Happy BIRTHday!

On February 23, 2014 our sweet baby girl was born.

I go back to work in 2.5 weeks.  It's time I start her scrapbook!

40 Weeks Labor Day

I made it to the 40 week mark.  After 10 months of carrying this little girl, she was born on Sunday, February 23.  This photo was taken Saturday as we left for the hospital.  The pain may be too evident on my face!

38 Weeks

We are so close to the end but our baby girl is still holding strong.  Hopefully I can make it to the end without spontaneously combust.

Baby Shower!! (34 and 35 Weeks)

January 11, my friends Kristin, Nicole, and Julia threw me a wonderful baby shower.  I felt so special and blessed that so many people will love my baby girl!  I also made a page for 35 weeks.  I'm on weekly appointments at this point until Baby Girl makes her way into the world!

30 and 32 Weeks

The holidays have come and gone.  The last holidays without a little one running around.  The 30 week photo is in front of my Christmas tree while the 32 week photo is in front of mom's on Christmas morning.

Thanksgiving and 28 Weeks Pregnant

Boy was I looking forward to being pregnant during Thanksgiving!  A real excuse to eat a lot.  Sadly, I don't think I ate more than I did any other year.  Haha!

Silly Little Girl

I hit 26 weeks and my baby girl is starting to show off her personality!  Read the text on this page for the story!

Clean Bill of Health at 24 Weeks

We had a 24 week ultrasound because our little girl wouldn't turn around at the 20 week ultrasound.  They couldn't check her organs with her facing the way she was.  This time she was facing the correct way and we were told everything looks great!  We are so happy to have the good news.

She's also now big enough that you can sometimes feel her movements when you touch my belly.  But she doesn't like an audience and usually stops moving right when I tell Theo and Mom to feel her.  Stubborn child!

My 22 Week Spaghetti Squash

It's unreal to me that I can feel this little girl moving.  She's making her presence obvious, as you can see from my belly in this week's picture.  Enjoy!

Halfway There!!!

We have reached the 20 week mark in my pregnancy.  At my 20 week ultrasound we found out that we are having a GIRL!  We are all excited, but my mom is probably the most excited.

Pregnancy Weeks 16 and 18

Today I made scrapbook pages for my 16th and 18th weeks of pregnancy.  Click on the image to see the full size scrapbook page.

Pregnancy Scrapbook

I haven't posted on here in a long time, but I wanted to share my newest project.  Documenting my first pregnancy!!

Check out my first few weeks of album pages.

Seattle Honeymoon Pages Finished!

I am FINALLY finished with my Seattle scrapbook from January 2010.  I have been working on a page here, a page there for a year now.  It's not that it takes this long to complete 36 pages.  It's just that work got busy and I didn't have much time.  But school's been out for a few weeks now and I finished it!  I'm just going to share my two favorites from the end of the book.

This one is our last night in Seattle.  We ventured over to West Seattle where there is a beach with beautiful views of the Seattle skyline and mountains across the Puget Sound.  It was gorgeous.

This is the first page I've made using "stacking," which is a technique I found out about through my daily downloads.  I just staggered three different papers with varying degrees of rotation and added some elements along the side.  It came out pretty well for my first try if I do say so.

For my last page of the book, my intentions were to do another stacked page.  However, the color scheme I was using didn't match the "mood" of my last few pictures.  So I saved it to use another time.  I loved it so much, I couldn't just delete it.  I'm sure I'll be using it soon.  I'm sharing it here so you can see that my second stack came out so much different than this one (And I think better).  I like that I resized my top two layers of paper to be smaller than the base page before rotating them.  The 2nd page isn't rotated at all.  I think I'll use this method more often.  I also like the lace and scalloping that I used as an edge on this one.  I think this will make a good page layout for some spring or summer pictures.  I can't wait to use it!


My last page of my Seattle scrapbook are views of the skyline as the sun set .  The camera just can't capture how beautiful this view was!  But alas, I tried.

This page also isn't my favorite.  Maybe this is because I've seen what stacked pages can look like!  I just used a simple print page and matted photos and a matted text description.  The page looked too plain so I added the two bows and a few "staples."  Still not satisfied, I added the embelleshment on the bottom left.  I'm still not happy with this page....but it does look better.  I don't want to add more to it because I don't want it to get tacky.  Oh well.  It will do!

