Remembering Christmases Past

I wanted to share some more of my Christmas-themed scrapbook pages. This time, I thought I'd invite you to look at a sampling of pages from my scrapbook of Christmases past. I put this book together a couple of years ago, and I made one for each of my siblings as well as for my parents. It took a lot of time and planning, but it was worth it. I bought these 8.5x11-sized Christmas scrapbook kits--got an awesome deal on them, too! I want to say they were, like, $5 each or something *crazy* like that--and that included the scrapbooks, paper, stickers, etc. I didn't put the books together exactly as the kit suggested, but I used a lot of the materials. Of course, I used a lot of other materials that I bought separately as well. I scanned a bunch of old Christmas photos and looked for family memorabilia that was Christmas in nature. It was like a treasure hunt!

I really enjoyed working with the 8.5x11 format. One of the best things about it is ... I could just run the paper through the printer to print out titles and journaling. I had to do a lot of test runs on regular paper, but once I got the spacing and everything figured out, it was a breeze (especially when putting together more than one book). I kept most of the embellishments simple and let the photos speak for themselves.

Here is a sampling of pages--I apologize in advance for the poor photo quality:

This is a color copy of the first page of a letter my Grampy Pierce sent to his wife (my Nanny Pierce) on Christmas Day in 1944. He was serving in World War II and was in Italy. She was home in Maine with their two children (at the time--three more came along after the war).

On the facing page, I included a couple of photos of my grandparents. The second photo--the one of them in the boat--was actually used in catalog printed by a company in the boating business. (I can't recall which one or for what, specifically.)


This page includes a drawing of a turkey that my Mom did for Santa Claus. I scanned this and had it printed on photo paper. The top photo is of my mother as a little girl. Several years ago, I made some Christmas ornaments of this same drawing for my family; however, I apparently didn't make one for myself. I need to do that.


On the next page is a letter written in my grandmother's handwriting. It's to Santa from my Mom. I found this letter in the same notepad/notebook that held the turkey drawing. The letter doesn't have a formal ending--the writing just kind of fades away at the bottom. I wonder if my grandmother was interrupted or if she just decided to stop writing once she ran out of room. I scanned the letter and had it printed on photo paper. The bottom photo is another picture of my mother as a little girl.

I included some pages of photos from the 1970s.


And the '80s--though that top photo could be from 1979 (not sure).
The bottom photo is from Christmas 1982, I think. That's the year we all got monogrammed sweaters for Christmas. We actually got to go to King's department store in downtown Johnson City and pick out the color and the monogram style. I chose a purple sweater with my initials (kep) in white thread on the left chest. My sister Robin and I are holding our adoption dolls that we received for Christmas that year--and I am holding a Smurf. I was in the third grade.


Here's a spread about Christmas at my Aunt Oria's house. Aunt Oria was married to my grandmother's brother, my Uncle Ivan. Each year at Christmastime, Aunt Oria would have the family over to her house on the Tree Streets in Johnson City. I used photos from four different years and wrote some of the memories of going to Aunt Oria's for an annual Christmas gathering.


I tried to include a page featuring Christmastime of each year starting about 1994, I believe. Here's our family Christmas gathering from 1998 (obviously).


Here's a page for 2001. Looks like I still need to label it.


2005's spread. This year, we had an early Christmas with the whole family in November when Cindy (my sister who lives in Spain) was in town with her family. Photos from that are on the left page. The right page has pictures from Christmas Eve/Christmas Day.


The last year featured in the book is 2006. Here's a spread of various Christmasy photos from that year.

The last page in the book features Scripture about the shepherds and the angels from Luke 2:8-20. I included photos of Abigail (top) and Rebekah and Riley dressed as angels--so cute!

Thanks for joining me on this trip down Holiday Memory Lane!