Everyday telling of a story

Christmas Journal - Days 8 & 9

I'm starting to feel a little under pressure to finish my Christmas shopping this week. It must be done. I leave for Montreal this upcoming Saturday, God willing, and when I arrive there I don't want to be shopping around for last minute gifts. I just want to be done before I leave and I'm feeling a little stressed out. Because of that, Dan has decided to help with the Christmas shopping this year. He's been such a great help and has already knocked off 6 presents off the list!

I am conveniently fitting in some scrapbooking time during the daytime. I finished day 9 yesterday so I have a pic to share.

This is day 8, I went shopping with Dan and Joshua for his winter gear. They were announcing the first snow fall of the season and we realized that Joshua wasn't ready for it. So we went to Gap for his jacket, I always buy his snowsuit there because I've been doing so for the past 2 winters. They didn't have snow pants for Joshua, only jackets, so we bought one, always the "warmest" that's what they call it. We found a cute furry hat to go with it and found snowpants and boots elsewhere. I gathered all the labels from his winter clothing and made a page with it and called it good.

Day 9 is journaling of community service we did with our Home Church. We organized a Christmas party for a small neighbourhood complex here in Oakville. My journaling describes the event and underneath the journaling I tucked in a photo of a family I met that night.

I'm four days behind but I've been documenting and taking pictures so I'm confident I will be able to catch up with my project. The real test will be while I'll be in Montreal. I will bring my supplies and scrap a little each day, maybe I will get the kids involved in the process :) I can't wait to be in Montreal with my family, I need them so much right now and I can't wait to see baby Josef!

 

Christmas Journal - Days 3,4,5,6 & 7

I did a lot of catching up last Thursday for my Christmas Journal. Once I got started I couldn't stop! Each little page in my album is making me so happy. Each day brings a special story waiting to be told. 

Here's December 3rd:

Here's December 4th:

December 5th was a lot of journaling:

December 6 & 7:

 December 8 is completed except 9th is not so I will post as soon as I get a picture of the double spread. I'm loving December so far and it's gotten so cold all of a sudden! I gotta get myself a winter jacket and boots and Dan needs a hat, Danelia needs boots too. The only one that is totally prepared for winter is Josh. I started my Christmas shopping but I'm not even close to being done. I wish I could buy GC's for everyone but my family in Montreal are not into that, too bad!

Anyway, gotta get back to my dinner preparations for tonight. We're having a wonderful couple over for dinner and I'm using the oven to make some nice salmon :) Really looking forward to that!

 

Christmas Journal - Day 1&2

I'm having fun with my Christmas journal! Yesterday I played a little bit of catching up with my journal, I needed to get it off the ground and I did! Days 1 and 2 are done and the days after that are documented and photos have been taken. I will print more pictures tonight and get a couple more pages done, I'm feeling so inspired to create right now!

Here's day 1: Ode to the cheapo chocolate advent calendar. Cheap but it works!

 Here's Day 2: A brand new Starbucks travel mug...not just a regular one but one with handles! And cute to boot!

I'm having a lazy day today and I'm enjoying it very much!

the triumphant return of the 20 year-old stove

I'll try to make this story short so here it goes. Early this year, I think it was back in February, I would have to go into the blog archives to confirm but it really isn't relevant because who cares really? So anyway, back in February the elements in my oven broke, they were no good and so I was happy as can be. Why you ask? Because my stove is about 20 years-old (from my google searches so far) and that meant that I could finally bug Dan to get me brand new appliances. At first he wanted to get it fixed and I mocked him and told him he was cheap haha. He took a slight offence to that and promptly started looking up at Consumer reports on what brands are best and all that great stuff that he's so good at finding anyway. Time went by, and soon enough it was spring and with that came a lot of Church commitments. And in a blink of an eye it was summer, even more commitments tossed in with some family vacations and some work changes and Dan didn't settle on appliances. Autumn rolled in and I was itching to bake and Dan's work was a bit more stable so he started looking for appliances again. 

I don't know how it happened but it went from needing a new stove from wanting to renovate our entire kitchen. Don't ask how it happened, actually I do have an explanation. This house is older than the stove and needs a facelift! My kitchen is u.g.l.y. Back to the stove. We decided that we are renovating the kitchen and at the same time get a new fridge, stove and dishwasher but before that we need to have all the cabinet measurements done etc etc which is where I've been procrastinating. Anyway, until we do the kitchen reno we decided to repair the 20 year-old stove, it cost us $140. It's sickening to put that amount of money towards an old stove but I have to say that I don't regret it. Since the resurrection of the stove this weekend, I have baked cannelloni and chocolate chip cookies and I'll be able to bake for the Christmas holidays. (at least for the few days that we'll be here before we go to Montreal) Lasagna is next on the list :)

Here's the succulent choco chip cookies. Dark for Josh and white for Danelia.

I will get my $140's worth! So who wants to come over for dinner?

so far today...