Hopefully I'll be scrapbooking and posting much more until school starts again.  We'll see....

Last Days in Seattle

The last day we were in Seattle, after going to the needle, we wandered the streets just to get a feel for Seattle.  The archetecture alone is beautiful but the hustle of the city makes it fun too.  Almost like walking the streets of New Orleans.  We saw neat sculptures and street performers.  So much fun.

This page highlights just that.  I wish I could take credit for assmbling the circles and frames and such, but I can't.  It's a bundle embellishment meant for making pages quickly.  The title is made of individual mint lettering.  It was a quick page to make but one of my favorites!

That evening, we rode over the bay to visit West Seattle.  This is said to have the BEST skyline views and the beach was nice too.  (more of that to come.

Before heading to the beach, we stopped at a viewing dock and captured the moment.  We wanted to be able to have photos of the semi-daytime and night time skyline.  So, later you'll see our photos from the way back to Seattle.

I can't decide yet if I like this page at all.  I wanted a romantic red, black, and white theme but I think the flowers pushed it too far.  But it was boring without them.  I honestly might end up remaking this page.  That's the joy of DIGITAL scrapbooking.  I haven't lost the elements that were used here and I don't have to go get the photos reprinted to make this page again. 

To remake or not to remake.  I just can't decide if I like it or not!

Enjoy,

Overlooking Seattle; Kerry Park

Day three in Seattle we made a visit to Kerry Park.  This was mainly a place for apartment dwellers to walk their dogs.  However, Kerry Park offers the AH-MAY-ZING veiw of Seattle downtown.  It was simply beautiful.  It was raining but we spent quite a while staring off at the view and being quite silly in the sculpture.  Did I mention that it was beautiful?!

To make this page I used round frames.  I love the way a round frame gives me a large enough picture to enjoy but also enough empty space on the page to fill with "stuff" that I can have fun with trinkets and journaling strips; as I did here with the strip "held in place" with the flower stamp and a button in the center.  To get the pictures in the round frame I select the layer that is the picture.  With the frame in place and on top, I erase that layer around the frame.  Using layering, I can erase and not worry about erasing the frame at all.  I need to find more frames that are circles so I can do this more often.

The second page I made for Kerry Park uses another erasing technique that I have been wanting to find the right pictures and layout to use.  For this page, I actually put the background ON TOP of the photos.  I used the eraser to erase only the background layer so that my photos would show through the space that I erased.  I have tried this a few times before but I never saved those pages because I was never happy with the effect.  This time, I like how it came out.  I used a word stamp at the bottom left to fill empty space and dedicate my affection for my husband.  (gosh that is mushy...shake it off, shake it off).  A journaling tag in the top right hand corner completes the page.

I hope you are enjoying seeing bits of our honeymoon in Seattle as much as I am enjoying sharing these scrapbook pages.  If anyone is reading that is.  haha

Museum of Flight - Modern Day Planes

Still day 1 in Seattle, we visited the Museum of Flight.  The outside area (which we visited first because it was about to rain) had a few planes you could actually go on and check out the inside.  We got on a British plane and JFK's Air Force One.  It a lot of American Airlines planes.  The most amazing plane was the HUGE Boeing 747.  I sure do wish we could have gone on a tour through the Boeing 747.

The first page shows the Air Force One and the British Airlines plane.  I staggered them and separated them so I could use individual letters to spell "Museum of Flight."  I used little airplane "stickers" to "hold down" the pictures.  The aqua of the background gives the appearance of the sky.

Theo really want to become the first non-United States Born President.  Since this would take a change of the United States' Constitution, he had to settle for the world of make believe.  He couldn't wait to get a picture of him coming out of Air Force One, waving like the president does.  We worked hard for this picture because, well, Yankees are rude and kept walking in front of us.  Haha, that would have never happened in the South.

This page, I kept simple to highlight the photo itself; since it is so special to Theo.  I used a more elegant background and journal tag to get the spirit of Theo's presidential term (haha).  The swirl corners were used to boarder the photo.  The page looked plain when I was finished so I added a vertical and horizontal stitching to add to the page.  I pushed them each towards the edge so the intersection would be off center.

