Chatting about the Holidays and Dec. Daily over a Cup of Tea

Abi over at Creating Paper Dreams hosts a monthly gathering where bloggers can sit and have a virtual chat over a cup of tea. This month, she's chatting about the upcoming holidays. And I'd love to sit down and chat with you about the same thing. I'd start by showing you my latest Christmas acquisition. I saw it in the store last weekend and couldn't pass it up, even though it wasn't yet December and we just finished celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend.

I bought it because this year I'm feeling pretty festive, and I wanted to start decorating early. Next I'd show you a couple of pages from my December Daily album. Here are the pages for December 1. 

The journaling on the bottom of the second page reads "Sunday, Dec. 1.  December began just as the cross-country season ended.  We spent Thanksgiving at the Cargases enjoying a brief visit with Henry home from college. Clara and I spent Friday and Saturday in Fresno where she competed in the California State Championships and ran her best race of the season. By today, we were ready for a quiet day around the house. One season ends, a new one begins."  On the upper left journaling strips, I wrote about our sleepy winter day: "On December 1, we did homework, went to E.F. (our gym); checked out college websites to see if Clara could run there; did laundry; ate stuffed squash and watched The Walking Dead." I'm going to put this photograph on the first page. And here's the photograph I plan to feature on my December 2 page:

It's a photograph of the wonderful Christmas cards I got today from blog friends and a super cute ornament as a thank-you for hosting the photography scavenger hunt. I'm also going to put our Christmas card on this page. The journaling for Dec. 2 reads "I received my first Christmas cards today, as well as a really cute ornament. This spurred me to order our Christmas cards."
If you had time to have another cup of tea and chat some more, I'd share with you the introductory page of my December Daily album:

The journaling reads simply "Life is Good. A record of the everyday joys of our life this holiday season. "  I'd tell you that as much as I am feeling excited and festive this year, I still sometimes feel haunted by the ghosts of Christmas past. Last year our lives were in such tumult, and the memories return when I find the box of Christmas cards I ordered last year and never sent or remember shopping for our first artificial tree because I knew we could not make it out to the tree farm. I'd tell you that building my pages for December Daily 2013, writing the journaling, sticking down the cute embellishments and applying wash tape, always make me feel better. As does chatting with good friends. Over tea (virtual or otherwise). And finally, I'd ask if you have any holiday news to share . . .