Words. Pictures. Either. Both.

I tell my stories with words. Most of the time. I pick up a pen and start to scribble and something like this appears:

Sometimes a whole story appears, sometimes it's just a snatch. But it's down on paper and that's good. That what Storytelling Sunday is about. recording a moment, keeping it for family and friends, for the future; and sharing it with us too.

BUT there is more than one way to hold that thought. This year the Storytelling Sunday emphasis will be on telling your story the way you love best. If you love to write, please keep on writing. But if you love to take pictures - if that's your best way of telling your story - show us a picture. One photo, a few words. That's a powerful way to tell your story too. I think we need both.

So if you have been thinking about joining in - make it your New Year Resolution! Lots of us will have plans for the 1st January, but remember - any story you tell on the first day of the year will have a special resonance. The link will be open all week, so maybe you'd like to tell the story of your New Year celebrations after the event. Or the story of anything "new". To start us off I'll have a persuasive post from a writer I know (you are starting to get to know him too..) - then it's over to you for

Storytelling Sunday 2: The words, the pictures.

I write:

Maybe you take pictures. Think about it.

It's Not Over til it's Over

We have been enjoying a break here at High in the Sky. Last year, and the one before too, I wrote about these, my favourite days of the year when we wind down and enjoy spending time together as a family. Each Christmas brings subtle changes, little signs that everyone is another year older, but the fun is the same.

The (Not So) Small One has been doing lots of the cooking. She found her pink labelling machine under the tree

You can tell by my face that I have just seen the scrapbooking possibiliies. That machine will be mine...

and now we are finding helpful notes attached to everything we own (I never did like this jumper, for example, or Mine, not yours).

The Tall One has some new L plates for the car and a cricket bag big enough to wheel his sister (or any other passing agreeable girl) about in

The Accountant has been patiently driving us round to visit family and friends, as he dreams of a leaner, fitter 2012.

Told you that we were finding labels everywhere. Poor man.

And me? I've stepped away from the scrapbooking and turned off the computer. I've been enjoying that glorious feeling of relief when it all comes together. You know the one?

By the end of the week I'm starting to look forward to the New Year

- with Miss Smith's sketch class starting on the 1st. All proceeds to GirlGuidingUK

- the 365 photo challenge I'm going to attempt

- Storytelling Sunday. Back this Sunday! But I'll tell you more about that tomorrow. I've got some catching up to do first..

From Our House to Yours

From all of us here

to all of you there..

A very Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year

Journal Your Christmas - Bearing Gifts

Most of the wrapping is done now, and gifts have been delivered and we are just about to put a fresh batch of mince pies in the oven. I guess you could say our Christmas was coming along nicely.

We aren't completely on top of things - when I went to print out a photo this morning I discovered that I had imagined that trip to buy photo paper. And could I get it to print on card instead? No I could not. It's on printer paper for the time being. That's good enough.

So, the next few pages in my album:

about a gift for a friend

and a junior chef in the making

Funny, the blog names are now making it into my scrapbook pages. Did you notice that?

and those letters to Santa. In this house Mrs Santa appears in the story. She did, too, when I was growing up. That's creativity at Christmas!

Journal Your Christmas - Deck the Halls

The house is decorated, the cards have been sent and there is more than a hint of excitement in the air here. We have two days of school left, then the holiday is ours.

We are all, each one of us, looking forward to something under the tree. A Scoring Board for me; a jigsaw, a "surprise" (how do you surprise a sixteen year old boy ? Second thoughts- don't answer that); and a phone in the shape of a hamburger for the girl who likes to stay in touch.

This page pulls out from a little brown baf sent all the way from the USA by Deb. Thank you!

It's not long to wait now and my album is building steadily.

I usually finish off on Christmas Day itself, but I'm feeling ambitious - maybe the week after will make an appearance too this year. It looks like I'll have room for it:

If you are busy getting ready today, may your preparations be merry and bright!

Tread Softly

 "This week is poetry week," said The (Not So) Small One. "We've got a big poetry homework about WB Yeats. And that poem He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven. What do you know about WB Yeats?"

"Ah," I said. "I don't think I'm the person to ask. You know how you love it that you go to the same school as Granny did? and you sit in the same classroom?"

"Yes.."

"Well, if you ask Granny, she'll tell you about her English teacher who taught in that classroom. She'll tell you how she listened to that teacher talk about Yeats, the man she knew. About his thick green cape and his strange, drawling voice and his striding walk. When Granny told me that story I always imagined him to look a bit like Sherlock Holmes." I said and The (Not So) Small One nodded.

