Manifesto - Journal MY Christmas

This year my manifesto is simple.

I am going to enjoy this festive season and stop worrying.

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!

Cartwheel Training

We have a favourite picnic place that we often go to. We don't take sandwiches, oh no that's not the sort of picnic we like. We go out to a place called Black Rock, which is on the Welsh side of the Severn Estuary not far from the Second Severn Crossing.
The Lave Net Fishermen work that part of the estuary and there are only 15 people licensed to fish in this way. One more traditional craft that is dying before our eyes.. That's not why we go there either. What we do is this.

We decide that we cannot be bothered to cook so we text my daughter and see if she wants to come to Black Rock, and stop at Kibby's in Bulwark for fish and chips. They make the best fish and chips in the area and most times my daughter will say yes so we all pile into the car and drive twenty miles to buy fish and chips and then go down to Black Rock to sit at the picnic table and eat them. We are not alone in doing this, although I don't think most people travel twenty mile just to eat fish and chips staring at the tide.
The picnic area is grassy and great for learning to cartwheel when you are seven - even when you have never done it before. Mummy tried and decided that she is the wrong shape now. Grandma? well, I just grinned and then gave clear instruction while trying not to laugh or fall over when taking the pictures.

I used the sketch based on a design by Tiff Firth from the Scrap365 challenge to do this page and even if I say so myself I think it is quite nice

What do I need to make a page?

Mr Blue wearing his special cap

Sian asked this question over at From High in the Sky and I tried to answer in a comment but failed so I decided to think about it and write my thoughts here.
I have been scrapbooking for so long I can't remember not doing it. When I had the riding school, way back in 1961 when I was 15, I took photographs of all the ponies and put them in an album with some notes about names and riders and what the event was and the date. Of course it wasn't called scrapbooking then. It was just a photograph album. It had black pages and I had a white pencil to write what we call journalling.

the journalling reads "Some mornings it's just not worth
 chewing through the leather straps!"

It was a very cheap album, from Woolworths I think and it received a lot of attention over the years so that eventually the covers fell to bits and then the pages started to detach from one another so I had to take all the pictures out and then make a new album. I haven't photographed the pages because it seems to have lost a little of its character in the transfer.
I like my pages simple. I am not a great one for embellishments and usually just matt and layer the pictures unless a sketch catches my attention. Then I will try to follow it, although my slavish adherence to the sketch sometimes makes the page seem flat and uninteresting.
The first page here was created because of the title. Mr Blue said exactly that so I took the picture and made the page because of it.
The next page was the Journalling. I saw that somewhere and remembered that I had the perfect picture of Mr M, taken when he had driven up to Northumberland and then he had a little nap. When he woke up he was still tired and needed a cup of tea. I asked how he felt and he pulled that face so I snapped it. The journalling fitted exactly and nothing else was needed.
The third one happened when I was downloading the pictures from the camera and these two were one after the other. We have a thing about "team" photographs. Whenever the family is asked to "Stand still and let me take your picture" they always say loudly "Team Photograph!" and fold their arms across their chests like footballers. It was Mr M who started it and it always makes everyone laugh so then I can get good pictures of them individually. This time we were driving home from somewhere and saw my son and his family walking along the road near where they live. We stopped to talk and I took the first picture, then I walked around the car to try and get my daughter-in-law in the picture and that's when my son said "Team Photograph" and explained what they had to do.
Reading back over this it seems that what I need for inspiration is a title; that the words come first and I can find a picture to fit. That would explain why sometimes I put together a page for a day out and I don't have a title for it.
I seem to prefer the 12 x 12 format for my pages. I tend to go for plain backgrounds for the most part, I like words on my pages most of the time. I sometimes have a lot of journalling, especially for holiday pages, but other times the title is enough. The words usually spring to my mind when I see the picture although sometimes I know I have a picture when I hear a phrase.
But what do I need to make a page? OK, paper, pen, glue, picture and inspiration -that's it!

My Prize is here!!!

I am so excited! The postman knocked the door this morning and handed me a parcel from Amazon. My mind went into overdrive because I hadn't ordered anything for ages! Mr M watched as I dropped the mail onto the table and rushed to the kettle - it was just beginning to boil - and made him a cup of tea. He could tell by my face that I didn't know what was in the package.
I gave him his mug of tea and made myself a milky coffee - usually on a Tuesday we seem to have a fridge full of milk where there is some left over from the weekend and the Milkman delivered another two days worth in the early hours of the morning.
I sat down and turned the package over in my hands. "Open it," said Mr M, "You know what it is."
"Well, " I replied, "no I don't, I haven't ordered anything, so it must be a mistake." He gave me one of those looks, you know, the one where a small part of his brain thinks you are joking while the big part of his brain is amazed that you can forget such an important thing
"What about your Scavenger Hunt prize?" He asked.
A stunned silence as I stare at him and then at the package............. Of course!
and this is what I received

I started reading it straight away but then realised that I have Things To Do, so I shut it carefully, took a photograph of it and now I am telling you about it. Mr M is off to work at 1pm (I hate afternoon shifts) so I can take the time to read and play for a while until I collect Miss Em from school - and then I will have a willing model. It seems to be written in real language, the sort that ordinary people use and not high-falutin' photographic techie stuff so it might even sink in.
Many, many thanks to Rinda for sending this wonderful gift. I am so thrilled by it and I will read it and play I promise.