• I've eaten a healthy breakfast and snack. Yay me!
• I finished a project for Joshua's school about Peru.
• I'm babysitting my friend's children, such angels!
• Listening to Dido's old albums, nothing beats Life for Rent.
• Made a few phone calls.

Soon I will be making lunch for me and the kiddos. I'll probably have a salad with some hard-boiled eggs and ham. Later this evening Dan and I are going to Joshua's report card meeting. We have lots of questions. Joshua is doing extremely well but there's a concern about him being distracted in class and chit chatting constantly which doesn't surprise me, he's quite the chatterbox! 

Christmas Journal

This year I will be doing a Christmas Journal. This concept is to basically document our Christmas with words and pictures from December 1st leading up to Christmas day. I did a Christmas Journal back in 2007, you can see it here. I really enjoyed documenting our daily lives during the festivities, the everyday mundane stuff as well as the more exciting Christmas related activities. Anything goes in this little journal and that's why I love it because it's a beautiful recollection of how we live our lives and how we exist. 

This is my 2009 Christmas Journal. 

 It's a 4x6  Heidi Swapp mirror album that I originally purchased last year for this same project. What actually happened is that I bought materials with this album to make my Christmas Journal for 2008 but never assembled it and thus the project collected dust. I still recorded our December of 2008 except I don't have a journal for it, I'm sure a double 12x12 spread will work just as good. So here's my album, I plan to follow through this year and it's assembled but it only has the basic stuff, no embellishments just papers and a few transparencies. I will embellish and print pictures as I go. I might post daily or I might post a couple of days together, don't know yet. But for right now I already have the theme/material for today (the kids got their chocolate calendars) took the picture and all I have to do is print it and journal it. Oh and another fun thing that happened today was Dan got a cool Santa hat with a Canadiens' logo on it that his friend bought for him from Montreal. He had a couple of friends come over for a Canadiens vs Leafs game. I can' wait  to have the finished product. I want to keep it simple and let the photos speak for themselves as opposed to having this album filled with embellishments galore. Keeping it simple, that's my motto.

Laters peeps

the eight grader

This is my Danelia, eight grader extraordinaire and soon to be high schooler?? Is that even a word? I should google it because it seems like it will be a word I will be using rather often and very soon. Yes, according to google it seems to be a word or at least a lot of people use it. Anyhow, she's my baby girl, even though she will be starting high school next year. I remember her first day of school, I even remember her first day of childcare when she was four. She was so happy to start daycare and I was so scared because I had been at home with her since her birth and I had to let her go. That day, she was all happy and I was nervous and I thought maybe just maybe she'll change her mind and want to be with her mommy and cry as we left her in daycare but nooo that was not the case! This child gave me a great big hug and then hugged daddy and she said "goodbye" and off she went, happy to start her new life in daycare. Thinking about it now, it makes me happy that she was such a good kid and adjusted so well with any situation but still I missed her because our days as mommy and her sidekick were over. So many changes over the years, so many different circumstances but some things are always constant, as I look at this picture of my thirteen year old daughter, I still see my baby girl, the one that started it all. I'm so thankful for her.

And on that note, Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends! 

ETA: Danelia brought home her report card and she Aced it! She even made honour roll...I'm such a proud mama right now.

it's Christmas shoe box time!

It's finally time to pack and ship the Christmas shoe boxes for Big Trout Lake! I'm so excited because that's what I've been planning for the last month or so and this year we have close to 200 children on our list!!! We have a packing party planned for today to sort, label and wrap shoe boxes and pack them so they can be shipped to BTL shortly. We are so thankful to our congregation for supporting us in this project and we are always amazed at people's generosity. I must say that the Sanctuary in Milton helped us out too as well as our sister congregation in Mississauga. I can't wait for these boxes to arrive in BTL! If you have a couple of hours to spare this afternoon, come and join us at the Ministry Center from 2PM-4PM. We'll have snacks and refreshments. That's all I got for now, I am already behind schedule but I had to stop here and post a quick update ;)

days with my father by Philip Toledano

I came across this website "Days with my father" a while back and was touched by the beautiful story Philip Toledano shared with the world. It really appealed to me because I love pictures with stories behind them. Today I received an e-mail notification from this website announcing that the story will be published in May of next year. How wonderful! If you haven't read this story, I highly recommend it. It's a little long but so worth it. I will get it for Dan once it comes out, it would be a great Father's Day present that he will love.

*picture from the website. Click here to read the full story*

we will miss you Grandpa

Grandpa Geza passed away on Thursday November 12th, 2009. He is Dan's step dad and my children's beloved Grandpa. He was an amazing companion to my mother-in-law for 20 something years and we will miss him dearly. This is how I want to remember him, always smiling. We will miss his teddy bear hugs and his Hungarian tales. We will miss his passionate politics conversations and his gulash. We will miss the way he said "hello" on the phone each time we called. You were quite the gentleman Mr. Lukacs and we will miss you dearly.