"That's not too many steps away from you, is it?" I said. "It's like that old song. I've danced with a man, who has danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales"

She rolled her eyes. "I know, I know. We've talked about this before. It's like Six Degrees of Separation. And that's cool. But can I do my homework later? I need check to Facebook now.."

"I suppose so," I said, "but remember - Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

Who can you get to through Six Degrees of separation? If I told you we managed Alvin and the Chipmunks that would kind of spoil the mood, wouldn't it? But it'll make a great page

Tagxedo: Making Great Cards Just Got Easier

This started out as an experiment and turned into a little project. Have you heard of Tagxedo (click here) ? It's a word cloud creator, a bit like Wordle only even more fun. As soon as I tried it out once I could see lots of possibilities.

You can paste in any text you like, choose a shape, colours, fonts, themes, whatever. I put in a few lines of "Jingle Bells", picked out a tree shape and came up with this:

Both photos today edited in RadLab

Then I gave it a bit of From High In The Sky and it gave me this:

which I'm pretty pleased with. Both of these are printed out at 7x5 and put into little Ikea frames.

But they would also make great cards or Christmas tags. And there's more: you can upload a photo and shape a favourite bit of text round it. I'm thinking of snaffling some schoolwork and turning it Tall and (Not So) Small shaped. That would make a different kind of birthday card next year. Or a poster..

Journal Your Christmas - Do You See What I See?

After a break for Gary The Magnificent and his moustache, it's back to a bit of Christmas programming today. I have a few more pages for my December album.

Like this:

and this:

A green ruffley bow for a green ruffley skirt. I blogged this story last year. When I wear this skirt, my Mum always says "Why not add some tinsel and baubles?"

and even this:

Just a little extra page. Photo printed with Pogo printer. One is looking very like his Dad. The other has just pinched her Dad's hat out of the boot of the car

and finally this:

Page 10 is another pullout with an old black and white photo - that's my cousin you can see peeping out there. The rest of us don't look much happier on our joint trip to see Santa. But the page isn't quite finished yet, so it'll have to wait for another day.

It might pop up on Facebook. We've been chatting about Florabella Actions and the arrival of the new copy of Scrap365. If you're a Facebook afficionado, please come on over. I could do with the help!

Enjoy your Tuesday

That Was Movember

I'm not being festive today. I'm just being plain silly.

When Sandra from Gotta Craft sent me some Echo Park Times & Seasons, the first paper I pulled from the stack had moustaches printed on it. Have to do something with that I thought. And thought. And thought. Until I heard The Tall One talking about Movember. He already sports some ambitious sideburns. Could a moustache be next?

Maybe not. But he had given me an idea for a page. First I had to find a volunteer. Someone who didn't mind looking a bit silly. All the obvious candidates shook their heads, so instead my beady eye fell on... a pair of beady eyes. Gary The Magificent? You're on.

Beard and hat shape cut with Slice Mistletoe card

Journal Your Christmas - I'm Making a List

That's a full week's worth of December pages we're up to now and my album is filling up nicely. Preparing the base pages last month has definitely helped.

For the 6th I did this one:

That's me on the left with my hand in my mouth

about the amazing cardboard "Super Shop" Christmas. No, it doesn't look like a shop here on my pull-out photo page. It also turned into a house! If you are thinking that toddler on my Mum's knee looks like Little E, you'd be right. That's his Mum. I really should do a page about that, too. He looks so very much like she did at the same age. And he'll be getting a cardboard house of his own this year. I hope he likes it.

For the 7th I did this one:

I had printed out a photo of the Keep Calm poster for something else, but I thougt it would look good here, as a pullout.

They are getting big now, our two. Dolls houses and train sets have been replaced by teenage hopes and dreams - an easily passed driving test for one, world domination for the other. The best I can do is shop for a few bits and pieces I hope they'll enjoy. Maybe a set of "L" plates; and, I'm thinking, world domination probably comes easier with a labeller machine (pink, limited edition). For making your mark. What do you reckon?

Storytelling Sunday news - we reached 300! Actually, with the addition of Fiona's, we are now at 301 stories for the year. Gail asked if I had any idea how many storytellers we had had - I thought that was a great question, so I had a look and I think we reached 48. That's 48 bloggers all telling their tales and linking them up. What can I say? Thank you!

Journal Your Christmas - All is Calm

I'm keeping up with my December album so far with the pages I completed yesterday:

This one

and this one

Perfection? That's funny! When I went to check what I had written on this subject last year, I noticed a big mistake in my journaling. I had replaced one word with another. So of course that's what I wrote about this year. The lovely letterbox is a postcard from Ruth and I have put it onto the back of an example of the cards I made to send this year. The paper bag format is working well for me - I'm getting the lovely chunky album I'd been looking for. This "advent" page is a pull-out from one of the pockets.

