How is your December to-do list looking? Here's what I've managed to cross of mine:
- Holiday baking? Accomplished last Saturday, mostly thanks to my sisters and nieces.
Super-secret Christmas gifts made with 2013 photos? Check, but only because my IT guy husband finally stopped tinkering with my PC. - Christmas cards? Printed...but not addressed yet.
- Sweet moments with children in front of the tree? Yes, with three out of four.
- One Christmas choir concert attended. (They sang one of my favorite carols, even: Angels we Have Heard on High.)
- One holiday sing-along still to go.
- Cute little gifts for my co-workers? Done, with help from Pinterest. (I made fresh potpourri.)
- Hot chocolate consumed in large quantities, a ridiculous amount of cookies baked, and my favorite Christmas music played in kitchen, car, and computer room.
I’ve even wrapped all of the presents—well, the ones I’ve bought.
But I’ve still got an overwhelming amount of shopping to do. (Teenagers are hard to shop for.)
And the neighborhood gifts to figure out.
The antique ornaments from my grandma's tree that I found in my mom's basement and want to display in a prominent (but safe, as just the sight of them evokes such a rush of Christmas nostalgia I can hardly stand it) way? Yeah...they are just sitting on the desk in my kitchen, waiting for a burst of inspiration.
I don’t know what to buy my husband (but not a solid-state hard drive as that was the source of the computer tinkering).
We haven’t gone to see Santa yet. Or driven around to look at holiday lights. Or made a snowman.
The house is pretty messy.
That super-cute pieced-fabric-star garland I started sewing just before Thanksgiving is still just vaguely star-shaped fabric.
And scrapbooking? Well. I have managed to fill out my super-simple Christmas Book of December Days. But otherwise, my supplies are gathering dust.
That’s the way it goes for me in December—caught between ultra-busy and sort-of-on-top-of-it. But sometimes, despite that frazzled feeling (or maybe because of it), I still need to scrapbook. I just need something that’s both inspiring and easy.
Enter the Christmas Question sheet!
Questionnaires are a fun (and fast) way to get some words and bits of story down on paper—mostly because your scrapbooking subject does most of the writing. But mostly I love questionnaires because they capture a realistic—and often fairly cute—snapshot of your child’s personality right now, from handwriting to the spelling errors to the surprising thought processes.
And a holiday-themed questionaire gets some ideas out of your kids’ heads that might otherwise be lost. I asked my eight-year-old to answer a few questions. Here’s the layout I made with his answers:
And I have to say: I love taking this approach to a quick layout. I mean, sure: I’m not sure why he thinks his dad wants a robot and I have no idea what a “Greec dress” might be, but the answers are authentically him. I love that he knows that switching the advent calendars is a help to me (I always forget), and how he spelled Storm Trooper, and that his favorite part of Christmas is seeing his grandma.
Those are all tidbits I can’t get any other way than by asking him.
So! Maybe in whatever December mayhem you find yourself in, you’ll have the time to ask your kids to answer a few Christmas-themed questions. (Download a PDF with the questions here: Download Christmas questionnaire a sorensen.) And see what you find out about your kids' Christmas thoughts.
Happy scrapping! Happy holidays!
