Beautiful Layout by Paige Evans

Friday, January 2, 2026

I love a large stitched title! This page was made with Happy Haven, my last collection with American Crafts and my BEAUTIFUL for Stitching Cut File.
I chose 9 softer pastel patterned papers to cut out the BEAUTIFUL letters and then backstitched with white thread around each letter.
I popped the letters off of a light blue cardstock background and then tucked two photos into the right side.
Flowers, butterflies, bows, and buttons finish up this simple page!
SUPPLIES: Patterned papers, stickers, die cuts: Happy Haven at SBC or Happy Haven at ACOT; Cut file: BEAUTIFUL for Stitching by Paige Evans
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December 2025 Highlights

Thursday, January 1, 2026

December 2025 was busy & wonderful. Here's what we were up to.
A gorgeous neon pink sunrise.
It snowed December 4th, melted a few days later, and then was in the 70s most of the rest of December.
Winter wonderland. I only hope all the warm weather doesn't come back to bite us in the bum in March lol.

Nana & Papa took Fox & Jane on an excursion to pedal through Christmas lights. It looked so fun.
I want to go next year.
We finished putting up all the Christmas decorations.
Fox and his friends decided to wear ugly Christmas sweaters to school one day which warms my heart. Cuties!
We went downtown to Cherry Cricket for lunch.
We get sat in these family booths a lot :)
I got the yummy burger of the month with 5 golden (onion) rings.
Then we walked a couple blocks to Cherry Creek Mall to go shopping.
I got Chris a new yellow gold wedding band for Christmas.
And we got yummy chocolates.
We went to Tom & Margi's for Tom's birthday.
Fox treated us to some carols on the piano.
A Facebook ad got me.
Finally the evening arrived for A Nostalgic Night with Macaulay Culkin.
We drove downtown and walked to the Paramount Theater.
We watched a screening of Home Alone and then Macaulay Culkin came out to do a show.
He had lots of great stories. My favorite part was the way he talked about his wife (Brenda Song) and his two young sons.
We went to Chris's work party at an art gallery in downtown Littleton.
Yummy appetizers.
Mike & Shawn giving short'n'sweet speeches.
Delicious bundt cake dessert. It was a year ago on December 13th 2024 that I started to diet and exercise. But on this night, one year later, I did eat the dessert.
We went to a German Christmas market back in downtown Denver.
Apparently this market has been happening for decades but we'd never been before! We love going to new things.
As we were walking to the market we saw a bald eagle fly above, how cool is that?!
The stalls and booths reminded us of the Christmas markets we visited every year we lived in Germany.
I took a lot of pictures, enjoy :)
Siblings.
Usually we watch Klaus on Thanksgiving, but Stranger Things released that night, so we watched Klaus a couple weeks later which is one of our favorite Christmas traditions.
One Sunday we turned my happy scrappy place into a makeshift theater and Lego building workshop.
We upgraded the old European TV in the basement and gave it to one of Chris' coworkers. The night before we gave it to them is when we put it on my filming table and we watched football and built Legos all day.
I built a Christmas tree (it took 2 whole days lol) and Chris built a train. Amy slept all day.
And best of all? The Broncos won!
Me throughout the month.
Another tradition: driving to the Gaylord Rockies Hotel to visit the ICE exhibit.
Once again, I took a billion photos.
We have so many Christmas traditions - another is visiting the Hazard Gingerbread House!
It's the most epically lit house in the whole wide world :)
We went to Disney World with my mom - she's now a Disney parks convert!
I did a whole separate blog post of our Disney World recap HERE.
We did our Christmas Adam tradition which is all 4 families getting take out then eating together virtually.
We had just gotten back from Disney World that morning and were sick of eating out so we ate homemade spaghetti earlier (the time change threw off our meal schedule) and just ate popcorn with everyone. Then we read from the Coming of Christ book.
We skipped out on our Christmas Eve traditions because Fox woke up that morning and barfed, poor guy. I think he and I and my mom caught a bug at Disney World. Anyhoo, December 24th was the last night we opened up our Lindt Giant Advent Calendar! This is the kind of stuff we come home with when I go to Costco with Chris :)
After setting out the clues for the Christmas Treasure Hunt we ended Christmas Eve with the traditional "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" X-Files episode.
Fox & Jane with their Christmas stocking loot.
