Holiday Calendar Mode

Well, now that I've come down from wedding mode, I'm looking towards the holidays.

I will get to a project post. Have no fear. However, you must muddle through a few personal thoughts first.

I've been going through all of my photos. I've had numerous computer problems over the last few months and my organization system has suffered. Now that I have a pretty good handle on them, I'm going through all of the 2008 photos and trying to choose the select few that will make it into the Year In Review calendar. After that, I will design at least 12 graphics. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm also feeling a lot of pressure to get it done ...

I didn't take nearly as many photos this year. I don't know why that is. Maybe I've been in a mood, but I think a lot of it has to do with being pregnant and the subsequent birth of my third child. Busy does not even begin to describe my life and tired follows right behind ... for instance, I took the kids to Kid City Museum recently and spent the whole time with a baby strapped to my chest and running after the other two. I snapped a few pictures, but they weren't the best. I couldn't get the kids to hold still and because I had three of them, I wasn't able to just take a million photos where it is inevitable one would turn out all right. Very disappointing.

So, this is where my creative genius must come forward. If you have great photos, sometimes the page just creates itself. It doesn't really need me. With mediocre photos, you must insert a bit more to make it special ... I'm praying for inspiration right now.

But, because I didn't want to leave my occasional blog readers hanging, I will post a project that you haven't seen yet :) Maybe past inspiration will turn into future inspiration!



Two years ago I made calendars as Christmas gifts to give to my children's grandmothers (my mom and Kevin's mom). I thought it was a grand idea. I had gone to my friend Moniqua's first CTMH party and bought the calendars thinking it would make a great Christmas gift if I scrapbooked pictures of my kids for each month. I was right. I just had no idea what it would entail ...



So, each calendar has thirteen 12x12" blank pages (one for each month and a cover). So, that's 26 scrapbook layouts. I started about 6 weeks ahead ...



Short story is that thousands of pictures later, two paper packs, embellishments, an unbelievable amount of glue, and a lot of work later I had two works of art!

The long story ... I printed out almost every photo of the kids from 2006 in color and black & white as well as in 4x6 and wallet size (got two that way). Yeah, it was overkill, but I used several of them and have a lot left over for my own scrapbook if I ever get to it.



I used the Basic Grey Lilykate paper pack for one calendar (needed two of them) and a Close to my Heart paper pack for the other one. However, I didn't have nearly enough paper and a few of the patterned papers weren't what I liked, so I supplemented by buying coordinating papers from my LSS.

I used similar design layouts for several of the pages and once I did one month in one calendar, I almost always copied the layout in the other one with different papers. Occasionally, I adjusted the pictures used.



As I was loading pictures, I realized that I had only taken pictures of the calendar I made for my mother-in-law (Lilykate). I must have thought that I could take pictures of my mom's anytime ... now I have to do it. I can only display five photos here, but I have uploaded them all to my gallery and you can check them out here. Believe me, you'll enjoy them :)

Never again, though. I took over half of the living room floor and spent every night up past midnight to complete them by Christmas. That's why I switched to the digital layouts. At least I take up less space :)