yeah!!! the advent season has officially begun.  we are deep in decorating and hunkering down to celebrate this amazing season as a family.

i’m busy working on my holiday joy photos for this season, and i’m very, very excited to take part in this awesome class with tiffany tillman.

check it out and sign up for yourself!  i’ll be guest “photo coaching” for her one day during the class!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hark how the bells, sweet silver bells, all seem to say …

It’s Holiday Template time, babay!
register now and get $5 off 

I am super geeked to announce open registration for my all-time, favorite class:Holiday Templates 2011. In it’s fourth edition, my 25 Days of Templates class has evolved into a month long workshop featuring special guests, loads of digital techniques, super-mega kits, and, of course, templates. In the next 4 days, I’ll share sneak peeks, introduce the special guests, and give you a behind the scenes tour. Let’s start at the beginning. The video below sums up.

FOCUS | This workshop will help you craft an album full of your holiday memories. That’s the simple focus. 

Every day, whilst you sit in your jammies drinking mochachino, you’ll watch at least one lesson with the focus in mind. My lessons are available and reviewable forever. So you won’t miss a thing if you’re on vacation at the North Pole with Santa and NOT in your jammies. Soon as you and Santa finishing delivering goodies, you’re more than welcome to catch up and document your outings with St. Nick!

Your album can be a physical album with a common theme or a compilation of 25 individual December stories. You’re not limited to creating a holiday album. Maybe you might want to go in a different direction, like a December Daily, and that’s perfectly okay. It’s completely up to you. My focus is to simply give you the means to document your holidays digitally using templates.

TEMPLATES | Every student will receive 20 templates on day one.

In years past, y’all received templates in groups of 5 at a time. But this year, I want you to be ready from the start and know exactly how many photos you’ll need to fill each page — if your goal is such.

The above preview shares the first 16. You’ll receive 4 more , which will stay hidden until start day. And an additional four as we progress. That’s 16 + 4 + 4 = 24 templates. And the templates were crafted as single | doubles. They’ll work for single and/or double pages as shown in the preview. Each single has at least three compliments to increase your variety of double page layouts.

KITS | Every student receives a super-exclusive, compilation kit by Paislee Press and Creashens.

I asked Liz and Shen to pair up for two reasons. First, they are two of the best designers in our industry with easy-going, sweet-as-sweet-potato-pie personalities. I uber-love working with them both. And second, their styles are nearly opposite but work in perfect harmony.

Liz crafted a modern kit fit for any occasion. Shen rocked the traditional “joy to the world” theme. We deliberately chose contrasting kits in theme but married them together using the same color scheme. The result gives you a variety of page options.

I’ll share more insights about the entire kit (and some peeks at the additional mini-kits — yes there’s more) tomorrow.

LESSONS | What would any 25 Days of Templates class be without the daily video lessons? Not my class, that’s for sure. You’ll see a range of topics from my favorite digital techniques of embossing, masking, selecting, shadowing, and filtering to photography, printing and more. Most lessons are about 5 – 10 minutes long. A few go over that. However, each offer an opportunity to learn or trick to use on your pages.

ALBUM | Covered. That was a joke — did you get it? Persnickety Prints provided a PHAT discount for participants to print a custom post-bound album with top-loading pages. I’ve already ordered and received mine! It’s delish. Once the season concludes, I’ll send my finished pages off for printing and add them in.

You’ll get the cover art to replicate (with your choice of pattern background) and I demonstrate how to make your own in day/lesson 3.

EVERYTHING ELSE | Special guests, weekly webinars, plenty of page examples, discounts, daily forum topics … oh yeah baby. The workshop will keep you engaged during the busy season. And if life gets a bit hectic during the holidays, you can still register and meet up with the material in January or February or later.  The lessons are designed to help you craft your album whenever YOU are ready. Remember, that’s the simple focus.

I hope you’ll join me! Register on or before Tuesday, November 8, 2011 for a $5 discount.

Perhaps you have questions — I’m here to answer! Ask your question in the comments and be sure to pop back here everyday for the next few days for more sneak peeks and info.

SHARE | Grab a banner to spread the word.

Want code instead? Here you go. Need a different size? Change the width and height to reformat the badge’s size; maximum 300.

One lucky winner will win a complimentary seat into class. Hark those bells! To enter for your chance to win, simply post a comment below in this thread by Friday, November 4th, 2011 by 11:59 PM EST. Increase your chances of winning by tweeting, facebook(ing), or blogging about the giveaway. Be sure to post a new comment for each tweet or post. The giveaway winner will be announced here on my blog Saturday, November 5th. Good luck!

• Registration & Workshop Information Page: includes a full list of the curriculum and additional samples.
• Intro + Seat Giveaway
• Kit Goodies + Color Swatch Inspiration
• Templates + Development
• Special Guests
• Q & A

so since i have been working on my holiday joy ebook, i have been in the Christmas mood like crazy….i wanted to try out this new blog product/tool called inlinkz…

this is such a great, useful took for bloggers who typically include links to products/other pages…you can find out more by clicking the link above.   i think i need to play with it more….it seems like a lot of up front work to me to create the thumbnails, but the end result is really, really cool.

the links below are just some of the things i have been planning and working on to make our Christmas one of the best yet.

we’re actually in the midst of some pretty cool house projects (have i mentioned how cool it is to be married to an incredibly handy architect?)…and i’m loving all the fun things we are planning on doing as a family as we welcome in the holiday season.

 willette’s christmas plans 2011

sting winter cd	organized christmas	what flossie is wearing
studio calico dec daily album	december daily	organize house
custom nightgown	holiday joy ebook

i also created a photo book of my Christmas photos from last year (at least a handful of them) to have on display and help us remember all the fun we had last year.  i just created my album using shutterfly (and all albums are currently 30% off).  i used a variety of cameras daily: my iphone, my nikon point and shoot, and my nikon d3.