Christmas (Scrapbook Project) Wrap-up

Christmas Day has come and gone and all indications lead me to believe it was a merry one at our home.  Merry for me was that I was able to complete my scrapbooking project (In Over My Head) without staying up all night Christmas Eve.  In fact, I was able to get it done in time to finish a few other things, including wrapping presents, before we took off to visit family a few days prior to the big day.  This probably was the worst kept Christmas secret ever in the history of our family.  In fact I think only the oldest was unaware of what he would find come Christmas morning and that is only because he was sequestered at college.

Even though the children knew what was going on, they all exercised restraint and did not peek.  That is everyone but Wil.  He peeked more than once and actually sat in the office with me watching Psych while I scrapbooked.  The hoped for reaction on Christmas morning was achieved as after opening the box containing their scrapbook, each child paused to look through it before moving on to other gifts.  Then they all looked through them again together and commented on the various pictures and their memories of those times.

It was most gratifying, when Jon said I should have ended each book with "To Be Continued..." because they hoped this wasn't the last time I would do this for them.  After I caught my breath at the statement, I thought that at least next time won't be so overwhelming.

(Product Endorsement Section: I used Creative Memories 8X8 Albums with Side-Loading Sleeves. Each book ended up being approximately 60 double-sided pages.  I also ended up with a small Power Sort Box for each child that has one compartment of pictures that did not make it into the album.  I have to say that doing a project like this was made a lot easier with the coordinating paper and embellishments from Creative Memories.  My normal scrapbooking style is usually a mix-and-match approach, but I liked how fast these books were able to come together and how coordinated/similar the books looked at the end by using the same products.  I will still keep my usual style for my other projects, but still use these products for future chapters for this.)