Being Crafty

While I am a very creative person, I am not generally a crafty one unless I have a Very Good Reason. For a few years, some of my siblings and I would make keepsake newsletter books for Christmas for our parents, grandparents, and far-away siblings.  It was always a long, tedious task, nagging everyone to write out several copies of a summary of each one’s year, getting the hand cramps writing, and then the gluing, decorating, and assembling, but it was always worth it.  For some reason, I got the hare-brained Idea to do this again this year, not thinking about the fact that I would be the one doing all the writing, cutting pictures, gluing, decorating, and assembling on my own.  It was silly.  But it was worth it.  And I even got it done before Candlemas!  We didn’t do any sort of newsletters last year, so this was definitely an improvement.  Maybe next year we’ll get to more than just family…we’ll see.  No promises. 🙂

I made twelve in all – that’s 24 paper bags, 48 pictures hand-trimmed, and 48 3×4 cards hand-written.

Oh, and 72 hand-drawn holly leaves and berries.  But that was the fun part.

So…yeah.  The words didn’t quite match up with the pictures.  Maybe next year.  That was just the new momma in me trying to sneak in as many baby pictures as possible. 🙂

The end!  And I didn’t have to write them all by myself after all – Stephen signed his own name!  Maria only signed her name on the one going overseas – she made it Very Clear that she is Not Ready to hold a pen.