Day 14

The distribution of gifts on Christmas Day definately depends where we are! When we are at home on Christmas morning then we take it in turns to rip off the paper, but when we go to my brothers house on Boxing Day it usually turns into a bit of a free for all! We do start out quite civilized with my neices and nephew giving out the presents, but once we realise that is taking far too long everybody pretty much just digs in!

Day 13

Oooh, I love it when the Christmas songs start to be played on the radio (just as long as it is not before the 1st December!) I have 3 favourites - Mariah Carey, The Pogues and Band Aid, but only the original!

Day 12

A few changes....

Day 11

Day 11 will be updated later with a nice picture of our tree that got put up later!

Day 10

Yes, I have the wrapping paper / gift bag situation all wrapped up (ha ha). Now I just need to buy the actual presents....

Day 9

For Day 9's entry I journalled about a tradition that is very close to our hearts - the Christmas Big Shop! We save any clubcard vouchers we get for the rest of the year to use on our Big Shop, and really go to town with the chocolates, biscuits, crisps and general goodies! The tradition of Big Shop is also combined with the tradition of Having Takeaway for Tea, as it takes us that long to do the Big Shop we generally can't be bothered cooking when we get home!

Day 8

A really simple page for my journal today - I took this picture at our local garden centre. We always visit at least once at this time of year as they have the most amazing displays, with different roomsets for different colour schemes and all sorts of clever stuff! I almost wish I could pay one of their merchandisers to come round and do my tree for me!

Day 7

I will definately be trying to do most of my shopping online this year. I went to the Trafford Centre a week or so ago to meet some work colleagues for a meal and almost couldn't believe how busy it was! The normal 20 minute journey took me at least 45 minutes and then I had to park what felt like miles away! So everybody - please take note, your Christmas list needs to be filled with things that have www. at the beginning!

Day 6

Ahh, the memories! On the whole I have not had any massive Christmas catastrophes - they have all been pretty good! The biggest problem for me, as I mentioned a few days ago has always been work at Christmas. I worked in pubs and then in shops for years, and both of those were extremely busy and stressful during the festive season! This year will be a whole new experience for me, I finish two weeks before Christmas and don't return till next July!

Day 5

I have a different countdown this year. I'm counting down to Christmas but I'm also counting down to 12/01/09 - my due date!

Day 4

I couldn't talk about a perfect Christmas without including a Starbucks Gingerbread Latte! This is a very lighthearted look at my ideal Christmas, these days I am just happy not to be working in retail anymore. Anything else is just icing on the (Christmas) cake!

Day 3

Greetings! I'm talking about cards, of course. As I have written on today's journal page, I am hoping to make some cards this year but so far I have managed the grand total of ....none! As usual I am sure I will end up buying some just so that there is an outside chance of people getting cards before the 25th this year.

I'm trying to keep my journal pages nice and simple this year, with a common theme running throughout (the bracket shaped patterned paper). I've also made all my date labels in advance, so I just need to pick one that goes with that days colours and stamp the date on it. I'm feeling very organised - wonder how long that will last?

Day 2

Snow Day!! Blimey, that took everybody by surprise! Well, it surprised me anyway, I wasn't expecting 6 inches of snow on the ground when I got up this morning. Managed to get some nice pictures as we ventured out for a little walk....

Day 1

It's that time of year again! I am joining in with Shimelles Journal Your Christmas prompts again this year and thought I would have a special blog just for that (what can I tell you, I had some Christmassy digi scrapping stuff I was dying to use, LOL!). I thought that if I didn't manage to actually scrap the days prompt, at least I might be able to blog it and I can catch up scrapping later...

So today is all about our manifesto, or promise to ourselves. Here's mine....

Starting today, December 1st, I will keep my Christmas journal. I promise to take 15 minutes every day to write something down, and record my memories of Christmas 2008.

I thought I would keep it simple!