If Scrapbooking was an Olympic Sport!

If Scrapbooking was an Olympic Sport.. I think I could be a medalist!

We have two teachers having baby showers tomorrow, so.. you know it.. two scrapbooks!

First is the one for baby boy.  The desired color scheme was blues, greens, khaki and white.  I was thrilled when I found this paper!  In fact, it came in a little paperpack, so I bought two of them to get 12 sheets of matching cardstock and made the pages. The bonus here is that there were boy stickers with the paper pack!!

In the above picture, I used a ton of eyelets and put them in the polka dots at random intervals.

Can you see the buckle on the left picture? I love it!

These brad things are self adhesive. I love them. So easy!

The safety pins are holding on elastic!  It is really fun in person! I can just see this page about a Growing Boy!! Wouldn't that be super cute :) ?

The second album was for a baby girl.  The colors here were brown and turquoise.  This was harder!
But, I found a pattern that was great and went from there.  

 I love the whimsy yet elegant look of these two colors together with the silver!

 More of those self adhesive bradlets!

 The embellishment here is glittered clips!

 Ribbon on these!! I can't make an album without using ribbon!!

And finally, more sticky buttony things!

And there you have it. My favorite baby gift! Total time spent? Two hours. And no, I didn't make all the pages from "scratch." I used my Close To My Heart layout books for most of the pages, but I make a habit of ALWAYS using scraps to make more pages, so a few are my own spur of the moment designs.

ABC’s for a baby shower

So remember the family that got the baby boy to adopt and then it looked like they might not get to keep him… well, they have him and everything looks like they are his forever family!! So we are having a baby shower for them tomorrow at my house.  I wanted to do something fun and special, so I made this set of ABC’s.

The mom, Amy is an elementary teacher, so I figure she will appreciate the letters and can come up with something to do with them :)

Each letter is on it’s own piece of 6”x6” chipboard and I thought would be great as a wall hanging or clipped together with rings or something.  The backside of each letter is covered with paper as well.  They come together as a great mix and match album type thing. 

Originally I was going to have all the guests sign each letter and use it for a sign in sheet at the shower, but after all the work and since they are just so cute a friend and I decided that they were too cute for people to mess up! So now I still have to make the sign in page.. oh well.

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Materials are mostly from CTMH’s Animal Cookies line.  I LOVE these papers!!  I did add in a couple of other papers as I needed more pages. The alphabet is your standard teacher pop-out letters.

See and you all thought I was just taking it easy not doing anything!  I have decided that crafting with a 4 week old, a 4 year old and a 9 year old is really hard and will probably happen only in the middle of the night for quite a while.  

I do have lots of in-progress items that I am hoping to finish soon, but man am I tired! I have to remind myself to take it easy and enjoy these precious moments with baby Kylie because in the blink of an eye she will be 4 years old and not need me to hold her all the time.

And just in case you all needed a sweet Kylie Faith fix… here she is at 4 weeks.

Technique Tuesday: Oh Baby Box

As we prepare for baby #3, I am determined to get as many memories preserved as possible before her arrival. Given that I have yet to scrapbook or even print out pictures from my pregnancy with Lexi and she is closing in on five years old, I know that if I wait to work on this baby’s memorabilia, she could easily be 20 before it happens! So, to that end, I have worked to make my life easier and to preserve memories at the same time!

Here is what I came up with.  A few months ago, I created this box and file pockets and am doing my best to keep up!  Some of the weeks were easy and some I haven’t printed pictures yet (oh shock..)  However, on the whole, I am thrilled with what I have so far!

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My goal is that over the next week or so to get the box completed.  I have the appointment reminder cards and things like that I will add to the box.  I am not putting a lot on the pocket itself about my showers as I will scrapbook those events, but for now, the memorabilia can be stored in the box.  Then, if it takes me 20 years to get to scrapping the showers, I will have all of my memories together!

I am also going to make a few pocket pages for welcome cards and a visitor page to go in the box.  Looking back, I wish I had done something like this for Lexi, daughter #2..

Thankful Thursday: The gift of clothes and a good Doctor visit for Maddie

Coming into the home stretch of this pregnancy has me psycho in a bit of a tizzy.  You forget from one baby to the next how much stuff they need!  Well, you do when they are 5 years apart each time.

On Tuesday I was worried about the fact that we only had a couple of receiving blankets, 4 pairs of socks, a few sleepers and one t-shirt.  I just kept thinking of how often I was going to have to wash if that’s all the clothes we had.

Yesterday, this is what my sister Melody brought over!! 
No those aren’t diapers, they are ALL 0-6 months clothes!! Can you believe it??? We had tons of fun sorting them out and looking at everything.

Mel’s baby is a year old, so we have the benefit of her stuff.. at least until my baby outgrows hers.. :)

It was so amazing once we got everything into piles by size and type. You can not believe the gift it is to be given beyond measure!

If that wasn’t enough a friend of mine provided us with a pack and play complete with baby changer and a couple of very fancy toys!!

And last but not least, Maddie had her yearly well child visit yesterday and looks great!  She is right on target for all of her milestones and her blood pressure (what we have to watch most carefully due to kidney disease) was great! As her doctor said, she looks wonderful!  I am so thankful that we have learned how to manage her disease so much more effectively over this last year. We look forward to her continued good health in the midst of a chronic disease and are so thankful to have doctors who truly care about Maddie!

Celebrating with “the girls”

This morning I had the pleasure of having brunch with my mom, my sisters, my aunts, my grandmother, my mother-in-law, my daughters and my nieces.  It was quite the girl fest!

We were celebrating our baby girl that should arrive sometime before the end of August.

We all gathered at my sister Melody’s house, had a wonderful feast and then had a ball laughing at stories from the past.  The stories were supposed to be about a funny event as a parent.. but like many stories they evolve into sister stories.  When you are one of four girls and your mom is one of four girls, that makes for a lot of special memories.  Grandmother can get a story started and it all goes down hill from there :)

One days like this, I am reminded how truly blessed I am to have such a wonderful family. The bond of sisterhood that my mom and aunts have has now been passed down to me and my sisters.  How exciting to know that I am passing down the sisterhood tradition with my girls.  However, I must say, please God… just 3 girls.  Let my youngest sister Katy have the 4 girls!!

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A baby registry.. always a sticker shock!

So Doug and I were able to get a few moments without the girls today and we registered for baby stuff. You would think that since we've been doing this parent thing for a while now that we wouldn't be so shocked at the cost of baby items. But yes, we were "those" people at Babies R Us... We did settle on some items and got our registering done! I love the bedding that we found! It's not an exact match to what my inspiration was, but it is very close color wise and I love the soft flowers and the 3d butterflies! This is Angelica made by CoCaLo for Babies R Us.Here is the valance with the paper samples. No, the bright blue won't work, but the soft blues and browns still look really nice with the fabrics. The cranberry (or Vineyard Berry to CTMH people) and the sage are great together!!

It was fun to finally figure out something for this baby. Strange, but the valance is the only thing I have purchased. I have got to start getting with it! This baby will be here before you know it! I am 25 weeks!! Here is a picture of me from today :)