Christmas traditions

As a grandmother, there is one thing I'm excited about this Christmas. In five days, I'm going to meet my grandson, James for the first time. He will be three months old on Monday. I also will be seeing Abigail for the third time. Ironically, Don's first wife, Lynn, is also seeing one of her grandchildren (the same two kids) for the third time, as we will be in Colorado together. In her case, however, that would be James. She was there when James was born and the family visited her for Thanksgiving.

That being said, I am not totally into the Christmas spirit yet. For a number of reasons. However, I am keeping focused on Jesus, the real reason for the season. And I'm enjoying two of our Christmas traditions, which are listening to carols on the stereo and making Christmas cards. Music is Don's passion year round, paper crafts of many kinds are mine. We enjoy incorporating these passions into one of the most important holidays of the year. 

My Christmas cards, posted second, all look pretty much like the second of the two images I'm sharing today. It's so subtle I don't even know if Don is noticing it as he signs the cards, but the cards do reflect our love of music, as the fronts are embossed with music notes and clefts. (Thanks to a Christmas gift a few years ago from Holly, a very sweet stepdaughter.)  If I didn't snail mail you one of these cards, consider this online version my wish for you. 

And if you are one of the people viewing this blog because you're interested in my art journal pages, I hope you enjoy how my Christmas card inspired an art journal page, the top image. The journaling mentions our two favorite traditions, but also scratches the surface of why I'm not feeling highly Christmas spirited this year. You can't read it, because the photo cut too much off for it to make sense. 

But in both this entry, and this one, you can see how I incorporate journaling into "art." Since journaling has always kind of been my "signature" on scrapbook pages, I can see pages like these being my style in art journaling too. Not my signature, because most of my art journal pages don't have this much. But I am very happy with the ones that do.