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Write: 31 Childhood Christmas Journaling Prompts

Welcome to the week before the week of Christmas! This is Amy Sorensen, and I hope your holiday plans are going smoothly. (Me…I still have 75% of my shopping left to do. It’s been way too warm here in Utah, unnaturally warm, and the weather is totally raining on my Christmas spirit. Actually, I’d welcome even some rain right about now!)

When I was a little kid, one of our holiday traditions was to hop into the car one night close to Christmas, all six of us squished in together. Then we’d drive around for as long as we could, looking at the lights on people’s houses. Sometimes we’d bring treats to snack on, or stop for a soda to drink in the car, and a few times we’d go to a restaurant somewhere along the way. But the focus was just on being together and admiring beauty.

I’d forgotten all about that tradition until I read the journaling on Jennifer Larson’s layout in this month’s gallery , and then the memories came tumbling back: the way the vinyl seats of our old Plymouth felt against my legs, the shivering before the car got warm and the luscious heat after. All those big, beautiful houses lit up to celebrate Christmas. My sisters and I alternatively arguing and laughing, my dad telling us stories.

How’d I forget that?

So I’ve been thinking this month about my childhood Christmases. The strongest memories and the vaguest. (I have a very fuzzy memory of sitting in an old, unfamiliar house next to an old-fashioned Christmas tree, eating those walnut cookies covered with powdered sugar, but no one in my family can explain it for me.)  Writing down some details, asking my mom and sisters about others, even sifting through old photos at my mom’s. Even making a layout about myself!

 

(Forgive my crooked photo of this layout. My regular camera is being repaired and I just cannot seem to get a straight-on picture with my cell phone! I tried 18 times...)

All of this remembering has given this December a unique feeling. It’s put me back in touch with how it felt to be a kid at Christmas (wasn’t that the best time to be a kid?), as well as given me some renewed holiday energy for making my kids’ Christmas more magical this year. I think that sometimes, in the rush and excitement of December-daily style albums (of documenting right now) we forget that our memories of Christmas are also important. So here’s a little tiny December challenge: write down something about your childhood Decembers. Maybe make a layout, or post it on your blog. Don’t make it complicated—just write down a story or two!

To get you started, here are 31 Christmas journaling prompts. I’m including a PDF at the end for you to download and keep.

