I'm back with more Journal Your Christmas pages! I'm a bit behind on the actual assembly, but reasonably caught up on writing my journaling (I'm keeping it in a Google Document) and taking photos. I'm not worried at all! Besides, this is a good time to be behind since the next few prompts have to do with things that I won't have photos of until Christmas day (Christmas dinner, opening gifts). I'll just write my journaling ahead of time if possible and wait until the right time to take photos, and in the meantime catch up on some of my other pages.
So, on to December 5th's prompt- advent calendars. I don't actually use an advent calendar, but I have other ways of counting the days 'til Christmas with little events and celebrations. I know I've already blogged and scrapped these photos from Bridge Street, but I couldn't help using them here, too!
I'm totally unconcerned that my photos were taken on a different day that the prompt fell on. I simply included both dates and left it at that.
December 6th's prompt was to compare a Christmas past to the Christmas present, and this year tree toppers came to mind (probably because I'd just finished decorating the tree). The journaling actually ended up being quite long, so I tucked it into an envelope after writing it out.
The journaling reads:
Looking at the topper that my family used when I was a child and the one that Darren and I use today, I realize that I’ve never had the normal angel or Christmas star sitting on top of my tree.
When I was little (and still today), my parents topped our tree with “Miss Mouse”- a handmade mouse wearing a frilly dress and reading from “The Night Before Christmas.” She was made from a pattern of my great-grandmother’s, and my parents sewed many of them to sell at craft fairs. I still have one today, sitting on top of one of my miniature trees.
When Darren and I put up our first Christmas tree, we searched in every store imaginable to find a topper that we liked, but nothing really seemed to fit us. It was all too gaudy, or too cheesy, or somehow just not pleasing to us. Finally, one night in December we were standing in the check-out line at Wal-Mart, next to a gift wrap display, and we both saw a beautiful iridescent bow (that was vaguely star-shaped) and a set of matching streamers. We picked it up and hung it on our tree that year, and we’ve been using it ever since. In the years since we bought that inexpensive little bow and streamers I have seen other stars that we might like, but I have a feeling that we’ll be staying with our first topper for as long as we’re putting up Christmas trees.
But now that I've written all that, I'm starting to vaguely remember a pretty white angel tree topper with sequins on her dress that I think we used for several years when I was a kid. Mom and Dad will have to remind me if they can remember, and I'm sure we have lots of pictures- just another reason to get all those negatives scanned in! I'd love to scrap some old Christmas photos.
I'll be back with more Journal Your Christmas pages later this week, and be sure to come back for Friday Favorites when I share some of my favorite albums by other scrappers!