JOY days 12-16

Just a quick catch up,

JOY albulm days 12-16

(Again, don't enlarge the first picture if you are of a sensitive nature as there are rude words, although some of my followers were annoyed that even after they had enlarged it they couldn't see them properly!!!!!)

 Day 12-another trip to the dreaded dentist

 Days 12 &13-visiting a friend in hospital and gift giving

 Days 13 &14-list of prezzies I have bought for people and friendship and community

 Day 14 &15-ladies of the friendship group and things I am grateful for

 Day 15&16-my gratitude list and one of my winter solstice poems. This page was inspired by this beautiful mandala on pinterest.

Day 16- My other winter solstice poem

Well, I am off to battle my way around the shops, I still need to pick up a couple of xmas gifts for people, and then I am going to watch my wonderful friends do some dancing in the town square with Bloodstone border Morris.

TFL

Sami x

Decorations and Joy

Hello! Just some more photos of my JOY albulm today and a couple of Xmas makes.(Warning do not enlarge the last photo of my JOY albulm if you have a sensitive nature as you will find some really rude words spelt out with fridge magnets!)

My son was off school for a few days last week with a nasty cold so we decided to make some salt dough ornaments. I am not doing xmas cards this year, waste of money and trees, so instead we thought we would give people decorations for their trees.

We doubled up on the salt dough mixture (recipe is 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt and 1 cup of water if anyones interested!) as when my group of ladies made Dias last month for Diwali out of salt dough we didn't quite have enough.

We had way too much this time though and must have ended up with a 100 ornaments!

 We rolled out the dough and used cookie cutters for the shapes. We then used a selection of stamps to imprint each shape. We then baked in the oven at 200 degrees until they went hard.

 We then spent about 6 hours painting them all and adding the thread to hang them. Some of them went a bit soft after painting but after a few days left drying out they harded up again. They look really pretty!

 At our crop on saturday I made some leather journals for the kids and me. I have been meaning to make some for a while but never got around to it but after watching Kirsties homemade christmas last week I was inspired to have a go! I couldn't get any leather so I bought upholstery leather vinyl stuff from the fabric shop. They turned out really well, my sons is the brown one filled with plain paper, my daughters is the black one with the pink ribbon which I filled with pastel coloured paper and mine is the black one at the back and it is filled with squared paper.

 Day 7 JOY-some of the ladies at the group where I work making xmas decorations

 Day 8-making the xmas ornaments

 Day 9- a new haircut

 Day 10-last crop of the year

 Day 11-Shelby and Trav

Reverse of day 11-naughty words (do not enlarge this photo as you may be offended!)

I have been a bad blogger this week and have not had any time to go looking at peoples blogs so If I havn't commented on yours I will try today to get round to you!

TFL

Sami x

Treasure and JOY

I have been thinking about my JOY book for this year. JOY stands for 'journal our Yule' which is P and mines Pagan version of JYC! Basically the same except we incorporate our Yule traditions in with our christmas traditions.

P had said what a lovely idea it would be to do my journal inside an old christmas book. We then found a pin on pinterest of a JYC book done inside a christmas stories book, so the hunt was on for an old looking copy of this Charles Dickens favourite!

I took P to this wonderful bookshop in Ryde. He sells new books but has 3 stories of secondhand books.We were in there for over an hour and came out with some excellent stuff!

 My selection

I found a red leather copy of A Christmas Carol, not that old, rather made to look old, another copy of A christmas carol as it has some wonderful line drawings in it, an old music book, some old patterns, a book of Keats poetry and oh wonderous joy, an old ledger from 1871!!

 (sorry forgot to turn photos!)

I have been looking for one of these old ledgers for about 8 months. They seem all the trend at the moment to art journal in. I tried ebay and etsy but they were either too expensive or would not post to the UK. I went into the same bookshop about 6 months ago and asked if he had any and he said no. I found this in the bookshop just sat on the window sill on the second level of the shop, as if it was just waiting for me!