Now, for "perfection" next year I think I'll be making a page about the simply perfect Storytelling Sunday we had this month. We have reached 300 stories this year! And lots of new comers have put their hands up to join in in 2012. I'm looking forward to it. Don't forget, the linky is open all week - there is still time to bump up this year's total.

Finally today: one more photo especially for Hey Birdie who asked for a picture of our Christmas trees. Here is the one I took back in 2008 - I can't wait to see if the Christmas photography class I'm starting today will make a change in the way I photograph them this year. We've added a few more decorations since then too. So let's see:

Happy Tuesday!

Storytelling Sunday: Memories Managed

It's the first Sunday of the last month of the year. Know what that means? Course you do! We've been telling stories here every first Sunday all year - think what we have achieved! In the past eleven months you have posted 252 tales (with another 11 from me). That's amazing, isn't it? We've gone from 7 in January to 37 in November. We could manage 300 memories before the year is out!

We've laughed, we've cried, we've connected. And that's a very good feeling. I've met some lovely new bloggers, I've learned a thing or three; and I hope you have too. I thought maybe you'd all be ready to let go and try something new next year. But it seems not. Let's tweak it a little, though, keep things fresh. Let's see who else we can persuade to join us.

But enough of moving on for now. Look at me - half way through a post and no hint of a story yet. Let's fix that. I have a short, simple Christmas one for you today. It could be sad, if I let it. But I'm determined it won't be.

It's about two little girls, and their even littler brother. The same three who appeared in the first page of my Christmas album this year. Here they are:

Now, these three were lucky enough to have a Father and a Mother who believed very strongly in the power of Christmas. And never was that belief tested more sorely than in that last Christmas they were all together. For the grownups knew that one of them had only a few months left to live.

But Christmas was still Christmas, and there was magic to be made, and they knew how to do that.

It started, really, with a letter from Father Christmas. Every year those three wrote their letters and put them under the tree and waited for them to disappear. Every year they knew that the letters had been read and filed away by the man in the red suit, for they always got exactly what they had asked for. But only this year, only the once, did Santa have the time to reply. And this is what he wrote:

What a thrill it was! It was passed round and round, even taken into school I think, envied by friends and enjoyed by adults. And when, finally, it had been read and reread, and held up to the light to check it was genuine, it was tucked safely away by the biggest of the three. She already believed in the power of Christmas; but maybe, just maybe, that's when she started to believe in the power of scrapbooking too.

And that's why she'd like to thank each and every one of you for joining Storytelling Sunday this year. Every time you wrote something down, posted it on your blog, you left it right there to be found when it was needed. You should be proud. You should all be very proud. Tell your story - because one day someone will come looking for it. And you want it to be there. Don't you?

So, for the last time this year, leave your link below. Write your story, with a sentence explaining what Storytelling Sunday is all about, then come back here and link us up. One rule this time round - you must wish the two linkers above you (more if you have time!) a Very Merry Christmas. Leave them a comment. Spread a bit of good cheer. Happy Christmas.

Tagging..

I'm "tagging" everyone today with a quick reminder that it's Storytelling Sunday tomorrow. Oh, but wait, I do have some tags too

This one:

The full pinboard is posted on the Gotta Craft blog

and this one:

and then this one:

A little glimpse of a quick Christmas banner I made with two different punches and the sewing machine

and then I took that top one and added it to the second page of my Christmas album:

Definitely no snow here yet!

Again, thank you to everyone who has "liked" my new Facebook page. I'm having fun with it so far, adding little snippets of news. I completely understand if you aren't a Facebooker fan - but if you are, you will find me here

Journal Your Christmas - And It Begins

It's beginning to look at least a little like Christmas round our way. There is talk of a tree, and a smell of slow cooked Christmas pudding in the air. And it's time for Journal Your Christmas!

This will be my third Christmas journal. The 2011 edition will be, like the others before it, a mix of December Daily and Journal Your Christmas. I'm happy to go with the flow. I'll see where each day takes me. But I'll be sure to write something.

It starts like this:

and from the outside it looks like this:

That's Lilybee Memorandum, some old October Afternoon and a lot of brown paper

It's a paper bag album, so I have ready made pockets for extra journaling:

starting with today and what I believe at this time of year

I can't wait to see what other albums there are out there waiting to be enjoyed. But before I go I just want to remind you that it's Storytelling Sunday this Sunday. You don't have to have a Christmas story to take part - we're interested in any story you love! I'm nearly out of good Christnmas tales myself, I think, after last year's Christmas Club. But I do have one to share. Same as always - everyone welcome, but do please include a link back to the stories here and a quick sentence explaining what it's all about. And with that I wish you a

Happy December!