It's Froggy Friday at The Lilypad and it's also the third Friday of the month which means it's Mixed Media Monthly (M3) release day too. I had fun playing with the M3 releases to try to incorporate them into my December album. It's soooo gorgeous and I can't wait to show you a couple more days in my album!

• DAY SIXTEEN: I used Heidi Swapp Color Shine and a paint brush to color the Color Magic paper behind the cut file I had previously made. I love the contrast. I'm still using the Paislee Press templates, but decided to add some fun papers and doodles from the M3 add-ons. I totally love how it turned out. It matches perfectly with the wrapping paper from my photo.

Confession time: I created most of these scrapbook pages yesterday, and took the photos at last night. I didn't have my lighting set up quite right so you can totally tell. I'm in robot mode, trying to finish up Christmas presents and still try to spend quality time with the kids while we're taking some time off from homeschooling to focus on Advent.

That means, this is going to be a fly-by post just sharing the photos and the perfectionist in me is totally going to "let it go" with the photos. I do however plan to have a video walk through of my album once it's totally finished. 

• DAY NINE: I totally missed taking photos, so I grabbed a tag from a coat I bought for one of the kids that day. It was a busy evening of shopping with the family. We had to buy a holiday dress for Moriah and Isaac's winter coat was too small. We also did our normal Tuesday night Costco and Trader Joe's trip.

I'm still keeping up to date in my December Daily® Memories Album, even with all the crazy busy schedules and parties. I am determined to stay on track and honestly the blog is keeping me accountable too. I actually whipped up all four days yesterday during the kids' quiet time. *fist pump*

I really think the key is to just pick a template or two and one photo that represents the day and go with it. I don't need to fill the day with several photos, I just need to tell the story of the day and make it quick and easy so that I can have fun with the kiddos.

• DAY FOUR: We put together the kids' tree in the family room. I just resized the image to 6"x8" and added an element and font (number) and clipped a paper to them. Then I adhered it to the back of the previous page and punched out my holes. The "Deck The Halls" page was previously created.

I stayed up late last night and watched Peter Pan Live with the kids. I also spent all day decorating for the Frozen themed birthday party. That means, this post is going to be super fast.

I'm totally in LOVE with the colors of the new BYOC (Build Your Own Collab) at The Lilypad. I didn't have much time to create with all the yummy goodies I wanted to, but did get to play with a little bit and I'm proud of myself for keeping up with my December album, and my Advent album. Though, I suppose 4 days isn't a huge feat, but it is for me.

Here's Day Two completed. I seem to be doing a two page spread for every day. This might be a pretty full album by the end.

Every day I'm spending a little bit of time going through the photos from the day before and picking one or two photos to use in my December Album. The rest of the photos will go in my regular Project Life album.

The templates I'm using have a plain white background, so I needed an easy way to figure out where to trim without having to do any math. So, I've put together a quick tutorial in addition to sharing my pages.

I'm so excited to share with you not just some more December Memories album preparations, but an exciting giveaway I have for you, sponsored by Silhouette America. I wanted to share with you the Silhouette cut files I will be using in this album, and thought the giveaway was the perfect addition to this post. So, be sure to continue to the end of the post to enter.

It's my favorite time of year at The Lilypad! There are so many great releases throughout the year, but my fave is definitely the Document Your December releases. The best part is that it's the same week as Mixed Media Monthly so there's all sorts of great mixed media releases mixed in. I'm really loving the color palette this year too.

Here are my pages using some of the goodies. I grabbed all of Paislee Press' releases, they're just so YUMMY and had a ton of fun using the cut files. I can't wait to cut out some more with the Silhouette this weekend.

This will be my fifth year doing a December memories album (based of Ali Edwards' December Daily and Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas) and I can't tell you how much I love these albums. My kids look at them almost on a weekly basis. It's so fun to look back and see how we've changed not just in years but in our traditions and how we celebrate and prepare for Christmas.

Today, I wanted to share with you how I'm putting together the album. I like the 6"x8" album size but this year I decided to go back to a traditional mini album format and stick just a few pocket pages in the mix.

I don't know about you, but now that the holiday season is coming up, I want everything to be gold or a warm metallic. I seriously can't stop myself from adding gold to everything or preparing journal cards for this year's December Daily.

This was such a great day... We went to worship and Asher was with us because he still had a runny nose, and he did soooooo well... I was pleasantly surprised!!! That evening we decided to celebrate Moriah's birthday and took her to 2 Toots for dinner... because we're a part of their birthday club, she got a free meal and cupcake... the kids totally LOVE this place... and yes, I'm totally immature and giggling at my title... and yes, we totally giggle at the name of the place too LOL!!!

I used the bulletin cover for one side of the page... and the two cards for the left side are Silhouette print and cut files... and of course since it was Moriah's birthday celebration I couldn't resist using some of the bling I got from the Freckled Fawn grab bags and some other bling I had on hand for the center of the flowers :)

I'm sooo totally in love with these photos, I just couldn't messy them up, so I kept it pretty clean... I know, shocker, LOL!!! I did add some doodles and some digital stamps to it though, just no paint or mist :)


Merry Mess by Michelle Godin
Simple Stories SN@P page protector, Big Bite hole punch, Neenah Bright White cardstock, Canon Pixma, Recollections wood veneer, Ranger glossy accents, Becky Higgins Project Life journaling pens, Fiskars page trimmer, sewing machine, gold thread, American Crafts Thickers, Target wood veneer snowflake tag


DISCLAIMER: As a creative team member for the aforementioned designers, I have received their products for free in return for creating and posting projects (digital layouts, hybrids projects, etc). Some but not all of the layouts you see here were done as requirements for these CTs, please be advised that the product used was indeed received for free if I am on the designer's creative team. Any additional advertising that I may do for them or for the stores with which they are affiliated is purely out of my dedication to these designers and the wish to see their business succeed. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Have a great time using up paper goodies... still have tons left though LOL... it's going to be fun, going through my album after it's complete and adding more paper goodies to it to use up everything...