The last page I'm sharing here displays the large American Airlines plane and the GIGANTIC Boeing 747.  I was almost literally looking straight up to get this picture.  I've never seen anything so big (That's what she said).  Theo, of course, needed to take a picture standing under the wing of the American Airlines plane.

On this page I used another blue theme for the reflection of the sky.  Again, I staggered and separated the pictures so I could use individual lettering between the two pictures.  I put cloud "stickers" on the corners of the pictures to act as double duty to "hold the pictures in place" and act as a background for the lettering.  Blue "gel" individual letters spell "giants" to highlight the extreme size of these planes.

The Seattle Underground Tour

On our first full day of our Seattle honeymoon we went on the Seattle Underground Tour in the morning.  That afternoon, we went to the Museum of Flight.  The pages I'm sharing today are a few of my favorites from the underground tour.

 The Seattle Underground Tour is just as it sounds.  The tour explains that originally Seattle was on a huge incline and sewage would literally run down the slope.  When a fire destroyed a lot of the city, they build the roads up so that the incline was not so steep.  I must say, this southern girl who is used to flat ground thought the incline was still VERY steep.  They built the streets up around the buildings that were still standing.  So a lot of the stores, lounges, etc, were below street level.

The first page shows a picture of a building pre-fire.  The streets after the fire were built up to the second level of the building.  At one point, we saw the original plumbing for a bathroom and it was about 5 feet up from where we were standing.  This page I kept simple; just putting a frame around the pictures and using a simple journaling strip.

The underground stores used "skylights" to let natural light shine into the store.  These skylights are literally built into the sidewalk.  This page shows the same skylight from the street level and the underground.  The purple glass shows up very pretty from the street level.  However, the skylights have not been maintained in the underground levels that are only used for the tour.  So they weren't so pretty from underground.

This page I used the same ribbon with a brass embellishment to create a layering effect with the pictures and the journaling strip.

At the end of the tour, there is an artifact "museum" and a gift shop.  The pictures and clipping of Seattle before and after the fire were shocking.  To see pictures of a major city burned to char is just crazy.  I couldn't believe a whole city could be destroyed by a fire that started in one building.

This page shows a SMALL collection of the pictures they had displayed of the fire.  I sized it to the width of the page so the picture would be the focus of the page.  I used individual letters to spell "Seattle fire."  To add interest, I put a locket and key hanging from the S and the e of Seattle.  I "erased" a piece of the loops so that the hanging effect would be more realistic.

On our walk back "home" from the tour, we saw a sculpture that caught our eye.  In fact, it may have been right outside of where we were staying....but I don't remember.  Anyway, I thought it would be funny if we had a picture of Theo "pushing" it across the ground.

I placed the picture on a diagonal and bordered it with a scalloped ribbon.  Under the picture I placed a journaling strip and a ribbon flower with a button center.

After we got back and ate lunch, we went to the Museum of Flight.  I will be working on the pages from the Museum of Flight this weekend.  Be watching for those pages coming soon.

Honeymoon Number 2 - Seattle

A housekeeping note....If you are running Internet Explorer 8, that is why the pictures are not showing up in my blog.  They do show up in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox....

Second, I took a trip to Office Depot today to start printing these pages so that I can start building my books.  The pages look so good and were cheaper than I thought to print.  I'm very excited.

I began working on my Seattle Pages.  I'm sharing two of them today.  The first one shows our first night when we arrived in Seattle on December 29, 2009.  I couldn't help but take a picture of the mountains out of the window of the airplane.  When we arrived at Seattle, we explored the block around the building where we were staying.  We found a coffee shop called "Tully's" that had a nice atmosphere.  Theo ended up going here every morning for coffee and breakfast.

This page was kept simple.  I placed 3 pictures, framed in gold, on the left side. I journaled about Tully's on a tag and finished the page with individual brassy letters.

After we had our coffee, we enjoyed the courtyard outside of Tully's and our building.  It had a beautiful fountain and a beautiful view of the nighttime city lights and buildings.  We did not go too far; we just enjoyed the block.  The three pictures featured here are in front of the fountain.

Used a circle of "pearls" to frame the pictures.  I elongated the frames to make them oval shapped and "erased" the photos to match the shape of the frames.  I used a paisley shape to be a background for my text.  A simple text block was used to type the caption.

Originally, I had a different background but it didn't work with the elements.  Theo picked out this bright yellow one.  Since I had not flattened the image yet, I was able to change the background very easily.