It is quite badly damaged but I am sure I can do something with it. And it was only £6!

It is about a third full with the most wonderful old writing. The trouble is, now I have started reading it I am not sure if I can art journal over the pages! It is so interesting.It has the Butlers accounts in, how much of what was bought, when and the price. The ledger seems to be from an English Family and starts off in Wellington(in India), then Aldershot then back to Burma. The names of where they are at the time are at the top of each page and by googling I have found they are towns in India. The names listed as the servents, I wasn't sure if they were the peoples names or their job but I googled them as well and it is their job, one is a washer women, one a water boy and one a native translator as well as the butler and gardener. There are little notes next to some of the names such as 'fined 4 rupes for burning a pair of trousers' and ' gave the old Sais Rs 4, keeping Rs 2 back as a guarnatee that he does not make a vow with other servants'. How cool is that! Unfortunately there is not a family name in the book, but my son and I are assuming that they were British goverment or military in India at that time.So, to art journal in it not???

 Anyway, on to my JOY book. I forgot to take photos from the start, but basically I took out the pages using a craft knife. There were two red pages that I left in tact so that I could cover the inside spine. I then took the binder bit from an old A4 ring binder and lined it up on the spine. I made two holes and used eyelets to attach the binder in place. The eyelets were not quite deep enough to give a firm hold so I also had to use two brads to secure it. I hammered the pin part of the brads into the indent of the binder so that they don't move around.

The spine with the brads showing

I have cut an assortment of pages,

Such as xmas paper, index cards, kraft paper and the pages of the christmas carol book.

No doubt I will add more as December comes around. I am going for a more art journal type book this year rather than a scrapbook/mini book style. I want to concentrate more on the actual journalling but I will include photos as well as I love looking back over previous xmas books I have made and seeing the photos of our traditions.

TFL

Sami x

Last JOY post before Xmas!

Super busy here, like I expect everyone else is, so these will be my last JOY posts until after Xmas.

Day 20- met up with friends for coffee and to look at each others xmas journals

Day 21-YULE!! Up at stupid 'o' clock to climb up to the longstone to watch the sunrise, not that we could see the sun through all the mist and cloud! In the evening our group got together to celebrate Yule in the old tradition and then we all had a lovely meal together, cooked by Teresa and Martin which was FAB!! We wrote our hopes for the next year on a chinese lantern and sent it up into the sky.

Day 22- My birthday! A lovely day spent with family and friends. I had some wonderful gifts: Both collections of Dylusions spray inks, one set from hubby and one from mum and dad, a beautiful crochet blanket and a silver ring from my sister, some funky house stamps and a booful cuddly toy from the kids, a new moon calender and beautiful tree charm necklace from Teresa and Martin, a crochet scarf and candle from Paige and Trav and a witches calender from Dawn. In the evening Paige cooked a wonderful birthday meal for me and hubby and Zoe and Alan. The meal was fantastic and all homemade (P sure puts on a posh spread!)
Well, thats all for now. I would like to wish everyone a very merry christmas and a great new year!
TFL,
Sami x

Epic catchup!

I have spent the WHOLE weekend catching up with my JOY. I have been so busy this past week what with new puppy Oakley, a xmas party to organise and sick children that I had fallen way behind.

Day 8-prezzie list hidden in pocket so kids cant see

Day 9-bringing Oakley home and saying goodbye to Molly

Day 10- a Page for Molly

Day 11- Works xmas meal

Day 12- cooker got condemmed on Sun night..it was leaking carbon monoxide, thank the Goddess we had a carbon monoxide alarm in the kitchen. Of course that meant no cooker so we had to go and order one on Mon, an expense we could not afford at the moment, but hey, at least we are alive!

Day 13-Shelbys xmas concert

Day 14-Icy weather and thinking about all the things I still need to do

Day 15- The friendship groups xmas and Eid party celebration

Day 16-succuming to a commercial xmas??

