{crazyjen}

Christmas 2011

Here are a couple teaser pictures while I work on getting the rest up on the blog.

Me with my two newest nephews. Jacob and Korby.

Tristan in the Christmas Box. Saw this idea on Pinterest thoguht it was freakin' sweet.

Jack taking his turn in the box.

p.s. I didn't use a tri-pod so I couldn't get the nice glow of the Christmas tree. Sometimes it's just better to get the shot while you have the chance. The kids's attention spans are about as long as a sneeze.

Korby talking and showing us his chompers. He's got 4 on top and 4 on the bottom.

Jacob with a twinkle in his eye. :) One of my favs from the night.

Christmas Giving

I love Christmas! I love it. I really do. My favorite holiday without a doubt. I was so excited about giving gifts this year. I had such good ideas and was so excited to see if the people opening my presents would be as excited as I was.

So here goes.

At work:

*Kim-I bought the PW Cookbook  
for Kim who has been talking about buying it for awhile. After I gave it to her she told me that she kept seeing it in the store and she would think about buying it then change her mind because she didn't really need it so that was the perfect gift because I got her something she really wanted but didn't need. Score 1 for ME

*Carlotta: I bought her some beautiful blue smooshy yarn from the yarn store 
 and she has already started making a pair of socks with it. It was so beautiful. Score another for ME.

Meixner Family Christmas:

*Auntie Sheila- I really had trouble with her this year which is scandalous because I see stuff for her year-round that I KNOW she'd like but I can't buy it for her because I don't know until Halloween whether or not I have her for Christmas (we draw names). Anyways, I finally found stuff for her at the last minute and some not at the last minute.

I bought her this cool black vest with ruffles along the zipper and along the bottom and it had black fur around the neckline. It was so her. Then I found her these purple (her favorite color) feather earrings. I also got her an Elvis lottery ticket (favorite on both accounts, Elvis and gambling) and I also made her a calendar for 2012 with all of my favorite pictures. I put all the birthdays and anniversaries of everyone in the immediate family). I think out of everything she really liked the calendar the most. She didn't cry or anything which really signifies that she likes something but I don't think it was a bust. Score 1/2 point for ME.

*Auntie Shelly - I made her a calendar as well. I thought she'd appreciate it because she told me that she uses my pictures as backgrounds on her computer at work. I think she really liked it. She had a big smile on her face. Score one for ME.

*Tristan - I bought him a gift card for Itunes and he actually told me thank you instead of whining so I figure that was definitely a Score for me!

*Tara - Michelle and I bought her Victoria's Secret panties and a bra. I think we embarassed her a bit but I'm pretty sure she liked it. Score one for ME!

Harbal Family Christmas:

*Mom and Dad - Bought Mom a huge and I mean HUGE 20x30 canvas print of our family picture that Jimmy took. She really loved that. She wanted to hang it right away but then put it away in her room so it wouldn't get wrecked before she could hang it. Bought Dad some organic fruit to go with the juicer that Mom bought him. Bought him some pants that he desperately needed. Score 2 for ME.

*Jayde-I bought him a couple nice sweaters, a bunch of boxers that don't feel like sandpaper, some turtles (he loves them), some milk duds (he loves them too), um...a bunch of quarters for pool and I think that was it. Score!

*Michelle - Gave her a gift certificate for $40 worth of household cleaning services from my cousin. She absolutely LOVED that because she was excited, she always asks for a cleaning service and now she got it! Score one for ME.

*Jacob-Made him a blanket out of flannel shirt fabric and this minky fabric that's really soft and fluffy. He started eating it right away so I know he liked it.

*Jack-Lego boat which he was in love with. Had to put it together right away and play with it in the bathtub.

*Gracie-two pairs of Gap jammies. She put them on that night. LOL

*Stockings: We do $2-$5 worth of stuff for each person's stocking. I almost like this the most because you get to find small fun gifts for people or in my case I make stuff too which means more to me.

Mom-Hershey's candy. So can't go wrong with that.

Dad-A pair of red ruffled underwear for Mom. So technically a gift for Dad because he'll be appreciating it. LOL This made me laugh so hard and Dad got a kick out of it.

Michelle-a silver paint pen. She loved this because she's always oggling mine and trying to steal it.

Guy-Gummy Bears. He can eat a whole bag in one sitting. That's how much he likes them.

Jimmy-Lottery tickets. Always a win here.

Chris-A yoda ornament that says yoda phrases. thought he'd love this as most of his xmas tree is covered in star wars ornaments.

Kimmie-Made her some felt coasters in the shape of baseballs and footballs. she loved these. I know this because she was super excited about them and told me twice how much she liked them.

