Gleason Christmas 2014 at Sarah's home

     My niece Sarah hosted the Gleason Christmas this year, in the old farm house home of herself, husband Paul, and his son Ryan.  Brandon is now living down state with his dad, but always comes to his mom's home for Christmas.  This year, her oldest son Alex moved back down to North Carolina, and now he is currently planning to move in with his girlfriend Amie.  Sarah was blessed with them driving here for several days over Christmas, returning to North Carolina after celebrating Christmas with the Gleasons.

This is the NON spicy meat...

This is the majority of her Christmas village, with a few pieces in the living room, and the rest in the school library.

    Wesley has been exchanging gifts with Brandon for the past few years, as they are the only non-adult children/grandchildren who regularly attend this gathering.  We followed Sarah's exchange gift guidelines of gifts being purchased from second-hand stores, yard sales, etc.

(Nearly) vintage STAR WARS puzzles from
Aunt Deb; these were Justin & Jordan's when they were little!

My FATHER'S hatchet...

     For the 2nd time this Christmas season, I broke down in tears in response to seeing Wesley's gift.  He had asked for a hatchet, after reading the book of that name at school.  A young boy became lost, with only a hatchet to help him to survive.  When Wesley opened his gift from Brandon, I realized that it may have been one of my father's, and when they said yes, I was already in tears.  It is very rusty, and needed to have the handle reinforced, but that doesn't matter....it belonged to my late father.  The fact that it is rusty only reinforces that fact, as he had several tools which were rusty, damaged, repaired and repaired again.   The attitude of those who grew up during or after the great depression:  that idea of repairing rather than replacing an item..... using, re-using, and using them up. 

Revisiting a favorite project...

Baby Girl/Gleason Girls albums.....

   I was SO excited when I heard that not only one, but TWO baby girls were going to join our family back in 2012!  I have a son and the boys outnumber girls 2 to 1 in our family.  I created multiple copies (so far NINE!) of the baby girl albums, customizing each one to the colors that the parents used in their nurseries, and my favorite colors in my own copy.  They are over a year old now and I am finishing albums to send to each family.  My copy is much larger, including both new girls as well as myself, and an additional version contains Gleason girls from several generations.
  I used a LOT of 3 Birds scrapbooking and paper crafting products, with some generic craft supplies, such as feather and lace added, most of which were purchased at Wal-Mart.
   Below you will find some of my favorite pages, both with and without photos.  



I began 'getting inky" this past year.  The pages in these albums (I'm giving out several versions to the mothers, etc) are personalized to match or at least coordinate with the colors of the girls' nurseries.  Both nieces' rooms contained pink and green, but one had an animal theme, hence some browns, and the other had a Pooh theme, with some yellows.

This photo shows the vellum page that matches the right side, folded over to our left.  That's why the doily page below it looks blurry.  

Photo credit: Jennifer Gould

 

 Some of the pages are much more simple, at least for the time being.  as I add more photos I'm sure I will not be able to stop myself from adding more layers and bling! lol  I also added several products for journaling, decorative items, etc...

I'm off to continue updating other drafts... SCRAP ON!