Confessions and a recipe

I must confess that I am a few days behind on my December Daily journaling.  I plan on catching up today.  I am so excited for my pictures to arrive.  Then I will really be able to show something off.  Ali's December Daily is just so amazing. 
I made this soup the other night.  Wow it was good.  I got a Cooking Light book from the library because I was getting bored with my cook books.  I like Cooking Light recipes.  So here it is:

{CHUNKY POTATO-AND-SWISS CHOWDER}

Cooking spray
2 cups thinly sliced leek (about 2 large)
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 cups cubed peeled Yukon gold potato (about 1 ½ pounds)
1 cup cubed carrot (about ½ pound)
1 cup cubed yellow squash
2 (15.75-ounce) cans fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
2 bay leaves
1 cup hot cooked wild rice
1 cup half-and-half
½ cup (2 ounces) shredded Swiss cheese
½ tsp salt
½ tsp black pepper
Freshly chopped parsley (optional)

Heat a large Dutch oven coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Add leek and garlic, sauté 3 minutes or until tender. Stir in potato and next 4 ingredients; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes or until tender. Discard bay leaves. Place half of potato mixture in a blender, and process until smooth. Return pureed potato mixture to pan; stir in rice and remaining ingredients except parsley. Cook over medium heat until cheese melts. Sprinkle with parsley, if desired. Yield: 5 servings (serving size: 1 ½ cups)
CALORIES 302; FAT 9.5g; PROTEIN 12.4g; CARB 43g; FIBER 4.2g; CHOL 28mg; IRON 2.3mg; SODIUM 693mg; CALC 209mg
From: Cooking Light

I also must confess that I misread the recipe when I was making my grocery list so I forgot to get squash.  I had some extra potatoes so I just added them instead.  It turned out good.

December 8

I finally stamped my journal cards.  They looked a bit plain so I wanted to jazz them up a bit.  So far I only have up to December 5 printed out. 

I am going to use these blank journal cards to write something about each picture.   I realized as I was journaling about the day that I didn't have specific journaling about the pictures I had taken. I may use number stamps to identify the pictures or some of the arrows that came with my Project Life kit. 

I really like the way this journal card turned out.  I may keep these same stamps throughout or I may switch it up a bit. 
Now to get back to my daughter's birthday party.  I will post some pictures of my decorations when I am all done. 

December 6 & 7

This is a busy week for me.  I am throwing a Robot themed Birthday party for my daughter's 4th.  I am trying not to leave everything to the last minute so I am doing as much prep before hand as possible.  I ordered some photos from Winkflash yesterday so I am super excited to get them and get caught up on the DD.  I fancied up my journal cards tonight and will take some pictures to post tomorrow when I have more light.  I love this project. 

December 4&5

I am feeling such a strong urge to go get some photo's developed so I can do a bit of my album.  I am not sure how long I can hold off.  I usually wait till they have a sale or until I have a ton of photos.  I have been keeping up with my journaling and I upload my photos every day.  I had to tweak my word document a bit.  The 3x4 spaces were a bit too big so I cut them down to 2.9x3.9.  This works much better.  I also printed out a graph paper design on both sides of my cardstock.  I have decided to include a bit of my own writing to tell the story of the pictures.  My journaling does not always reflect what is going on in each photo.

 I found some graph paper in word and printed it out on both sides of some white cardstock

I then printed out the other word document I created on top of the graph paper.  I am typing up my journaling in each box.  I took a bit of playing to get it how I liked it.  I then just cut out my little cards.

Here is what the cards will look like when I am done.  I corner rounded them because I love that look.  This particular card is too large so I had to fix it.  I left a bit of space at the top and bottom on my fixed cards so the corner rounding didn't cut my letters off.  I will sew my 4x6 photo sleeve in half so I can slide in my journaling cards and the other decorative 3x4 cards.  On the journaling cards that I have fixed the small bit of space that is left at the top and bottom may get a stamp or some kind of embellishment.  I will work on this tonight and update you tomorrow, just in case you are patiently waiting.

December Daily-Dec 2 & 3

I continue to keep up with the journaling.  I am also taking pictures of things that I don't usually take pictures of.  I am also trying to remember not to focus too much on the getting it all down and focus on the living it.  It is such a magical time for my daughter right now. 

December Daily-Day One

I do have some photos to upload but Abi has the camera right now.  She loves taking pictures.  I sure am glad we got her her own camera for her birthday.  I even have a file for just her photos.  Some of them are so cute.  I will one day print them out and scrap them.  One day.  Just like all the other things I am going to do one day. 
So for December 1st I have done my journaling.  I formatted a word document with 6-3x4 squares.  I journaled about yesterday and started today.  So far I have filled up 5 squares.  I also wrote out our December Wish List.

December Wish List:
○ gingerbread houses
○ decorate cookies
○ see Santa at the mall
○ see Santa at the tree lighting
○ see Santa come by the house
○ wrap presents
○ Chuck’s party
○ Larson family get together
○ take Christmas photos on Christmas day
○ watch a whole bunch of Christmas movies
○ go to Lewiston to see the Christmas lights
○ make a snowman
○ make an igloo
○ try to make gingerbread cookies
○ fondue on Christmas Eve

I plan on downloading my photos and then planning my December 1st page or pages.  I will print out my journaling once I have filled all 6 of my squares.  I am also keeping a lined journal handy so I can jot down things that I think of during the day.  I love this project. 

December Daily

 I finally started my December Daily.  I am trying to use my stash.  I have had this paper for a while.  I scrapped Christmas 05 with it but I still had a bunch of stuff left over.  Perfect for my December Daily.  Since I am doing Project Life this year I wanted to stay with that theme.  I have made 31-4x6 cards with every day in December on them.  Then I made a bunch of 3x4 decorative cards.  I created a word document were I will do my journaling on 3x4 cards.  I then cut up some pattern paper at 4x6 and plan on using them to mount my photos on.  I am going to try hard to take at least 3 photos a day.  I know some days I will have more and some less but I hope to keep up with at least what we do on a daily basis. 

 Here is my stacks of cards.  I used up some letter stickers and other stickers.  I stitched on all of them. 

 I slid my cards in my Project Life photo sleeve just to give an idea of what I plan on doing.  The only problem with these photo sleeves is that some of the 3x4 pockets are not exactly that size.  I also am not sure if I want to stick with this layout.  So I am going to try and stitch on my 6-4x6 photo sleeves to make 3x4 pockets.  If Ali can do it I can sure give it a try.  I will keep you posted.

I cut out some snowflakes on the Cricut and misted them with silver.  I plan on putting them on my daily cards and will post that photo once I finish.  I hope to keep you updated on the whole process.