Thomas-Made him a whole tupperware bowl of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Not cookies, just the dough. LOL That was a hit. Kim told me later they couldn't stop eating it. LOL

Nick-A Squirrel ornament. This was one of my favorite gifts. I saw it at Macy's the day after Thanksgiving and didn't buy it but I kept talking about how I should buy it and Nick would love it for his tree so on our way out I figured I should buy it since I was so in love with it. I think Nick liked it but he never said anything about it so I'm not sure. This one was probably a more exciting gift on my end than his. Damn. A bust. Michelle and Kimmie got a kick out of it too. :)

 

some xmas pics

Gracie took this one of me at the Hometown Holiday Parade in Owatonna, MN. pretty good actually

Me and Pita waiting for the parade to start. She kept saying she was cold and then wanted to sit on the cold curb. I said, "Gracer, your butt will be cold if you sit down on that frozen curb." but she did it anyway. LOL

She was so excited when the parade started. She kept saying, "Look at that Auntie Jen!" "Take a picture of that Auntie Jen" "Auntie Jen there's Santa!" It was awesome.

Mrs. Claus

Jacob wearing Jayde's stocking hat. He was so cute. I mean still is cute but I am referring to this picture. Notice the fat sausage fingers. Just like his daddy.

Birthday, Snowstorm and Santa Claus

What do they have in common? My weekend.

Made a "Fish House" cake for Guy on Saturday. Jack and Grace were a big help. ahem.

See...."We Love Daddy" That's what they wanted on the cake. They also added a fish house door, a picture of Gracie (on the left), some ocean water (that's the blog and a fishing pole *underneath the blob).

Jack "helping" LOL

After making the cake we went outside to play. Well, I went outside to scrape my car and get it warmed up and Jack and Grace went outside to play.

Gracie tried to help shovel the driveway but she got tired fast.

Jack chasing me with a pile of snow. He thought it was funny to try and throw it on me...but instead of getting me he got his Mom. Ha ha. I pulled her in front of me at the last minute and she was too busy yapping with Mom to notice. So Jack threw the snow at her. ha ha

The serious snow shoveling face

Gracie watching her mother build a snowman which looked less like a snowman and more like Jabba the Hut. LOL

 

You think someone likes pink?

Here's the finished product.

Not shown: Lunch with Jayde at Costa's. Love that place. Got the skinny on the noodles in the chicken noodle soup. Oh yeah now I've got the best noodles for my soup. he he Also, Jayde got his 3-year sobriety pin.

Sunday we went to Breakfast with Santa at the Holiday Inn in Medford.

Jack talking to Santa and telling him he wants Legos for Christmas and telling him that Gracie wants a doll. LOL (strange boy in front of my picture. Damn kid. LOL)

Still talking to Santa...I mean to his hands. LOL He seems a bit shy  here but he got right up there and talked to Santa even if he didn't look at him.

Gracie wasn't as scared this year. She walked right up there but she wouldn't actually talk so Jack did the talking for her.

Jack and Gracie. jack excited and Gracie still a bit frightened.

Eating breakfast. Santa stopped by and was talking to both of them. They really got a kick out of that. Jack ate around 8 french toast sticks. What a piglet. LOL Gracie didn't eat much. She just wasn't into the food but she was pretty into her candy cane.

We checked out the trees after that. There were a ton and the kids really got into looking at each and every one. Gracie loved the pink trees with cupcakes and ice cream cones. Jack really loved the big tree and the cooking tree.

Laughing about something. LOL

"Take a picture of the Santa Auntie Jen!"

Jack  kept trying to kiss the present on this tree. LOL

 

 

December Daily Day 7

 

I absolutely love these two pages. Just love them. I used a full 6x8 page horizontally (I love switching it up between vertical and horizontal. Some pictures are just better one way or the other plus it keeps me moving the book around instead of just paging though.) The second page is just a journalling page.

used some letter stickers and some rob-ons here for the title. I have a small red border around it...because I didn't cut this page just right so one side was slightly smaller and showed the red paper from the previous page...so I just trimmed the other side a bit and gave it a little red border.

the journalling for this page.

the second set from day 7.

DAy 7 is a big circle cutout from I believe some Girls Paperie Christmas paper...don't quote me on that and a journalling block that I cut in half.

I have my journalling on the left and Michelle's journalling will go on the right. So often I find myself writing down all of my thoughts...well this page is meant to have her thoughts as well.

 
 
 
 

 
 

December Daily Day 6

 
Day 6 is only two pages and I don't have a transparency in between them today. Just didn't feel like it would fit. So I did two pages, one with the main picture and the other with the journalling and a smaller picture.

