I Have Such A Lovely Little Girl!

I hope you don't mind a bit of a photo overload today! 

Many of you know I used to do newborn photography, but life got super busy and I had to stop a couple of years ago. Well, I made an exception for my own daughter and over the weekend I had a marvelous time taking lots of photos of her. I hope you don't mind me sharing a few (okay more than a few) of my favorites today.

I found this basket at Joann's a couple of weeks before she was born and I just knew I had to find a way to work it in. I love how these shots turned out!

Big yawn!

Thanks to Kristen Baker and the many lovely ladies at my baby shower who gave and made some of these lovely hair accessories! They were perfect for this shoot!

Claire already loves the quilt her grandma made her. She found it to be a perfect spot to take a nap!

Some of you might recognize this basket! It has held many little babies in it before Claire!

The pink afghan was made by my grandma for me when I was born. I was so happy to still have it and use it with Claire! 

I could kiss these squishy cheeks all day long!

Okay, enough for now! Thanks for letting me share her!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Months

Well we didn't quite made it to 9 months along, more like 8 1/4 so these photos really do capture me at my biggest ever though at the time my brother took them for me I thought I had awhile still to go!

This layout uses the new Echo Park line Sweet Day, and was one of my June layouts for Scrapbook.com.

The journaling reads: "It has been so fun to have older children to experience this pregnancy with. You boys have been so fascinated and excited about Claire joining our family. Each night you pray for her and kiss my belly goodnight. You boys get excited to feel her kick and to remove a link from our paper chain count down, you also pepper me with questions about how big she is and what she looks like. I loved having your help to paint Claire’s room and my heart melted when you Ty, told me you were saving your allowance to buy her a doll. Claire is so lucky to be getting such wonderful big brothers! 6/12

Thanks for stopping by!

Wow! What An Unexpected Weekend! (Baby Story Inside)

Well, for anyone who hasn't heard, we started Friday morning as a family of five and by Friday night we were a family of six! For those interested, here is the story.

With the last two pregnancies I have had a lot of false labor towards the end, usually starting around week 34-35, some very intense contractions and some more simple Braxton Hicks. Sometimes they are close together and rhythmic and other times random. This is highly annoying and makes it hard to know when these babies of mine will arrive--plus it tires me out and makes life at 8 months pregnant pretty miserable. Still on Friday at 36 weeks I was convinced that despite all the false labor we had at least 1 more week to go. I went to my morning OB appointment for a regular check up and expected that afterwards I'd come home and Marc and I would do the last little bit of baby prep (pack our hospital bag and install the car seat) before an early celebration of our 12th anniversary that night. Little did I know then that I wouldn't be coming home for a while and that maybe I should have listened to the prompting the day before to get the hospital bag packed!

My appointment seemed to be going well, not much dilation despite the contractions, baby's size and position looked good and we were almost to 37 weeks. The only concern was that her heart rate was little fast. My OB decided to monitor her heart rate and my contractions there at the office for a bit to see if she would settle down after some time went by. Well an hour went by and she really didn't settle down at all, so off to labor and delivery I went for some more monitoring. I was pretty sure that after awhile she would settle down and that labor and delivery would send us home, but I called Marc to let him know I was going to be a little bit longer and that just maybe he should check to see if my parents were around. 

Thankfully they were because after an hour or so of further monitoring at labor and delivery my Dr. came over to tell me that she thought all my false labor was putting too much stress on little Claire and that we were going to be having her today!

I was extremely surprised and quickly called Marc to explain. I only had about 1 minute to do so before a bunch of nurses came in and started getting me prepped for an induction. I was a little bit worried about how fast things might go as Spencer's labor went extremely fast once I reached 4m in dilation. I wanted to be sure Marc was there and explained my hope for an epidural--something I missed with Spencer because of his speedy arrival. My Dr. was happy to wait for Marc to arrive before breaking my water and starting the induction. It turns out I didn't have to worry so much because getting to 3cm took forever. 

