12 Days of Christmas | Day 4 | My Early Christmas Present

Our 12 Days of Christmas event continues with a little unconventional Christmas present. It’s a little present to myself. The gift of recording…just for me.

I honestly can’t remember when the last time was that I scrapped something because I wanted to. While I’ve done many pages and it’s great, there’s always been some kind of reason that it needed to be done.

This is something I need to change.

I need to record just because I want to.

For a long time I’ve been longing to just get things printed and recorded. I’ve had the hugest hankering to use the Project Life method as the primary way. I have even been stocking up on various page protectors. Heck, I even got my little Epson Picture Mate Charm last year so that I could do it. And while I’ve used the heck out of it for work, I haven’t used it just for me.

So last week, in the middle of a ton of stuff going on, I was determined to carve out a little time to prove to myself that I could really do it.

A little gift to myself. 

I think we all need something like that, don’t we?

I can’t tell you how happy it made me! I felt a sense of accomplishment in a way that I haven’t felt for a long time. It meant a great deal to me that I was able to do something without any other ulterior motive than I just wanted to do it.

I don’t get that often.

This past September we took a Sunday drive up to Mirror Lake and had a wonderful time! We packed stuff to make lunches, packed the dog, and ran up to the mountains about an hour+ away. We met Zach and his friend up there. They’d been camping and fishing. We ‘hiked’ around to some smaller ponds above Mirror Lake and it was just gorgeous!

While we did have our dog on a leash, this was his first real experience at being taken somewhere up in the mountains. Eventually we did just let him go because we were all alone. I know, sweet, right?  He was really good to stay with someone, and if we got out of sight, he got worried and would wait or look for us. He’s a pretty awesome dog. :)

The boys enjoyed their hands at fishing while we watched and visited and sat with the dog.

If I could just sit out in the mountains all day, I would.

Here’s a visual picture for y’all. It was all about keeping it simple and getting it done….I will neither confirm nor deny it took me longer than it should have. ;) But there were a lot of photos. I also have another 6×12 set of photos that aren’t included in this little ensemble.