I'll have more Seattle pages to share soon.  Some may even cameo our friend Mullins who was staying in Seattle and was a great tour guide and friend.  We find it humorous that we spent our second honeymoon with our friend...but we had been married for a few months at this point....  Haha.

Enjoy,

Last of the New Orleans Honeymoon

First of all, I have found that, for some reason, on some computers you can not see the pictures I'm posting.  They show up on some computers as long slivers for whatever reason.  If you click on those pictures, you will be able to see them in a new window.  FYI.  In the mean time, I'll try to figure out why some of us can see the pictures and some of you can not.

This page is one of my favorites.  It is of Theo in front of Jackson Square.  I used a "rustic" background.  I framed the picture with a delicate scrolling frame.  I used the flowers with the jeweled centers to pop the corners of the picture.  Last, individual silver lettering announces our location at Jackson Square.

The day we were here, just to the left of the frame of the picture, there were great street performers.  They were playing music and dancing.  It was just fun to watch.

The last page I am going to share from the New Orleans album is our trip to the WWII museum.  This museum was fabulous.  I want to go back now that they have expanded it (or when they're done if they're not done yet).  It was just so amazing to see all these artifacts and experience the reality of a war I've only heard about.

I did not intentionally use a background that looks like it is splattered with blood, but in hindsight it may have been appropriate.  I used a frame set that put 4 frames on the edges of the page.  Once i put the pictures of artifacts and such in the frames, I spelled WWII Museum with individual letters.  The center of the letters were beige so I filled them with a chocolate color to blend with the frames better.  After, the page still looked empty so I added two individual camel colored frames with pictures.

Up next; Seattle Honeymoon.

Honeymoon Book - New Orleans Chapter

I have been working on a book for Theo's and my honeymoons.  But, I may have said this already.  Anyway, I'm almost done with our New Orleans section and I wanted to share a few of my favorite pages I've made for this one.  These are just a few...not the whole thing.

I made a lot of pages for our day at the aquarium.  For all the aquarium pages, I used the same background to tie it all together.  For this page, I could not find a frame for the pictures that I liked for this page....So I made one.  I used a "ribbon" to piece together in a hexagon frame and put the pictures together in a random shape.  I spelled aquarium with individual silver/scroll letters and used a "marble" to fill in blank space.

The next page is a few of our pictures we took with the animal figures throughout the aquarium.  It was fun to just be silly.  We had many more pictures of these poses, but I had to select a few...

For this page, I found a cute scroll frame to stagger the pictures.  A zig-zag ribbon cuts the page in half.  On the right half of the page, I placed a blue note page with curled corners on two corners.  I used a staple embeleshment to create the image that I stapled the two corners that are not curled up.  On the note I added a text box to create the caption, "The Kid in Me!"  I thought it was an appropriate caption since we were truly enjoying the aquarium as a child would.

The last aquarium page I'll share...I promise.  This one displays a few pictures of Theo "playing" in the aquarium and one picture of us in the shark jaw.  Theo was funny when he was petting the skark.  He was so scared!  I'm sure he kept putting his hand in and pulling it out fast before he could touch it.  When he finally touched it, he couldn't believe the texture.

I matted these pictures with a gel shape I found that had a border that matched the background but the main part of the shappe was a bright contrast. I used blue gel letters to spell "explore" but the letters blended with the background too much.  So I put a sheer rectangle behind it to make the letters pop.  I used a tweed bow at a diagonal on the page to make it appear that the date tag is being held in place by the tail of the bow. 

This page marks the end of the aquarium section of the scrapbook.

The last page I'll share today is from our visit to the children's museum.  We enjoyed this but decided that this will be more fun to come back to once we actually have children.

For this page, I used a background similar to the matting on the last page of the aquarium section.  I did this because we went to this museum the same day.  So, I wanted some element to tie these pages together.  I used a stitching element to make it appear that the "bar" of photos was sewn on to the page.  I used individual multicolor felt letters to spell the title.  It bothered me a little that the randomness of the colors created a pattern in the word "museum" but was completely random in the word "children's."  However, I did not change the colors because I liked the character of it all and if it were real elements, I wouldn't be able to.  So, I left it as is for "authenticity."  I finished the page with a "gift tag" explaining our visit.

Enjoy,