Heather Johnson Photography

Introducing my advent calendar–made out of toilet paper rolls!  Yup, you heard me right, toilet paper rolls!

Although I had the idea for this project a few years ago in response to a Donna Downey trash to treasure challenge, it’s still as popular as ever at our house.  This is probably the last year I will be using this one, next year I hope to create one and lead a project here online with those of you who would like to make one along with me.  I am working on templates and instructions now.  I had wanted to get it done for this year, but had too many things planned this fall…so like many things it remained undone.  Next year for sure!  (Leave a comment below if you are interested in playing along next November.)

It’s a great way to do a fun craft with your kids, and very economical–who doesn’t have toilet paper rolls around the house?!

If you like this project, please share the link of my post on your blog.  Would love to spread the word about this fun project!

Here are my Day Two pages.  We have a lot of fun holiday themed stuff coming up today, including a visit to Santa, so I wanted to make sure that one day in this album was dedicated to Holly’s dance class.  (The girl LIVES to dance!)  That’s what I love about this project the most, you can really make it anything you would like.  Not only do you get to record holiday traditions…but also glimpse a little bit of everyday life.  I may  not get a chance to scrapbook again for months, but I always feel good knowing that if nothing else I am able to record December!

I am REALLY hopeful that today will go well.  We haven’t been able to sit on Santa’s lap yet, as she has always been too scared, but this year Holly seems really into it.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

Here it is…my two-page spread for day one this year!  I will refrain from telling you just  how long I worked on this, but let’s just say it’s a good thing I create these digitally.  I would hate to think  what the table would have looked like had glue and scissors been involved!  I am really looking  forward to my project this year, and building on the foundation I started last year.  This time  around I am designing a 12 x 12 album with two pages per day.  (The 8 x 8 from last year is already  getting hard to read and I am not that old!  I have decided it’s just way too small.)

Supplies this year were mainly bought at jessicasprague.com.  I opted for the Everybody Loves Christmas line from Echo Park, and had the BEST time creating a keepsake silhouette ornament with Holly thanks to Nisa Finn.   The journaling on page two reads: The Christmas season is officially underway and this year is all about starting new traditions. For the past few years we have looked at the tree and felt like it was missing something. We knew that we would want to look at our tree years from now and remember special things about each year, so this December we decided to let Holly pick out her own special ornaments to hang. She fell in love with the nutcrackers, or “peoples” as she calls them. I decided my contribution would be to create silhouettes of Holly that I could turn into ornaments. I think we achieved our goal-this year the tree is full of the beginnings of special memories…we can’t wait to see how it changes year to year.

I hope there are some of you out there following along and creating an album too.  Be sure to let me know–I love seeing the creativity out there!