Its cold, and I'll cry if I want to

Honestly, it annoys me when people say "Everyone needs to stop complaining about the cold,  People in (insert cold place here) deal with this all the time! And they don't have heat." Blah Blah Blah, Guess what, I don't live in that god forsaken cold place.  I live in a suburb right outside of Chicago. Weather.com says the average High for January should be 31, with the average low at 16.  December should be 35 and 21 respectively.  I want to be in a place where the average temperature falls between high teens and freezing.  Not the insane weather we have gotten.


Weather.com also says the average precipitation should be 1.73 total inches in the month of January and 2.25 for December.  (By the way, 10 inches of snow = 1 inch of precipitation.)


Do you want to know what January was like??? The average HIGH temperature has been 24 degrees, but the average LOW temperature is 6 degrees.  That's a huge difference.  Its been, on average, 10 degrees colder this year. While I don't know what data they use for average, I'm sure its more than the past 30 years.  And lets be honest, the past few years have been warm.   AND, none of this includes windchill.  I don't know what the windchill averages has been, but it has been a crazy windy month.


Guess what else, we broke 2 records this year for coldest temperature and tied another, 1 record was set in 1988, another in 1977, and the record we tied??? 1955.  Do you see what I'm trying to say?  It's been CRAZY cold.  So cold that we have broken/tied records that have been set for 59 years!


Lets compare precipitation now... We have had 4.88 inches of precipitation in the month of January.  That's almost 3 times the AVERAGE.  And guess what, there's a 60% chance it'll snow tomorrow. God only knows what that's going to be like. Oh and December?? also much higher than the average...


So lets go back to comparing warm places with cold places... On January 10th (this year) got 8.5 inches of snow... that was a lot.  And yesterday, Atlanta got 3 inches of snow, which is a lot for them.  Atlanta had 1200 accidents because of that snow, and you don't see people saying it was "no big deal."  Because guess what, while 3 inches of snow may not be a big deal for Chicago (it happened 5 times this month alone), its a HUGE deal for Atlanta.


I choose to live in Chicago, so when we have a 60 degree swing in temperatures of the span of 3 days, Its not a shock... That's what Chicago is like.  But I don't live in the North Woods, or Russia, or Alaska or any other cold place, I live in Chicago.  And you know what?  I'll cry about the snow if I want to.

Christmas Cards - Pinterest Inspired

What to do with all those Christmas Cards?  That's the main question.  I found these photos on pinterest -

      

They gave me some inspiration.  I love the old book idea, however I find it difficult to deface a book.  I may incorporate that into my Christmas cards later.

I was not a fan of keeping the Christmas cards separated by year, because I wanted to group them by families.  How neat would it be to be able to flip through the Christmas Card "book" and see each families Christmas Cards over the years. :)

So here is what I did.  I bought binder rings - 1 inch in diameter size.  Honestly, I would recommend going bigger than 1 inch.  Especially if your only creating 1 "book" as mine is pretty full already and I only have 3 years binded. If your doing each individual year, 1 inch would be perfect.

Here's my final-ish product.  It's awaiting a cover, either a book cover, or just something printed.   All in all, the whole project took 20 minutes?  The longest part was hole punching the cards. :) A very easy task, and now they are stored with the Christmas Decorations!