Crafty Christmas gifts

I have grand & glorious plans to get a bunch of homemade gifts done this year. I want to do a clipboard or two, some small albums, an altered notebook, some calendars, and a shadowbox. Of course I really need to do another stained glass sweatshirt (for my grandma) and the fleece robes for the boys that my parents bought the fabric for last year. Yikes. It's still sitting in my closet.

I also have these little 7x7-inch albums that I have done for Garrett and Evan. They are each 25 2-sided pages, beginning with the first official portrait from the hospital and ending with a shot of them with their kindergarten teacher. In the middle are the birthdays, the important people, the Halloween and Christmas photos, the families, and lots of everyday photos. Spencer will be the "Extra Special Person" in his classroom the week of his birthday (January 12) and I have not started his book yet. He wants to display it in the classroom that week, so I need to get moving. So that is percolating in my brain and I'd really like to get started on it but clearly the other items have priority.

Maybe when my mother-in-law is here after Christmas I will have a day to hide in my scrap room and get it done quickly.

I did a couple albums a week or two ago -- used plain chipboard, cut it to size with an X-acto knife, and covered it with patterned paper. Cut pages to size out of cardstock, and took it to school to use their comb binder machine. I LOVE that thing! The comb bindings are available at office supply stores (I could only find black) but on ebay they have every color under the sun.

As an aside, on the pastel-ish one, should the flip flops be coral/lime or periwinkle/lime? I can't decide -- what looks better?