2 for 1 Day!

As I said in yesterday's post I am starting to feel overwhelmed by the Christmas preparations and am falling behind in my JYC entries. Last night I managed to catch up on my two entries as well as finish my Christmas cards! I know the pressure is what we put on ourselves but why oh why can I not be happy to just be in the spirit rather than feeling like I have to do it all? I am definitely going to have to work on this more this upcoming week.

So here's the entry for Dec. 5th. It's all about Advent calendars - something I love. The two tiny photos are of the two Advent calendars we currently have at the Larsen house. I just looked at the one Andrew likes to do and notice that he is about 3 days behind. That was so not his style when he was little. He never understood why you couldn't just pull out the days you wanted. The journaling reads:
When I was about 6 years old my sister Colleen made me an Advent calendar. It’s a large Christmas tree with ornaments for each of the 25 days. I still have the calendar although I made some new ornaments for it after Andrew and Laura were born. I can remember the anticipation of checking the pocket every day and always being so excited to see the next day’s ornament. When Ian and Annabelle were christened I wanted to make them something special to mark the occasion. I was not as talented (or patient) as Colleen to make the ornaments from felt like she did so I made a much larger felt tree and painted small wooden ornaments. I made an identical tree with ornaments for our house so that we now have an Advent calendar for both Andrew and Laura. Andrew swears the “TT” one is his and he may win out if Laura can have the village and the dishes. I was on the ball this year too and had the calendar up by December 1st. Some years I’ve been a real slacker and not had it up until the 6th or the 7th.
Products Used: Bazille cardstock; BG Figgy Pudding paper & chipboard; MM tag; Provo craft chipboard numbers.

The prompt for yesterday was all about your best and worst Christmas memory. These are two polar opposite memories of the same event that happened to be in consecutive years. Neither of these are the "best" or "worst" Christmas memories I have but certainly memories I want to journal about.

The journaling reads:

2005
We all went to Auntie Amy’s at Debbie’s insistence for Cookie Baking Day. Not only did no one have the stamina for a FULL day of cookie baking, I ended the day by looking down at my hand only to find that the diamond from my engagement ring was gone forever. That was almost enough to make me give up baking all together UNTIL . . .

2006
I was back in my own kitchen with all my own supplies feeling like it was okay to have another Cookie Baking Day. What a difference a year made! Laura was very into decorating the sugar cookies. Grannie left in the middle to make a Target run to treat me to new cookie sheets and Liz came to join us. I still have no diamond but the cookies tasted awesome!

Products Used: Bazille cardstock; Figgy Pudding paper & chipboard; Heidi Grace sticker letters; MM tag; misc. ribbon.

Makes me want to have a Christmas cookie right now! Maybe if I get off the computer I could get a batch made today . . .