It's Official!

My baby boy is turning ONE in a few days. This past year really has flown by.

Here is the party invite. Obviously, I smudged out our personal info. But here is another bit of trivia for you today. On the printed invitation, 12:00 p.m. is actually 12:00 noon. (I didn't change it on this one because I had already done all the smudging.) So, for future reference, 12 midnight or 12 noon are stated exactly as that, not 12 AM or PM. It's true ... I googled it.

We are so excited to celebrate this little guy's birthday with family and friends ... and cheer on the Tide.

project SCRAP 2011: February

Personally, I am shocked that I finished my two layouts for February on March 1st. That must be some kind of record or something. But, I am on a roll ... and Photoshop is so much easier to navigate when you use it frequently (not once every 6 months to make Christmas cards and birthday party invitations).

Layout #1

Layout #2

project SCRAP 2011

Before I started sewing (shortly after Claire was born), scrapbooking was my one true crafty love. I still like to scrapbook, but since my three little kiddos came along, there has not been a whole lot of that going on.

When Claire was born, I had all of my scrapbooking up to date. I made a family album for each year and I have even gone back and scrapbooked my high school and college years and Will's summer in Lake Tahoe with Campus Crusade. Claire's baby book was "in progress" before she was born!

Now, I am still working on Claire and David's baby books and Luke's is yet to be started. As far as our family books are concerned, 2006 is complete and I have started 2007. Needless to say, I am very BEHIND! And I may never catch up until my kids go to college!

In 2008, I switched to digital scrapbooking (and have printed very few pictures since then). One of my favorite websites for digi scrapping is The Shabby Shoppe. They are currently sponsoring project SCRAP 2011. The goal is to have a 24-page finished book at the end of the year (a two-page spread for each month). Even though I still plan to go back (one day) and do a full family book for each year, I thought I would do this to have some current pictures scrapped (and possibly a nice little gift book for the grandparents at the end of the year). The Shabby Shoppe makes it really easy and even gives you two templates to use for each month. All I have to do is add pictures and my own papers and embellishments.

Here are my two pages for January. Instead of kind of doing an overview for each month as the project suggests, I am just going to pick an event/holiday from each month and scrap about that.

I hope to have my February pages up by the end of the week. February's theme is Valentine's Day of course! I am excited to be scrapping again!

My Happy Place

Claire's old bedroom became my craft room this weekend ... or as I like to refer to it ... my Happy Place! Claire and David are going to share a room when the new baby arrives and the baby is going to take over David's current room/nursery.

That left Claire's old room open. Since it is the smallest bedroom in the house, it is not really big enough to make it a guest room. We moved all of my sewing stuff from the old guest room/Claire and David's new room and all of my scrapbook stuff from the bonus room into this room. (We will now be able to make a bigger play area for the kids in the bonus room.)

The sewing side.

The scrapbook side.

Clearly, I still have a little decorating to do. At the very least I need to remove Claire's name from the wall! I would love to hang some pictures and maybe put up a few shelves on the wall. I would also like to hang a bulletin board to store project ideas until I get around to doing them (which takes a while).

I found these lovely photos over at Creating by Cami. I have decided that to have an affordable craft room that fits all of your crafting needs, your husband needs to have some mad woodworking skills ... and mine does not.

I like the series of hanging boards above her sewing area.


And, I love her little ideas/inspiration clothesline.

Now, maybe I can actually finish Claire and David's baby books before baby #3 arrives. Sounds like a lofty goal since I have barely started. Looks like I need to sit down and make some realistic goals and get to scrappin'.

First Day of School

Today was Claire's first day of preschool and David's first day of mother's day out. We had a crazy morning getting everything together, but we finally made it to school and the kids had a great first day!

I stayed up really late last night making this cute poster for David's class. Apparently, I was so tired, I couldn't hold the camera straight to make the picture. I was finally able to put my scrapbooking skills to good use! I was pleased with how it turned out. This will be laminated and become a part of a class train that hangs on the wall outside David's room and later it will hang in his crib in case he gets lonely during naptime.

We snapped a few pictures at home before we headed out. I made the kids' outfits. I was also up late last night putting the buttons and ric rac on Claire's dress. Nothing like waiting until the last minute! They do look cute though, so it was time well spent in my book.

