Daily December... Day 2 and a Dream Come True!

On the 2nd of December we made some Christmas cards!!

From Christmas 2012

Actually, ELIANA made some Christmas cards. First, she made a list of friends she wants to give Christmas cards to.

From Christmas 2012

Then we went up to the craft room and crafted together and chatted. It was WONDERFUL! I have decided that 6 is a magical age where Eliana's interests and my interests overlap and her skills have improved enough that we can spend quality time doing things that we both enjoy, and having conversations that actually have content. Hooray!! It's awesome! We created an assembly line in which I tied on the fringy string and Eliana put the snowflake stickers and Happy Holidays sticker on the cards in her own style. Really, it was a great time, and the cards turned out great!

From Christmas 2012

Well, MOST of the cards turned out great... There was this one card that she decided she was going to draw a nativity in...

From Christmas 2012

It's baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in the stable. And Joseph is running away because, in case you can't read the speech bubbles (which have arrows leading to other speech bubbles because, well, Ellie's speech bubble to handwriting size is still a little off...), Joseph is saying, "AAAAA! I forgot my pants!"

Ah, 6 year old humor. Hopefully she'll just be signing her name in the rest of the cards...

Holiday Card Planner - FREEBIE!

Have you gotten your Christmas cards mailed out yet? My goal is to get them mailed out tomorrow morning, which means that TODAY I need to get my address list updated and print out mailing labels. Hopefully that won't take too long, because I also need to get set up for the week ahead. Of course, as I was signing my Christmas cards last night, I started thinking about next year's Christmas cards. That may seem premature, but a lot of how I do things this year is to set up for a simpler year next year. So I made a Holiday Card Planner that will come in handy when I get the urge to start making my cards for next year (which usually happens in February, or July). Here's a peek:

Download the Holiday Planner HERE.

I am hoping to make a Homeade Card Planner soon, to correspond to this and help you design the card, purchase the correct amount of supplies, and make sure it all gets done by the time you want to send them out! Enjoy, and good luck with your cards this year!! If you find this helpful or have suggestions, please leave me a little comment love!!

Project Life...

I'm pondering doing something like Project Life this year. Not so much buying Becky Higgins' albums / pages, etc, but the same general idea. Basic layouts (or even divided page protectors) that sketch out the year for me with places for journaling cards, etc. Has anyone out there done Project Life? What are your thoughts?

Daily December Downloads

As I'm putting together our Daily December activities, I'm also creating some printables you are welcome to use for your own Daily December activities! Some are specific to what we're doing, but perhaps they will inspire you or be something you can adapt for your own purposes. I already shared my Christmas Planner cover sheet with you. Here's my snowman certificate...


And here's the printout I used of our Daily December activities.



I hope you enjoy them! I will (hopefully) be posting more downloads as we go!

Daily December 2012

First off, I am going to apologize for the less than stellar pictures. I took these pictures with my phone late last night in low light, so I'm actually surprised they turned out as good as they did! But given the options of poor pictures or no blog post, I chose the former. And now.... on with the show!

From Christmas 2012

I made this Advent-style calendar in February. I find that I don't have time during the bustling holiday season to make all the brilliant ideas I come up with during the season, but that I get in the mood to do holiday things around February. Perhaps that's normal, perhaps that's strange, but I say seize the motivation and do it! What a wonderful surprise when I unpacked my holiday boxes this year to find this little gem!

I have done a Daily December album in years past, and even created a list of activities to do in advance. The problem is that I have either done all the activities / done an activity every day but not finished the album, or I've finished the album (I think 2008 is actually the only one I've completely finished, since it's the only one I could find in our Christmas boxes) but had to stretch to make some of the activities. It sort of ended up with me saying, nightly, "Hmm.... what did we do that was Daily December worthy today?"

So this year we have a plan. Every day I have an activity planned to do with Eliana to celebrate the season. Here's an overview of what we're doing...

From Christmas 2012

I have this page in my Christmas Planner. I hand-wrote what thing was in each of the gifts on the calendar so I would remember what we were doing that day.

My grand plan is that each day when Eliana comes home from school, she will get to open one of the Daily December containers and see what the day's activity is.

From Christmas 2012

Some activities are events, like going to the downtown Christmas Stroll or seeing the Nutcracker (which is gift #11, since she is getting a Nutcracker book with paper dolls to play with - that I got on clearance last year!), while other activities are things like making a snowman or drinking hot cocoa and playing games. The days that say "Open Gift #____" she has a corresponding gift under the tree to open.