1. The Christmas tree. Just one, or multiples? When did you decorate the tree? Real or fake? What color of lights?
2. Ornaments. Cute? Elegant? Homemade? Fancy? What were your favorites? What stories can you tell about the ornaments? Where are they now?
3. Decorations. Aside from the tree, how was your house decorated? Thematic or eclectic? What decorations did you love?
4. Gift-opening traditions. When did you open gifts? What kinds of things did Santa bring and what did your family do? Did you open gifts one at a time or was it a free-for-all?
5. Holiday meals. What sorts of food did you have at Christmas time? How did meals change during the holidays?
6. Christmas breakfast. A tradition every year, or random dishes? Did you eat before or after opening gifts?
7. Baked goods. What sort of baking did you do in your home, specifically for the holidays? Do you still make these treats?
8. Siblings. Did you exchange gifts with your brothers and sisters? What experiences did you have with them?
9. Extended family. Did your grandparents show up on Christmas morning or did you go to their house? What about aunts, uncles, cousins—how did you interact with them during the holidays?
10. Santa Claus. How did the man in red function at your house? Did all the gifts come from him, or just a few? Did he wrap or not wrap?
11. The stockings. What did they look like? Where did you hang them? When did you open them? What gifts were you likely to find every single year in your stocking?
12. Your worst Christmas ever. Which Christmas had some memorably bad or difficult parts? How did that change you or your relationship to the holidays?
13. Christmas Eve. Did you leave cookies for Santa? On what kind of plate? If not, did you leave something else? What other Christmas-Eve traditions did your family have?
14. Parties. What kind of holiday fetes did you attend? Do you have any stories of things that happened there?
15. Going to visit Santa. Where did you see him? Did you see the same Santa every time? What do you remember asking him for?
16. A unique experience. Do you have something unique that happened to you during the holidays? Something that was unlike anything else and only happened once?
17. Favorite gift. What was the best gift you ever got?
18. Memorable gift. Maybe you absolutely hated it, but you never forgot it: the most memorable gift you ever received?
19. Life-changing gift. Big changes can sometimes be caused by small gifts. What gift altered your life, and how?
20. Wrapping traditions. How were your presents wrapped, and who wrapped them? Was there anything unique about how your family wrapped gifts?
21. Your adolescent Christmases. How did things change after you were a teenager?
22. Finding out about Santa. When and how did you find out about Santa Claus? How did this change you?
23. Christmas music. Did you listen to Christmas music as a kid? How and where? What were some of your favorite Christmas songs?
24. Church + Christmas. How did your family combine Christmas with religious observations?
25. Christmas break traditions. What kinds of things did you do during the weeks between Christmas and school starting again?
26. Gifts that repeated. Which gifts were always under the Christmas tree? Did you like this repetition or did it start to be obvious after a while?
27. Christmas entertainment. What movies, books, or TV specials were a part of your holidays? Did you go to A Christmas Carol or The Nutcracker or Handel’s Messiah?
28. The holidays at school. What kinds of holiday crafts, programs, or plays were you involved in at school?
29. December weather. Was it usually snowy during December? Did it ever snow on Christmas day? Was there a time when the weather influenced your plans or traditions?
30. An old photo. Find a picture from one of your childhood Christmases and study it. What details does it include? What memories does it spark? Write down a list of memories, or pick one to focus an entire paragraph on.
31. Snippet of memory. What has writing about your childhood Christmases helped you remember about Christmas outside of these questions?

Here is the PDF:  Download 31 Childhood Christmas Journaling Prompts

Sunday Photo + Words

Printable Peace

Today's printable present is the gift of peace! What a lovely thing for this holiday season. Mmm. Peace.

If you would like, you may download it here. Thank you for stopping by during this busy holiday season!

Scrapbook. Scrapbooking traditions

 

Traditions are really visable this time of the year. I don´t think that my family has more traditions surrounding any other event during the year than during Christmas time. One of my favorites is acctually a rather new one. Five years ago we started getting together with a friend baking gingerbread. We missed 2012, but other than that I have scrapbooked the event ever year. 

 

This, above, is the first year. I love that my daughter aged 10 is there baking with the 2 year old of my friend! I remember I wanted to make a two page layout since I really wanted to capture all those shapes. My friend has like 200 different cookie cutters! It is so much fun!

 

This is our second year. One of my favorite things about this project (that of recording the same tradition every year) is to see how the girls grew in just a year. In the journaling you can read that the little girl has a little sister now and that we are hoping she will be baking alongside us the next year. 

 

 

 

As I mentioned above, we didn´t get to have a baking date the yer after the third year, but last year the little sister was indeed with us baking! My then 14 year old wasn´t :)  Last year I used my December mini to hold this story of tradition. We are having our annual baking date tomorrow and I can´t wait to add another year of this wonderful traditions to my album!

 Lisa

Making Christmas Unique

Hi, Sue Althouse here today, with some ideas for scrapping your Christmas. Even though Christmas is an annual holiday, I can always find something that sets each year apart from all the others. Like the year a drunk man in a Santa suit came in off the street and disrupted Christmas Eve service at my mother in-law’s church. (true story) Or the year Dad got roller blades. (we had 911 on speed dial)  You get the idea. Now, what will set your Christmas apart from all the others this year? Here are a few more examples.

 

One year, I had a simple plan to make a few Christmas cards for a few special people. Several weeks later, I had over 60 cards ready to mail! I don’t know where I lost control. Based on the number of people who took the time to tell me how much they loved their handmade card, it was worth it. But I’ve never attempted such a thing again.

