at work, so I figure I'll give 'em these. Engineers aren't very big on aesthetics. Not when it comes to paper crafts, anyway.

We had a really great weather day here today. It was cold and windy and the sun kept popping in and out of these huge grey clouds that whizzed across the sky. Well, I enjoyed it, anyway. It's unusually cold for this time of year here. It's actually cold enough that I could pull out my beloved brown wool jacket, and I could tell exactly the last time it was cold enough to wear it: the last weekend of January. Because there were two ticket stubs in the pocket--one for "Sweeney Todd," which I saw with Todd, and one for "27 Dresses," which I saw with my friend Beverly.

I get a kick out of finding things in jacket pockets when I get them out for a new season. Usually it's ticket stubs or fortune cookie slips, but one wonderful time I found a 20-dollar bill in the pocket of my pink spring jacket. That doesn't happen too often!