OK EYES DOWN - YOU MAY NEED A CUPPA TO ABSORB ALL THIS!

First of all, where has the week gone, primarily it's been spent on work, normally I only do three days but this week has been a four day week with a 12 hour day on Tuesday and a split shift on Thursday which has led to someone stealing two of my evenings!  Not a good thing at this time of year, however, I'm hoping to finish on either Tuesday night or Wednesday night and then won't be back in until the New Year - yee hah!  So what has this meant, this has meant that basically my journal for Christmas has stopped, not slowed down but quite literally stopped.  So today's task was to catch up!  Essential because any longer and I won't catch up and the album will sit looking sad and sulky forever and I hate half started projects. 

Now the entries are somewhat short on embellishments, and mainly consist of written entries - but hey - that's better than nothing and does document the days.  Last year I followed Shimelle's prompts to the letter, but this year I've sat saying - "I did that last year" so some of the entries are unique in the fact it documents our day! 

So entry five should have been Advent or Countdown - but I did that last year so this year's was about how our 9 year old kept himself occupied whilst we were building a bookcase!  Here is an excert from the journal

"In amongst all this was our nine year old, who managed to occupy himself—with the cardboard box that we got the microwave in! He hacked at it with scissors, used cellotape on it, chopped up lumps of polystyrene to create—a car! He had great fun making his own car and added wing mirror and engine and was very pleased with his creation! And here he is sat in said car looking mighty pleased with himself!"

Here is the said 'car' fully made together with headlights, engine and wing mirrors! 

The 6th of December - was about good times and bad times - but I decided to relay a little nativity story which was neither although rather humourous! 

"The first year Malachite was in infant’s the Parents Association saw fit to buy a number of nativity scenes for children to bring home and ‘enjoy’ for the evening. These nativities were brand new and Malachite was very excited to be the first person to bring one of them home.


Imagine my dismay when we started to remove it to discover that the people and animals were made of pottery—who in their right mind would provide 4 and 5 year olds with something like that! So it was an evening spent trying to explain that he had to be really careful with all of the ornaments, as the evening grew to a close I was relieved to be at the stage where we could put it all away again, but for some unfathomable reason I had forgotten the ornaments weren’t secured to the ’barn’. I picked it up with all the ornaments stood up and over toppled Joseph and off came his head, “ooh no” I cried “what have I done!” then launching in to pick up the pieces I knocked over a sheep, off came it’s head “ooh no, I’ve made it worse” Craig by this time was laughing! Before I’d done I’d beheaded, Joseph, a sheep and a King or two, Malachite was in tears but Craig was laughing so much! Out came the superglue and the set were returned the following day and I vowed if they ever sent one home again it would remain in it’s box, because after all we already have a nativity set to admire!"

The joys of being a Mum sometimes - what am I like!

Won't bore you with entry for 7th December - a 'to do' list ranging from cleaning stair carpet to trying to find that extra special something for my brother!!!!!

8th December - Christmas tree festival - this occurs at the church nearest to us and consists of community decorated Christmas trees on a theme.  This year's theme was the nativity, ranging from poems to excerpts from Christmas nativity plays, my favourite tree was the Cherry Tree Carol tree, covered in cherries!  An absolute delight to the eye!  We took my Mum and she enjoyed it as well and it's a time when you can take that step back from the stresses of the season to really enjoy being in a beautiful environment. 

9th December - Traditions - well we started our own tradition last year - The Christmas Day Gingerbread Competition - basically last year we created 8 plain gingerbread houses which we challenged our visitors on Christmas day to decorate with sweeties and icing!  It was the quietest that the house has ever been on Christmas day and afterwards we put them around the gingerbread church that the three of us had done the week previous to create a little town!  We said this year we would do a castle - watch this space to see if we actually manage it - just to say we're on with planning this.

10th - wrapping - this was ultra fast basically enclosed a bit of this year's wrapping paper - I was trying to catch up!!!!!!!

11th - Commenting on where the trees are in the house this year - already done on blog so won't bore you with the detail!

12th - Real Reindeers in the local town.  We ended in town this morning as each year the town centre has a Saturday when real reindeers trundle into the town centre pulling Santa's sleigh, this year we had two reindeers pulling the sleigh and two following and Santa had decided to walk this year to make a change.  It's so sweet to see them and they seem quite happy to parade around the town - I've never seen the town centre so busy.

   
Last night we ventured to Meadowhall - I know potentially we were heading for a catastrophe being this time of year, but to be honest it was quite good at the time we went, I bought a top (which is something I never do) and we had a lovely wander, other half went to buy more gifts whilst I headed to a retailer for food for 9 year old!  Then purchased two evening meals in the two for two pound section of a retailer who loves to talk about their food seductively on the TV, before we headed home. 
 
So that's it caught up, Saturday evening, journal done and blog updated.  Went online this morning to my local scrapbook shop to find a 50% sale on loads of things including Tim Holtz stamps!  It's only a 24 hour sale but I managed to order loads of things and then went and collected them, off there again tomorrow for the shop sale to have a further peruse. 
 
Tomorrow means scrapbook shopping, food shopping (which I detest but there's no food left in the house) and hopefully catching up with family.  If you wander by for a read and you actually get this far without falling asleep then leave me a comment!  I know there are the odd family member's who've wandered along following my Christmas newsletter - so if you're still here leave a comment! 

MINI BOOK RANDOM GENERATOR!

My addiction to mini books recently seems to have continued to grow, but the biggest dilemma is how many pages and what kind to include when I set out. To create a random book I decided to make this little creation, based on one my son brought home from school. I decorated the outside with plain, striped, spotted and circled paper - so you call out the name and spell it out, move your fingers underneath to reveal...

Either one set of numbers...

Or another ...

Once you stop your fingers, you need to call out your number again and once again move it back and forth until the number is revealed. Select a number again and then open it up

And look at the corresponding page link - the outer triangles have types of pages to include , envelopes, acetates, tag, tag in holder, pockets, pages, shapes and fold out pages. Then you can do it all again to decide on a type of embellishment, which can be seen on the inner part of the folded out section - die cut, stickles, stickers, chipboard, buttons, glossy accents, stamping and ribbon. It was easy to make and I'm pleased with the finish result, might make a dice now to go with it to decide how many of each type of page I'll use.