Amy & Sandy under the tree on Christmas morning.
Jane asked for crackers for Christmas, I kid you not.
She did NOT want to replace her phone with a brand new phone. I don't understand lol.
Chris made a delicious Christmas dinner.
The top left photo is the photo I brought to my nail tech and the other 3 photos are how my nails turned out. I loooved them!
I watched these 3 shows every week with the kids.
And of course, we watched the rest of season 5 of Stranger Things. It ended so good. I BELIEVE!
There were all kinds of promos for Stranger Things on the Christmas Day NFL games.
I have to give an update about our Broncos! Check us out!!
YESSSSS!
My screenshot to predict the Super Bowl :)
Who dat at the tippy TOP!?
LET'S GO BRONCOS!!
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Time for the monthly kitty update! They were canoodling in side-by-side buckets in our closet, such cutie patooties.
1) Sandy licking Amy, a very rare occurrence. 2) Switching feeding stations. 3) Waiting for me to do something interesting.
Amy acting like a Salvador Dali clock melting on my leg.
Amy has never done this before - she jumped up to the TV to try to eat the birdie lol.
Sweet Amy sitting in an empty LEGO box.
Amy throughout the month being her cute self.
One more of Amy, she always like to find the tallest position in the house for watching over her kingdom.
Sandy barely fitting in a bucket lol.
Sandy being Sandy.
Sultry Sandy. 
We love our girls!
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Onto the scrappy things!
Throughout December I shared my filled 6x8" window sequin album, (6) 12x12 layouts, and my December Daily 2025. Click on the links to take you to each post for all the details and to read more about these projects:
The best way for me to get into the Christmas spirit and in the mood to document our December is to bring out all my past December Daily albums. This is my 14th year of creating this special annual project. I brought Jane into my scrap room and told her to pick a year between 2012 and 2025 and she chose 2012 so we looked through that scrapbook and it was so fun. It's amazing to watch my kids grow up through scrapbooks.
You can watch flip throughs of all of 14 of my December Dailies in this YouTube Playlist.
I got 5 days in my December Daily for 2025 done before I decided to pause and release the kit & class with the promise to have the 2nd half of the class ready early in the New Year. Here are the custom numbers fussy cut out and collated into a cute bowl.
She so cute!
Here is a collage of images I used to entice people to buy the kit & class :)
My favorite page in the album is of course the handstitched intro page. Perfect for an ugly sweater shaped album!
Taking pics of the full kit.
Collating colorful bits.
Collating ribbons, trims & threads.
Bringing up all the bins of goodies from the basement.
Putting all the kits together.
Boxing up all the kits with my su"purr"visor.
Shipping all the kits. They sold out in about a day!! I'm so so so happy.
A Christmas tree tower of boxes. These are the 4x4 Halloween sequin albums and extra ugly sweater sequin albums on their way to be dropped off at the post office.
And that, my friends, wraps up an epic season of scrapbooking! Now let's take a look at what's in store for the first part of 2026:
Join me (Paige Evans) & Lisa Fonseca for two fun-filled days of virtual learning, crafting & creating at our TAKE NOTE VIRTUAL WEEKEND EVENT! Lisa is flying to Denver so we can both teach from my Happy Scrappy Place! We will use the Take Note collection by Simple Stories to create at least (6) 12x12 layouts, make a handmade mini album, fill a Sn@p Flipbook, and you'll have lots of leftovers for making even more amazing projects! Registration opens on Friday January 9th at 8am Pacific / 11am Eastern Time in my shop HERE - please note it says "SOLD OUT" but there will be kits available that date & time.
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And then, join me (Paige Evans) & Andrea Lake along with bonus instructor Lindsay Wahl for two fun-filled days of learning, crafting & creating at our CRAFTED MOMENTS WEEKEND! We will use my next collection with Pinkfresh Studio called Crafted Moments to make at least six beautiful 12x12 layouts, create 2 mini albums, and you'll have lots of leftovers for making even more bonus projects! Registration opens on Friday January 30th at 9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern Time in my shop HERE - please note it says "SOLD OUT" but there will be spots available that date & time.
And that's a wrap on 2025! It was amazing! I hope 2026 is just as great!
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Paige Taylor Evans © // Quinn Creatives DESIGN