Day 17-The new cooker arrived, Oakley got his first set of jabs and Shelby got sent home from school ill

Day 18- Snow started again today which has meant my Nephew couldn't get down to the Island for xmas. We are praying it clears up in the next couple of days so he can get here by train.

Day 19-Still snowing, still freezeing, still playing catchup all day!

Thanks for looking,

Sam x

Joy days 5,6,7

Falling behind already! Here are days 5,6,7

On the 5th, I spent the whole morning typing up training notes for a training session the next day-hence my thought of the day tag! In the afternoon we went to Paiges to visit our new puppy,Oakley. I put Willow in the kitchen with him to see how they got on and Willow was great with him. What she will be like when hes permanately at our house I don't know! We are bringing Oakley home today so I won't have long to find out!

Day 6- I didn't do anything exciting today but Eclipse was released on DVD so as soon as Hubby was in from work he was sent to Tesco to pick me up a copy! I was going to write xmas cards on the 6th but still have not got round to it! I hate the task and this year I have not made the cards and will be sending out cheapy ones-Im such a Bah Humbug this year!

Day 7- nothing doing today either so I have written about things I am grateful for. The photo is of my Dad, sister and me at my Dads 'remission' party in August, not christmassy in the slightest but important to me that he's here after everything hes been through this year.

This is a page in my art journal that I did last night. This is the Goddess Cerridwen. She is a Celtic Goddess and is concerned with education, arts, knowledge, intelligence and creativity. She is considered the patron of poetry, wisdom and grain. She is keeper of a cauldron of healing and inspiration. Drinking the brew from the cauldron bestows inspiration and knowledge.

TFL,

Sami x

JOY-Days 2,3 & 4

Well, I am just about managing to keep up with my JOY, but I don't know how long that will last!

Day 2

We woke up to 15cms of snow this morning! School was cancelled, buses were stopped so we had a bonus SNOW day!

The neighbours had sneaked out in the night to build a giant snowman, just like they did in January. Zoe (my little sis), Paige, the kids and me went up to the rec for some snowball fun.

Day 3

We went to my friends husbands surprise 40th birthday party last night.

A little bit about Yule (as the photos I took of the party were not very good!)

Day 4

Zoe, the kids and me, had breakfast at Spoons today and then went to a free wreath making session in the town.

Then we went to Busy Bee's for the kids to choose their xmas decoration. This is a tradition we do every year. The kids get to buy one tree decoration each and then when they leave home they will have a collection of decorations to use on their own trees.

We then went home and shoved my hubby in the attic to get the xmas tree down and spent the afternoon decorating it.

TFL,

Sami x

JOY-Day one

This year I am doing JOY-journal our Yule, rather than JYC! Still the same thing but as I am Pagan, Yule is my holiday! We still celebrate Xmas because of the kids and family, but Yule has more significant meaning to me.

Here is my front cover

This is my first page. There is a calender for Dec which opens up and I have written my goals for the season on the tag that pulls out from behind. On the tag it says:

This year its all about JOY-journal our Yule. This year I will concentrate more on journalling about each day-what I have been up to, what the kids have done, rather than using the same promps from other years-how many times can I write about my fav xmas song?!
This year I'm finding it hard to conjure up the xmas spirit. Whether I'm finally realising I don't have to concede to the comercial Christmas by spending a fortune on tat, I don't know!
My main focus this year is being with my family and people I love. Celebrating that my Dad made it through his cancer treatment and is now in remission and is still still here to have Xmas with us. To focus on the important aspects of Yule and Xmas, giving thanks, celebrating the return of the light and being with people who mean the most to me.


Day one page-waking up to snow on the 1st Dec-amazing!!

On the reverse of the date tags, I am writing my thought or quote of the day. This thought is about being proud of the work I have done with the Friendship group I run. Seeing these women gaining confidence, trying new things and really expressing themselves is amazing. The photo on the right is the self portraits the women of the group have just completed and which are now proudly displayed on the wall of the venue we use. Nearly all of the women had never painted before in their lives!

There is also a pic of my DD and my advent calender (twilight one of course!)

TFL

Sami x