JYC Days 4 and 5

I have spent much of today playing catch up with my Christmas journal. I must say it has been so nice not to have to spend time on college work which is the first weekend in about 6 weeks.

I have talked about my perfect Christmas and about Advent and the tradition we now have in our family. I think the journalling is clear enough to read so I won't repeat it here.

And this evening is the college student Christmas Party. It is being held at the Guildhall in Northampton and I am hoping that it will be a good evening. I hope lots of students attend and I know full well that most of the evening will be spent having photos taken with them all. They like to take photos of their teachers home to show their families!

JYC Day 2 and 3

Today I managed to get the pages finished for the 2nd and 3rd day of the journal. Weather and Cards! It was parents evening at college last night so there was no time to complete my journal page yesterday. The first parents evening that I have been a teacher at for 22 years!

I really enjoy the journalling part of it which is quiet a surprise to me as I am not used to writing much on scrapbook pages! My pages usually tell the date and the place and not much else. I know I need to expand on this so that future generations can read about life in the early 21st Century and maybe this journal will give me the confidence to carry it over onto scrapbook pages.

Here are the two pages for Days 2 and 3.

JYC Day 2

Today I finally got my page complete for yesterday's prompt. I toyed with several different papers and then decided on something quite simple. I also played around with several photos and then had trouble with the colour when printing, but this is my completed page!


Today's prompt is about the weather and this is what I have journalled about it. As it is parent's evening tomorrow I don't imagine I will get chance to create my page until Thursday. And I can't find the photographs I want either - I think they are in the loft so I may have to think again about what photos to include!

"Christmas Weather!

Winter in England – A white Christmas is something many of us dream about. As a child I’m sure we used to get more snow than we do now, but still not on Christmas Day I guess!

We have actually experienced snow on Christmas Day twice – the first time was back in 1993 . We were on an 8 day holiday to EuroDisney (as it was called then!) and were spending the day in the park. During the afternoon it started to snow and that was such a magical feeling – Walking down Main Street, USA, looking at all the fantastic decorations, listening to the singing and watching REAL snow fall. The next morning we awoke to find thick snow and some boys were building a Mickey Mouse snowman outside our window.

The second time it snowed on Christmas Day was in Wales in 2001. We were staying in a log cabin just outside Carmarthen. We had a lovely log fire and the cabins were nestled in a wood. And on Christmas Day we looked out of the window to see snow falling. What a wonderful way to spend Christmas – sat in front of a warm fire watching the snow falling all around.

In 2005 we went to the other extreme and celebrated a warm Christmas. This was the year we went to Florida. Christmas was spent in an apartment on the west coast of Florida in a little place called Anna Maria Island (near Bradenton). The weather was not that hot but it was warm enough for Frank and I to stroll along the beach wearing just a cardigan or jumper.

I wonder what the weather will be like on Christmas Day this year and where we will spend next Christmas!"

First Day of JYC

Today I waited eagerly for the first prompt, but all to no avail. Some hiccup with the email meant that I didn't get it first thing this morning, like I expected. But that wasn't a real problem - I emailed Shimelle and she sent it to me, but the prompts are also available on her forum.

So the first prompt is to write a sort of Manifesto - why you are doing the JYC, what is special about this time of year, what you want to get out of this experience ...

So - here goes!

Starting today, December 1st, I will keep a Christmas journal. In it, I will write something everyday (hopefully!) to reflect on the holidays of my past, enjoy the holidays of the present and dream about the holidays of the future. I plan to give at least 15 minutes of each day to this task, no matter how crazy the season becomes. This Christmas I will create something of my own which will be filled with my own memories and my wishes. It will be something for my family to look back on in the future and hopefully it will remind them of the good times we had.

Advent

Tomorrow is the first day of Advent and consequently the first day of JYC by Shimelle. I am really looking forward to getting involved in this and hopefully keeping up with at least some of the prompts.

Today I put all the Christmas stash I have in a box so that it is easily accessible and that way I don't have to hunt around for what I have got. I treated myself to some wonderful K & Co paper, chipboard and tags on Thursday and can't wait to start using it. I have lots of Chrismas scrapbooking paper left from a pad I bought a few years ago too so I have no doubt that I have enough. Enough for several years I think.


I also managed to scrap some more of our summer holiday 2007! It has been hanging around so long now that I am bored with it. But - I have only got 3 spreads left to do and it will be finished. It was the trip to Sipan in Croatia. Here are 4 of the pages I did today.




On the top left is our new bedroom! The one we got moved to after the electricity went in our first room.
The one on the top right is the view from our room - this is the terrace where we ate all our meals and you can see how close it was to the sea.
Bottom left is looking from our room window again, but out to sea rather than down at the hotel. You can see how beautiful the Adriatic is!
And bottom right is a view of the front of our hotel. Frank is outside the restaurant that they use for visitors.

As tomorrow is the first day of Advent, Katie and Lizzie will be opening their first present on their calendar. I hope they like the little gifts I have chosen for them.

Journal your Christmas

I have signed up to take part in Shimelle's Journal your Christmas. I am hoping this will give me something to look back on in years to come and remind me of what we were doing in 2008. And hopefully I will take part in future years too.

Christmas has always been a favourite time of year, especially since having children. And even though they are now adults it is still a special time of the year. We very much enjoy each other's company (well I enjoy theirs anyway!) and have lots of laughs doing things together. Some years we go away for Christmas and other years we stay at home and have family around. This year we are staying at home.

I can't wait till December 1st arrives and I can get started on this project. I just hope that I can keep motivated for the whole time. Some friends on an online group are taking part too so we are hoping to motivate each other!

Weekend

For the first time in ages we spent a whole weekend at home!

Frank spent much of the weekend working on his model boat - he will need a new one soon! And I spent some time scrapping some of our US holiday photos. My big problem is deciding which ones to leave out of the layouts, consequently I end up putting most of them in and I think my 2 albums with extra pages won't be enough for the whole 3 week vacation.

The photo on the left is of the Lincoln Memorial from various angles, the one on the right is of the reflecting pool. The bottom photo on this page is of Frank trying to photograph his finger on the top of the Washington Memorial! It didn't quite work out as he planned.

So far I have got to the end of day 2 - 30th March. This was the first of our two days in Washington DC! We visited the White House, Lincoln Memorial and National World War II Memorial.

These two photographs are of the National WWII Memorial. The photo on the left is one of the gateways into the memorial. It took us ages to get the photograph of the fountain without anyone in front of it. The photo on the right is of quotes and carvings. The carvings depict different aspects of the war!

Saturday evening we had invited a work collegue around for dinner, and as he is vegetarian we had a no meat Indian meal. Frank cooked a selection of dishes - Bindi Fry, Stuffed aubergines, dahl, mushroom curry, coconut rice and we had some naan bread too. It was all absolutely delicious.