David's pants are a Kwik Sew pattern that I just bought. Theyhave the cutest pocket on the back (in red and white check). I just appliqued a plain white tee from Wal-Mart to match. Claire's dress is the Lucy pattern from Children's Corner with added applique and ric rac on the bottom. There are tons of ways to dress up this pattern!

Of course, we had to have a Dora lunch box. Claire was very proud of this little accessory. It was the first thing she showed her teacher when we walked in.

Headed inside ... needless to say, David was not thrilled about having to ride in the stroller.

Outside David's room. Believe it or not, that is actually his name he is pointing to ... and then he pulled the poster off the wall. Way to make a good first impression Dave. He went inside with very little fussing and was off playing before I got him signed in and headed off to Claire's room.

David with his teachers. Not the best shot but I was trying to leave before any crying ensued.

Claire outside of her new classroom.

Claire and her teacher. Another quick shot where Claire was more interested in what was on the table to her left. I think it begins with "play" and ends with "dough".

Yeah for school!

Happy Birthday America!

This is a digital scrapbook page I did today before the kids woke up with one of our pictures from last July 4th. We've had a fun, but busy weekend. I hope to have pictures of all the festivities up soon! But for now ...

Here's to all of the men and women who have fought/are fighting for the freedom that we enjoy every day!

I finally got around to a little digital scrapbooking

I have been up until the wee hours of the morning this week doing some online tutorials to learn how to better use my Photoshop program for digital scrapbooking. I am proud to say that I finally finished a page. Yeah!

This is from Father's Day 2008. David was only 2 months old! He has grown so much since then!

I copied this page from the sample in the digital kit, but I did manage to get every element on the page all by myself. Now I'm off to take a nap!

Scrapapaloosa 2009

I think I just made up a new word. But I like it!

Last weekend 10 girlfriends came to my house to scrapbook ... for the entire weekend! A special thank you to Will's parents who kept the kids for the weekend since Will was out of town until late that Friday night. And a special thanks to Will too for putting up with all of our gab on Saturday. He came home at 1am on Saturday morning to this:

(Dining Room) Melani, Nicole, Christi and Heather (our fearless leader)

(Living Room)

I didn't even photograph the upstairs, where we had 1o people sleeping on 3 beds, 2 air mattresses and a couch.

We had our first weekend crop in Gatlinburg in November 2005. It was so much fun that we decided it needed to be a quarterly event (when possible). We typically go to a lake house in Guntersville, Alabama, but it was BOOKED on the weekend that most people were available. So, I offered to host at my house, which was nice because I didn't have to pack up all my stuff and go anywhere.

We always joke about that first crop ... there was a lot of scrapbooking and not a lot of sleeping (and a lot of driving -- it took us almost 8 hours to get to Gatlinburg from Nashville due to traffic). We have digressed over the past couple of years with a lot less scrapbooking and a lot more plain old fun girl-time. I can't wait for the next crop!!

Here are some more friends.

Melissa and Kaisha.

Melissa, Me, Kaisha and Leann.

Me and Claire (Claire is my travel buddy to these crops when we have to go to Alabama).

Marsha and Claire. This was Marsha's first crop. I hope she had fun!

Man, we take up a lot of space. Look at all this crap. This was at the end of Day 2.

More messy.

A special thanks to our host Heather. She always brings extra supplies (she sells Creative Memories) and keeps us well fed. As you can see if the photo above, I was working on Claire's baby book. Yep, that is me on my way to the hospital to be induced (in 2006). I am WAY behind. Maybe I will finish this book before she heads off to Kindergarten!

My New Toy

I promise that I am going to post some photos of our Christmas festivities soon, but I have been busy putting up all the kids' toys and playing with MY NEW TOY. Adobe Photoshop Elements. I have been wanting a better photo editing tool than the one that came with our printer and I have also wanted to give digital scrapbooking a try. I have not printed any pictures from 2008, so my plan is to digital scrapbook this year and see how I like it. This is a cute calendar set I got at this site. Its sister site has some great FREE digital downloads as well. I hope to finish the other 11 months and get these things printed for a cute desk calendar (this page is approximately 4x5) for the beginning of the new year. What a great gift idea for grandparents too! I love it! I think I might have overdone it with 2 photos but the great thing is that I can edit it until I print it. I love it more! I hope to post some more pages soon. (It would go much more quickly if I had all of my photos organized and edited already!)