 

Then there was the year I decided to go all out with my cookie-baking and made five different kinds of cookies using brand new recipes. My husband gladly helped me on this one or I never would have made it. The results were very successful, but I don’t plan on doing that again anytime soon.

 

Two years ago, there were heavy packages for me and my siblings from Dad, who usually leaves the gift giving to Mom. So that got our attention right away. We eagerly opened them to find on the inside...a brick. But we knew they were from our 1884 courthouse that had (sadly) been recently demolished. How many people would enjoy receiving a brick as much as we did? Now that’s some creative gift giving!

 

So I wonder what will define my Christmas this year. We have a new house to decorate and an 8-month old granddaughter to spoil. Both perfect candidates for a little excess, don’t you think? 

 

Scrapbook. Record everyday life in December

 

 

Welcome to reality! I want to talk a little about recording life in December, but without it surrounding the Holidays. We all know that life happens very much in December like it does any other month of the year, but a lot of us memory keepers tend to capture the Holiday aspect of the month. Instead here are a few ways I have recorded our everyday life in December.

 

As our weather typically changes during December, I have done a few weather related layouts in the past. This one above is a new page I did for this post. The journaling talks about how beautiful the sunrise can be in the wintertime, when snow is on the ground and it gets really cold. 

 

This is an older page from when we had the dogs too. I remember how much they loved to be outside in the snow! I am so happy I got this photo of the cats and Dixon watching the outside world, him longing to go out and the cats happy to be inside.

 

In Sweden the kids get grades at winter break and summer break. This is a page about my daughter´s first grades in Junior high. Even though the photos was taken infront of the tree, it is not Christmas related at all. If anything, the tree shows that it was a winter break grade not a summer one. 

 

So, am I right? Do we scrapbookers tend to focus more on Holiday related stuff in December?

Lisa

Click: Repairing photos

Hello! It's Jennifer Larson. I am sharing an almost photographic tragedy last summer and how I solved it using PSE.

I was camping at Itasca State Park. For most of our trip, I carried my point-and-shoot in my pocket. When I took it out of my pocket to get a shot with my friend, I must have accidentally switched the camera setting, disturbingly to shoot a SNOW scene. Here's what came out:

See how white it is? AGGHH! It's a good photo, though, and one that supports my story, so I set about repairing it. I tried lots of manual adjustments, but none worked well for me, probably due to my lack of expertise. Then, two adjustments did it. First, auto adjust:

For as much as we poo-poo auto adjust it tends to do a nice job, like in this case: It made everything a bit darker. Woot! Still, the outer edges were blown out. Then I got an idea: add a vignette:

Perfect! Now it looks like I made it artsy on purpose instead of accidentally adjusting the camera setting in my pocket while I was hiking. Here's my final page:

Thank for checking out my page! Hopefully, I gave you ideas for fixing photos you love that are not perfect but you still want to use on a page.

*Confession: I made this page last summer. When I tried to replicate my adjustments, of course I couldn't do it exactly the same as last summer. The vignette I used was either Pioneer Woman or CoffeShop Blog. I'm not sure how much I fiddled with it, but I obviously had more time to do it in the summer to get it perfect than I did right now. GAh. Still, photo reparied! Sally forth and fix those photos.

Write. December bucketlist

 

 

 

We write summer bucketlists all the time, but have you ever done one for December? Well, lists are one of my go-to techniques for journaling, so it was a no-brainer for me to list things I hope that we get to do this month.

 

I created my journalingcard on my iPhone 5s using the Rhonna app. But it would also be fun to create one using my scraps! 

Ok, so what is on your December bucketlist?

Lisa

Sunday Photo + Words

Printable Joy

The holiday spirit has descended upon us! For the next few Saturdays, we are suspending our Saturday Sketchbooks so that we may bring you the gift of freebies. This week may we present the Gift of Joy!

 

You may download it here. Please enjoy! Happy holidays...