Janie,
I know the feeling! I just started in January scrapbooking and my Daughter is 21 so I also have tons of pictures. I am doing mine in cronoligical order, so I have birthdays, christmas, halloween, fun times etc. My vacation pics will be in seperate albums. After awhile I got real bored with doing birthdays and Christmas lol. But Christmas is fun, there is so much paper, stickers and stuff to select from.
I have done pics and matted them in the shape of ornaments and hung them down from the top of the page at different heights using green or red sticker strips and put some holly stickers at the top. Let the paper and stickers be your guide, also, Scraplink.com has oodles of layout ideas.

Happy scrappin and welcome to the addiction!

Pam

There are a lot of great papers that you just insert your cropped photos into the open spaces. The one I used still had plenty of space for journaling, too. They still look great and it saves a lot of work. You may want to slip one in here and there since you have 20+ years worth! Might break up the monotony for you.

I have also seen a paper piecing pattern for a stocking that was patchwork Christmas papers. Instead of a few of the pieces they had three or four pictures. I can't remember where I saw it, but there's a few places I can look. Even if I can't find it, I think this would be pretty easy to do. Just draw a simple stocking shape that takes up most of the page. Crop a few pages into wedges, triangles, etc. that would fit on the stocking, leaving plenty of space between them. Then use assorted Christmas patterned papers to fill in the spaces to complete the stocking. Finish with holly leaves or whatever around the edges. It sounds confusing, but it's hard to explain. If you can picture it in your head from my explanation, you can do it. I'll look for the pattern and if I find it I'll post it. Good luck and happy scrappin'!
-Sarah

Sarah,

I think I know what you mean from your explanation--sounds cute. I have several pics of the kids emptying their stockings, reaching for them, etc. and this would be a great way to use those, plus it would save the scraps from a lot of the patterned papaer that I use for mats, etc. Thanks!
Janie

I found the picture! It is in the More Than Memories book- edited by Julie Stephani. It is a great ideas book- I've seen it at Michaels and my lss, but I checked it out from my library. It's on page 45. There's a really cute wreath idea a few pages later. Lots of other great ideas, too. There's a More Than Memories II with a ton of great ideas, too, but I didn't see any Christmas layouts.

I couldn't remember where I saw it so where I started was with a couple of favorite websites. There's a lot of neat ideas on these two sites, too. Enjoy! Good luck and happy scrappin'!

Here's the two sites:

gracefulbee.com http://www.scrapobsession.com/christmas.shtml

They both had a bunch of good Christmas ideas with pictures of the finished layouts.

-Sarah

Dear Janie,
I did one of my daughter where she was standing with her hands behind her back so I traced around a wood craft pair of angel wings and put them behind her, it turned out cute, on another one of my son I had cut the top of his head off with the camera angle, so I mounted him on some paper with a santa wearing a long hat, then I paper pieced the same looking hat together and put it on my son's head thereby hiding the part where the picture ended, and making it look like the shot was complete.. I have not done too many Christmas photos either, but if I see any good ideas I will let you know. Penny