Celebrating Christmas 2008 (for the last time!)

Tonight my parents came over for our much belated Christmas celebration. We had a simple dinner of Saucy Italian-Style Chicken Thighs (super simple and tasty), pasta, salad (romaine, strawberries, cucumber, cashews, and a berry vinaigrette), and bread. Dessert was homemade oatmeal cookies (from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook) (they are insanely tasty, by the way) with some vanilla ice cream.

In addition to sharing the meal, we also exchanged gifts-- which means I can finally show off the rest of my handmade gifts, including this pirate pillowcase I made for my brother:


But, the handmade gifts I was most proud of went to my mom and mother-in-law (the grandmas!). I put together little photo albums of my son. I created a page for each month (plus a few more, because the albums each had 16 pages). Here's a sampling:


I used the scrapbooking software, Storybook Creator Plus, from Creative Memories, to create the pages. Since the albums I was using were 2.5" x 3.5" (not a standard size), I used a 5" x 7" template and divided it into four sections. Once I got my photos, I cut the sheets apart to get four separate photos, stuck them in the albums, and--voilà!-- they were done. The software made building these pages super simple, and it was so fun! I was never really drawn to traditional scrapbooking (though I have made one book with the help of my friend, C), but I am seriously loving digital scrapbooking! (Just so you know, I don't have any affiliation with Creative Memories-- I'm just a very happy customer.) I'm really looking forward to creating new pages as time goes by, to help keep the grandmas' little mini-albums fresh.

It's really nice to finally be done with the 2008 holidays. Now I can really start planning/preparing for 2009!