Christmas 2016

Another long-overdue layout into the album! 

Christmas 2016 (affiliate link)

Until my parents moved out of state in 2018, our tradition was to spend Christmas Eve and morning with my family, then Christmas day with Steve's family. I combined photos from both events on a single layout with the photos roughly in chronological order (left to right, top to bottom). I managed to include at least one photo of twenty of the twenty-one people (sorry Uncle Bill). Other than that omission, I'm happy with how the layout turned out. 

Christmas 2015

I pulled out the Christmas supplies and scrapped the photos from 2015. It feels really good to fill those spots in the album. Here's Christmas morning with my family:

Christmas 2015 (affiliate link)

And here's Christmas dinner with Steve's family:

Christmas 2015 (affiliate link)

They're from the same day and will sit next to each other in the album, but I intentionally used different supplies and different shades of reds and greens to distinguish between the two. I'm particularly happy with the mitten embellishment I made on the second layout. Mostly, I'm really glad the photos are finally in the album. 

Dollar Bill Dispenser #2

Now that the recipients have their gifts, I can begin sharing some of the homemade gifts I made! First up, a second version of a Dollar Bill Dispenser.

I have four boys ranging from 13-21 on my gift-giving list. I'm pretty sure that teenage boys are the most difficult people to shop for, unless you have a large budget and very specific instructions of what to buy. Since I had neither, the choices were: 

A) Choose something random and hope for the best

B) Gift card

C) Cash

I chose cash. The Dollar Bill Dispenser I gave Courteney for her birthday was such a hit that I decided each of the four boys would be getting a Dollar Bill Dispenser of his own. I went to the bank and got a bundle of ones.  

I made my cousin's son Ryan a red Dollar Bill Dispenser that was similar to the purple one that went to Courteney. I thought I took a picture of it before mailing it off to Spokane, but apparently I did not.  

For my sister-in-law's two boys, Ian and Sean, I decided to try a different style of Dispenser. I started by painting two empty square Kleenex boxes with a coat of gesso.  

  

When that was dry, I painted one box black and the other red.

While they were drying, I started taping dollar bills together, end to end. Then I rolled them up. I rubbed-banded the two bundles and set them aside.

Next, I covered the sides of each box with Christmas-themed patterned paper. I pushed one square of tissue paper down into the box and fluffed it to cover the top of the box. Then I stamped the word PULL onto a piece of white cardstock, used a border punch on the end, and taped it to the roll of dollars. I placed the roll down into the Kleenex box with the PULL tab protruding out of the tissue paper.

Here's the candy cane box for Sean.

 

And here is the snowman box for Ian. 

 

They were a hit. Both were a bit nervous to pull the tab, thinking it was going to explode or something. Once money came out, they kept pulling and pulling and pulling. I was really happy that this design worked as well as the cardboard tube style.  

On Monday I'll share the way I gave cash to my nephew Timothy. I had a LOT of fun putting it together and couldn't wait to see him unwrap it.

Christmas Means Family

Here's a simple layout from Christmas 2012. That's our family of three in the upper right. The bottom left is us with Steve's parents, sisters, brother-in-law, and nephews. The bottom right is us with my parents, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew.  

Christmas Means Family (affiliate link)

It makes me happy. As does Trevor's snowman sweater. If the best thing about Christmas is time with family, the second best thing about Christmas is snowmen.