From Christmas 2012

In  years past I have done a gift every day for the 12 days of Christmas, but found that there were too many trinkety toys around my house, then. This year the gifts are books we already had (like the Primer Christmas Carols book I used as a child that Eliana can probably play out of now), or books / puzzles I got on clearance last January, or holiday movies we only watch this time of year. I think she will enjoy opening gifts and doing activities, and I will enjoy not having extra things around out house to clutter things up, or the cost of buying trinkety things.

As for the album, we'll see how that goes. I'd love to make one this year, but I haven't started it yet, so we'll have to see how it works. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't. Either way, I will get to spend quality holiday time with my family, and that's what really counts.

What activities do YOU do in December?

Candy Land Birthday Party... from 6 months ago.

I just looked through my last few posts and realized that I never posted (on THIS blog) Eliana's birthday party. While I **have** taken a bit of a break from crafting, I have not given up on all My Inner Martha's endeavors!! So, while it's belated, here's a look at Eliana's Candy Land birthday party....

From Eliana's Birthday Party

For Eliana's 6th birthday party, she wanted a CandyLand theme. What she got was 10 friends hyped up on sugar. =D The party was today and it went well. The kids got CandyLand tattoos...

From Eliana's Birthday Party

... And made candy themed necklaces...

From Eliana's Birthday Party

... And walked down the candy path...

From Eliana's Birthday Party

... And laughed a lot...

From Eliana's Birthday Party

... And got goody boxes...

From Eliana's Birthday Party

... complete with toothbrushes...

From Eliana's Birthday Party

... And ate LOTS OF CANDY!!

From Eliana's Birthday Party

... And cupcakes...

From Eliana's Birthday Party

From Eliana's Birthday Party

... and generally had a great time. Happy Birthday Party Day, Eliana!! I can't believe you're almost 6 already!

2012 Christmas Planner

I have not been crafting much lately, but on Sunday afternoon I got together with a couple friends and I made my Christmas cards. I love having them finished! More than that, I love our craft get-togethers. I miss crafting.

And now, having my Christmas cards finished means I am thinking about the next steps to make this holiday season merry and bright. And, well, not only this season, but next year's too. So today while I was piddling around on the computer, here's the cover I made for this year's Christmas Planner.

I'm excited to create printables as the season progresses that I can use year after year. I have used other people's freebie printables for a couple years, but find that the mish-mash doesn't make me nearly as happy as everything matching does. =D So that means creating my own! Click the picture above to download the cover sheet for the planner.

I'm debating doing a Daily December album this year. Part of my problem is that there are 33 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I don't just want to do daily DECEMBER, but a list of the activities between the holidays. So we'll see what happens with that. I'm okay with making it simple this year, but I don't want to lose all documentation. I've been bad about recording things this year or taking pictures, so I don't want that to happen over the holidays, too!

Cowboy Cookies and Chocolates

Yesterday I threw a baby shower for a friend having a baby boy. Her nursery is cowboy themed, so we had a cowboy diaper roundup! I made cookies, cake, a diaper cake, chocolates... it was kitchen mayhem! But the shower was fun, so here's a peek at the cookies and chocolates I made...

From My Inner Martha

There were lassos with "Howdy" (that matched the invites and top of the diaper cake)...

From My Inner Martha

There were stars with little cowboy babies on them...

From My Inner Martha

There were plaid stars...

From My Inner Martha

And there were chocolate and white chocolate stars with dulce de lechce filling!

From My Inner Martha

Do you see how SPARKLY everything is???? I love my luster dust!! SO fun! I used blue and white sparkle!! Hee hee!

Another Baby Album

Right now all my friends seem to be sprouting babies! I had a baby shower last night to attend, so I sat down yesterday and whipped out this album for the mom-to-be and her precious baby girl!

From My Inner Martha

From My Inner Martha

From My Inner Martha

Lots of pink and brown!! I have to admit, it's nice to be able to whip something like this up in a matter of a couple hours. It makes gift giving so much easier! I used to agonize over every single page, but now I have learned what works and what doesn't, and the process is so much more streamlined! I watched a few episodes of Cake Boss on Netflix and crafted away. It was awesome!!

Inspiring Myself...

My treadmill is in the dormer of the craft room, and it's my little workout nook. I have been wanting to make shadow boxes for my craft room for a few years now, but this phrase made me think that it would be nice to have a shadow box in my workout corner!! Inspiration in more ways than one! I also made this one, which I can write on with a dry erase marker... From My Inner Martha LOL! It's fun! I got this sheet off a "goals" pad from Staples that I thought was fun and refreshing. So now I have a little reminder of the couple things I want to accomplish each day! I won't change it every day, but putting up general things inspires me. Like... "Today I will Work Out and Be Happy" Yes, I am awesome!

From My Inner Martha