i've been busier than those elves over at keebler

As promised, faithful readers, because I would never let you down, and because Mom and Dad have already seen these, I present to you . . .

MOM & DAD'S CHRISTMAS TAG BOOK ~ 2008. It's like my blog, my scrapbooks, my own handwriting, and memories of Christmas all wrapped up in one pretty package!

I'm a big fan of Ali Edwards and read her blog often. She's a scrapbooking guru over at Creating Keepsakes and has authored several books - about scrapbooking, of course. Well, one day about a month or so ago, she posed these questions to her blog readers . . . "What do you do to simplify the holidays? What is something special you have made and given to someone during the holidays? What are your Christmas traditions?" I didn't read through all 1,000+ comments (oh, I could only wish for that many comments in one single day), but I did find one that went something like this:

"My parents and mother-in-law live far away. And on this particular year I wasn't going to be able to see them for Christmas. So I decided that what I would do is make them a mini scrapbook of Christmas memories - from my childhood, teen years, early adulthood, married life, and send them a page a day to add to the book. I included scanned copies of older and newer photos and journaled my memories for them. They had something to open up in the mail for the 25 days leading up to Christmas."

I LOVED THAT IDEA!!! I was thinking, "Ya, I'm not going to Ohio this Christmas. And those people are going to miss me. I've got to do something about that." So. . . my brain immediately started getting crafty on itself and began to tweak this idea around. I began thinking that I could do something very similar. Instead of putting it in an album, I could use tags and make a tag book. On a cute little ring. With lots of ribbon! One of my Cricut cartridges has several different tags. So I picked a line of patterned papers that had matching stickers and decorated chipboard accents, grabbed a binder ring out of my stash, got some snippets of cute matching ribbon, three colors of cardstock, and went to town.

I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up with the mailing so they could get one every day, plus with mailing stuff to Ohio - sometimes it takes two days to get there, sometimes it takes four or five days. So I opted for Plan B. I put each tag in a separate envelope and mailed a bunch altogether in a big bubble wrap envelope so they wouldn't get squished. I called my mom and told her to watch her mailbox for her very own elf. She was like, "What in the world are you talking about?" I told her she'd just have to wait and see. I typed out instructions so they knew they could only open one envelope per day, threatening their lives if they didn't follow my rules, and they have been loving life ever since!!!

Everyone who's seen it has been getting a big kick out of it, but probably not as much as I have been. I've had the most fun reminiscing about Christmas when I was a kid. I dug out all my old acidy photo albums and found some rather hysterical pictures of my brother and sister. I was sitting here on Sunday evening working on the second installment of tags and I was cracking myself up over one particular memory of my dad. Which I can't share with you because it's a tag for like the 18th or 19th. Sorry.

So there you have it. The elfity-goodness that I've been up to these last few weeks. A tag book. Try it, you might like it.