Journal MY Christmas

I am never sure whether I am going to try this again. I always think I won't bother and then Shimelle writes something too tempting and I join in.
I never manage to finish the Journal, and after a great deal of thought I realise that it is simply that I get so caught up in the Christmas-ness that I simply forget. I am going to try again this year. I am going to keep it small and simple. I will be starting tomorrow. I have not prepared anything so it will be completely new and surprising for me.

I had hoped to find a picture of a previous journal but no such luck. Hey Ho, and on we go.

A few Weeding pictures

The Proposal

 Just a few of the pages I did.

The Proposal is told from both points of view. You can see the surnames in one of the pictures so I will simply call them by those.
Andrews has no family. Apparently he told Cooke that if he could choose parents then he would choose Mr M and me - isn't that lovely? We would be his parents of choice. So When Cooke decided to propose to Andrews he seized the opportunity, on a visit to us, to formally ask permission to propose. We were to keep this a secret - Andrews was in the loo when we were asked - so we did.

The Preparation

On New Year's Eve 2010 the proposal happened and we received a phone call just after midnight from a very emotional Andrews, telling us that he had received a proposal and had accepted.

The Ceremony was arranged for the following November and when we arrived at the venue I discovered that I was to be the one to give Andrews away. I was also asked if I would put together the guest book and "put some pictures into an album because you do that scrapbooking stuff"

The sign from the door

The Ceremony

Fire and Light

this is the sign that the hotel put onto the door to show the guests the way to the correct room. When we left the party that evening it was still there so I took it for the album. I also managed to get the little metallic confetti stuff, you know it! The hearts and just-married, and things. and some of the flowers from the tables and the manuscript of the Best Man's speech. I also made a pocket page for one of the table runners that Cooke made so they will have somewhere safe to keep it.

The Party

The ceremony was beautiful, and seeing the pair of them standing and shaking with nerves together set the tears trickling down my face.

Then there was the reception and the cakes. Two cakes one a fruitcake with icing and the other was six or seven layers of cheeses, many different varieties of cheese. After this everyone changed into their Masked Ball costume (Mr M and I were not staying for the party, we were coming home as we don't do parties, I get panic attacks). We watched as more people arrived and marvelled at the masks and costumes. We met up with lots of old friends and managed lots and lots of hugs from some extra special people.

The party moved outside where there was a fire eater and chinese lanterns. We left then for the two hour drive home.

All in all it was a wonderful day.

I wanted the pictures to tell the story so I did not embellish the pages very much. Because the album has 70 pages I used only the right-hand pages. This leaves a lot of room for Andrews to write the story onto the left-hand pages, if he wants to. There are also about pages at the back of the album that are empty - the darned thing was heavy enough before I put the pages in. These empty pages will also serve as pages for journalling.

So there it is The Weeding Album.

Weeding Guestbook 2

A year ago I said that we had been to a weeding (the hotel spelled it wrong on the notice for the guests) in this post I put together a lot of pages and matted and layered the entries for the Guest Book using black cardstock as the base for each page.
I knew that the Best Woman was going to give the happy couple an album for the photographs and was kind of aware that something was going to come to me to be "finished".
WELL. two weeks ago the Best Woman contacted me and said that she had finally managed to surface through all the bad stuff that had happened in her life and she had purchased the album and had the Calfskin cover embossed with the names and date. When the embossing was completed the thing would be sent to me so that "You can do your magic with the pictures and things". She sent me a link to the album so I had a look. A shortness of breath happened when I saw the price of the album AND how many pages there are in the thing. The pages, all 70 of them (that's 140 sides) are heavy quality acid and lignin free and the most beautiful cream cardstock. the pages are 13" x 13and a quarter. I t weighs a ton! without any pictures and I was quite worried that with just a simple matt for each picture the covers would be at right-angles to each other. I mean, I dreamt one night that I was trying to get the thing onto a bookshelf! That's how worried I was.
Anyway, I asked the person who did the photographs if she could send some to me and then I learnt about Dropbox. She sent me 267 pictures. I selected a lot and tentatively began to compose pages. Making the album a chronological story of the day. I will photograph the pages, I promise, and when the album has been given to the even-happier-than-last-year couple I will share some of them with you.
It was very strange at first because I was so scared of making a mistake that I would open the album, stare at a blank and very expensive page then close it again. Today it was like a switch was turned in my head because I suddenly knew exactly what to put on each page and how to transfer the Guestbook pages that are already made to the album and to integrate the rest of the stuff into an overall theme. I am on a roll!