Journal Your Christmas Days 5 and 6

I got a day behind with my journalling as a result of spending Sunday evening with my family (I was very proud of my slow cooking effort- a lovely beef korma). Living Christmas was a little more important than journalling it ;0) So I spent hours last night catching up (who'd have thought 4 pages could take me all of Eclipse, Eastenders and Nigella's Christmas Bites!?).

The prompt for Day 5 was 'Counting Down' and how we mark each day to Christmas. This was an easy one for me as we've had the same Christmas Advent Calender since i was a child (and in recent years I have been refilling a lovely M&S tree with treat drawers for Sam and I). So with a little help from my sister I journalled a page of my own calender and our family calender too (Nat had to take the family pic for me).

I started with the title page for the day. I decided to incorporate this with a Wight Craft Circle challenge, Patchwork. I'd had this idea in mind for a while and was looking for the right time to use it. It was a great excuse to get out my stack of old alphas and use up all my odd numbers too. Sorry for the darkness of the photos. No natural light available before I come to work in the mornings.

 Here is my Advent Calender page. The photo is on hinges to reveal my second calender photo.

 I've tucked another photo and a decorative tree behind the first main photo. I wanted to go into more depth with the journalling. So I might go back and add some more tonight. The family advent calender was handmade by my Mum when I was younger and has seen us through every Christmas since (we've had all manner of treats and lovelies hanging from each day over the years).

 Day 6's prompt was 'A Tale of Two Christmases' and we were challenged to split our page/s in half somehow. Well I thought long and hard about Shimelle's prompt and about reflecting on stories from two Christmases past. However, I couldnt really think of a negative Christmas memory. And in reality, I wanted to focus on happy memories and make my journal joyous. So instead I have simply made todays journalling about stand out Christmas memories.

My title page was inspired by this LO I saw on Ali Edward's December Daily page. I think she used pre-printed acetate where as I chose to break out my Stamp-a-ma-Jig and circle stamp from the Something Sweet stamp set and hand stamp my circles in Cherry Cobler and Old Olive. The photos reflect on handmade Christmas treats. The upper right is a decorated Christmas Cake I made for my Mum and the lower photo is a handmade gingerbread house Sam and I created for his nieces and nephews a couple of years ago.

 My final page for Day 6 was inspired by Shimelle's idea of breaking up the page into two. I used a lovely piece of stripey ribbon to define the split. However, it got covered by the photos! I called the page' Ghost of Christmas Past' and my journalling reflects on two Christmas photos. One of my sisters when they were tiny and one of Sam and I visiting the German Christmas markets a couple of years back.

Still loving Journal Your Christmas. And hoping to catch up with some other people's blogs today to see how everyone else is getting on.

Happy Festive Crafting ;0)

-XXX-