(belated) ♥MERRY XMAS!♥ (+ dd19)

hello, darlings!

♥♥♥

i hope you had an amazingly lovely christmas full of only the good kind of surprises... not to mention your share of fun, treats and presents! we've had a wonderful week, albeit one with quite a bit of driving time amassed; but when you're on the way to see the people you love, time passes pretty quickly, doesn't it?

♥♥♥

ok, so, you might be wondering, "hey lauren! what happened to december daily?!" and the answer is, i was on schedule with taking photos and thinking up what i'd write about each day, but around monday morning or so i realized i could either work and post like a mad person to stay on top of things, or let it slide in favor of enjoying the holiday and catch up afterwards. and do you know... for once in my life... i chose *SANITY*!!! go figure! this whole maturity thing rears its head at the weirdest times, lol! :) but the result is, not only did i enjoy christmas eve and christmas day a whollllllllle lot more, now that i'm getting back to making the pages, it feels even more fun, to remember what we did in the lead up to the holiday! bonus!!! 

(patterned paper: pink paislee; vintage-look ephemera pieces: pink paislee, echo park, october afternoon; alphas and "story" sticker: girls' paperie; tape: love my tapes and some from a package lovely linda b sent me! digi green stamps from an old 2peas kit called holiday shopping; labels: dymo... which have made an appearance on nearly every page along with my manual typewriter... there was no "plan" for that, but i LOVE how it looks and also the fact that i can fit in a lot more words than my big loopy handwriting would permit, lol!)

you'll have sussed that december 19th was the day my mom and i made our annual trip into manhattan to check out all the beautiful department store windows, see the tree at rockefeller center, visit the holiday markets, and just generally revel in the joys of "christmastime in the city". it's always a super-fun day, and this year, despite the day being rather cold, was no exception. i took plenty of photos, of course-- (and in fact i've only used a few of them here!) --so it was pretty obvious that one 5.5x8" page was not going to be sufficient. thus a special fold-out was clearly called for! i used the outside flap to hold a little collage and our itinerary, whilst the interior holds selected pics with little dymo label captions:

(patterned paper: echo park; sentiment sticker: october afternoon; deco tape: love my tapes, freckled fawn, k and co, martha stewart, my mind's eye, little b; labels: dymo; instagrammed photos printed on kodak premium glossy paper)

one of the things i'm totally LOVING about this project is that i've been trying to work pretty flat, and somehow, amazingly for me, it's turning out to be possible to still make things i really like! the other big insight for me has been finding out i don't need to include EVERY. SINGLE. THING. either via journaling or photos; it's enough to preserve a few favorite moments or images. this page has both... and thus i think my blogging work is done for the day! 

ciao, darlings! 

♥