I love this ornament so it got front and center today. I probably should have left off the green border but it needed something otherwise the bear was getting lost and I wanted it to be christmas-y. If you have a suggestion for something else...post it. I can still change it. I liked adding the to: from: sticker because it was a gift to me. thought that was good.

Details on the second page. It looks a bit crazy...so I might change it. It doesn't look like it connects with the first page which it really it shouldn't because there are two different stories there but it still looks disjointed...have to work on that one. 
 

December Daily Day 5

The first little page is the back of the previous journalling from day 4. I kind of liked just using that instead of a full paged transparency. Thought it fit well with the large 6x8 page of our family.

Here's a full look at our family picture from Budd's tree farm. top to bottom left to right: Mom, Guy, Chris, Dad, Nick, Michelle and Gracie, Kimmie, Jack, me and Jayde.

 

second set of pages. The left-hand side shows some pictures of hunting for a tree and hauling it to get shaken (they do that to get loose branches, needles and snow off. It's pretty slick.)

The right-hand side is a single 4x6 page that I created using two different pictures. One of a landscape shot of the tree farm and one of a tree close up. I typed up the text in the sky. Got the idea from the tree farm's website. :) I added a page turner as well.

left to right and top to bottom: 1.tree we looked at buying. didn't have a tag on it. dang it. 2. mom, dad and Gracie checking out a tree. 3. Jayde and Dad hauling down our Harbal tree to pay. 4. Mom, Dad and Gracie waiting in line.

A close up of the journalling page.

The next set of pages. The reason I did two sets of pages was I had two stories to tell. The first story was about looking for a tree and how it was a tradition with our family and the second was how much Jack enjoyed searching for and cutting down trees. I had to do both. I just had to. So this day has a lot of pages.

close up of the left page.  I added some word stickers on the page turner and their names on the bottom in the snow.

the second page just has a large tree with "cutting down our tree" in white rub-ons. It's on a transparency. the white you see is the next page's journalling.

the third set of pages with journalling.

close up of the second page. I almost just blew up the picture on the left but I wanted to show all three. one of both kids running around like crazy people, jack checking out thetree and gracie looking cold.

That's all for day 5. I kept the samepaper going throughout because I wanted some kind of continuity.

 

December Daily Day 4

Day 4 has several pages because several things happened that day. I have a hard time choosing one particular thing to talk about. I like to post several things from the day.

So the first day starts with this little notepad "day 4" sheet.

That folds over to show the first part of day 4. Breakfast.

I'm really loving using a collage of 2x3 prints on these 6x8 pages. I'm not doing 8x8 pages this year. I find that I have to try and "fill" the page whereas this is a nice smaller size. Although I do make different sized pages as well.

 
 

Here's the full 2-pager with the journalling on the left hand side....If you look closely I made a mistake. I forgot to punch the holes before I wrote it out so some letters are cut off but you can see enough of them to know what I'm trying to say. :) If you'd like me to type up the writing in this post, just say so. I can read it farely well myself. :)

Part two of day 4. The Dunnell House collage of pictures on the left. I had to add this page because I love Christmas-y decor and this old historic home never lets me down with each of it's room's prepared in the holiday spirit. THe right hand side has another smaller journally block.

 

 

December Daily Day 3

First set of pages. I did several because I had a lot of pictures I wanted to show. I couldn't choose just one. LOL

Page one with two pictures of driving home in 1/4-1/2 mile visibility...and Jayde playing in the snow.

The journalling is on a little piece of cardstock I cut out with "brr" being a little page turner. Behind it is a snowflake transparency with blizzard on it.

Jayde playing in the snow. i loved this picture because of the snow I caught in the camera. I think it is cool. Jayde's making a snow angel in the front yard.

The backside of snow angel picture was just some from the roadways. I couldn't not put them in. Figured I had to show some of the snow we got and the rural countryside.

December Daily Day 2

Day 2. There are a couple of pages. This is the first. I changed the orientation to horizontal because it better fitted the pictures plus I figure if I have to keep moving the book I'm more likely to actually look at it...well when I say me I mean whoever looks at it. LOL

"Owatonna Lighted Holiday Parade" left to right: Jayde and Gracie, Michelle and Gracie, me and Gracie, Gracie looking excitedly at the lights in the parade, a lawnmower with santa and a reindeer and Michelle and Gracie waiting like bums on the street for the parade to start.

Second set of pages for day 2.

This is the backside of the transparency that has the big 2 on it. it is a gold-lettered transparency that I liked because it looked elegant and had christmas carol words on it like "Joy" and "Noel"

I used a caroler picture on the left for journalling because it was the back of the directors cloak. I thought that would be a fun way to incorporate journalling. I put the picture of Michelle and Gracie on the left because they were watching the carolers...Michelle looks happy and crazy doesn't...because she was cold as evidenced by her very red nose.