And suddenly, the holidays season arrived. Bam!

This last week was a bear for me. For the first time in my teaching career, the trimester ended BEFORE Thanksgiving, so I am feverishly trying to finish my grading. In addition, the family continued our Turkey Day 5K tradition, followed by Thanksgiving with the family, Black Friday at the Mall of America (another tradition), and more grading. I remember Thursday coming home from Thanksgiving at the relatives and my older boy asking me, "When do we put up the Advent calendar?" I was about to chastise him--it's too soon!--when I realized Advent was starting in three days. Holy cow.

Since then, I've come to terms that this was an abbreviated November. I dug out the Advent calendar and am ready to start sprucing up the house, pun intended.

There's a reason my son is excted about the Advent calendar. Here's a page I made about our tradition for December's Write Click Scrapbook gallery:

I used  Fancy Pants Designs Merry Little Christmas for this page. I like the mix of traditional and new colors, and the playful Santas got me at ho ho ho. I also added some corrugated paper for some texture, plus the diamonds and pearls for some holiday bling. All of this, of course, was designed to distract from the absolutely terrible pictures I took.

This, of course, is my lot in life. Living in Minnesota, where the sun rises around 8 A.M. and sets around 4 P.M. in the winter, I cannot take a lovely casual shot indoors. I leave for work at 6:30 in the morning and usually return sometime between 3 and 4. Good indoor photos are a rarity in the winter. I tried using PSE to adjust the color especially, but it just wasn't happening, so I used my tried and true method: I printed Small. And hoped that the dancing Santas would distract.

Thank you for checking out my page! Please go to Write Click Scrapbook to check out the full gallery for a month-load of inspiration.