Well, not forever, but about 4-5 hours which seemed like forever. We had to induce slowly to make sure she wouldn't go into further stress, so that took quite awhile longer than a typical induction. They kept coming in every so often to up the medication. We were beginning to think we wouldn't be having her until Sat. when things suddenly took off. I went from 3cm to fully dilated in about 40minutes. Which, let me tell you, was lots of fun (not), especially since my epidural wore off on my right side. Thankfully the anesthesiologist came back in just before delivery and fixed something so I had some pain relief for the three or so pushes it took to deliver her. 

And she was perfect! She weighed in at 6lbs and 8oz, and measured in at 20 inches long. It took about 2 seconds for her to capture our hearts and we are certainly smitten with her! 

 

 

We love our little princess!

Spring Choir

In January Ty came to me to ask if he could join the school choir. I was completely taken by surprise. He had never shown much interest in singing before and had a difficult time singing in key! However his music teacher at his new school is a very fun and sweet lady that Ty has really come to love. She has made music and singing something that Ty really loves now and I'm so glad she convinced him to join the choir! Amazing the difference a good teacher can make in how much a child will love something! 

All spring Ty went to early morning practices and had several performances. We loved going to all of them and were so proud of Ty's hard work and improvement. Ty is very excited to start choir up again in the fall!

So here is my layout about it. It uses my new favorite Basic Grey line PB&J!

There are also several Echo Park Stickers and some American Crafts Letters on this layout. 

The journaling reads: "It really surprised me Ty, when you announced that you wanted to join the school choir this year! I’m so glad that you did though! It has been so fun to watch you learn and enjoy this new hobby. We have loved attending your concerts and seeing you develop a love and passion for music. These photos are from your spring concerts including the children’s music festival where your choir earned a gigantic trophy that you were very proud of! Spring 2012"

Thanks for stopping by today!

A Cricut Quilted Christmas and a Stamping System Winner!

Hi everyone! Sorry for the long break, we had a family reunion last week and I thought I'd be able to sneak a couple of posts in during all the fun we were having, but things were so busy and we stayed up waaaaaay too late for me to even think about blogging! Anyhow I have a couple of things to share today and up first is a set of stocking hangers I created for the Cricut Blog with one of Cricut's newest cartridges, A Quilted Christmas.

I saw a cute idea to make stocking hangers out of 2x4s on Pinterest and thought that idea would be a perfect  base for these adorable cuts from this cartridge.

In addition to the Quilted Christmas cuts, I added some flowers to the base of each stocking holder made from the Flower Shoppe Cartridge.

I cant wait to display these along with some new stocking this Christmas--now I just have to make 4 more for the kids stockings to hang on! 

Here is a quick look at a few of the other super fun cuts on this cartridge.

Here is another project I made, a Christmas card.

I love the beautiful and elegant card feature on this cartridge. The bottom of my card shows one of these card cuts. 

The sentiment is cut from the 'Tis The Season Cartridge by Creative Memories.

The patterned papers, and ribbon for these projects are all by Chatterbox, and the Cardstock is all by Creative Memories.

And now on to the winner of the Stamping System giveaway by Creative Memories. The random winner is:

Congrats Sunnie! I hope you have a great time creating with them!

Thanks for vising today everyone!

In A Growth Spurt?

Happy Friday! Today I just have a little share of a layout I did for Scrapbook.com with some of the new Echo Park Note To Self line. It's about Spencer and his ability to fall asleep just about anywhere when he is in a growth spurt. He normally doesn't take naps, but now and then he will start a period of falling asleep in the late afternoon no matter where he is!

The journaling reads: "I can usually tell when you hit a growth spurt Spencer, not only because I see a sudden need to up-size your wardrobe, but also because you start to take little naps all over the house when I least expect it. Last fall I found you asleep on the couch many times, usually right in the middle of playing on your ipad or watching a movie. I even found you sacked out one Sunday afternoon on the couch with grandpa. It was always funny to see what position you would end up in before I carefully rearranged you. Fall 2011

Thanks for visiting...and be sure and comment on the below post by midnight (CST) tonight for a chance to win the Stamping System prize. It's a really great prize!!!!  

Have a great weekend!

Big Stamping Giveaway!

Good morning everyone! I'm really excited about my post today as I have a chance to giveaway an entire Creative Memories Stamping System  prize package and show some examples I made with it!

Stamping is something new for Creative Memories and is something I was really excited about when I first heard that they were coming out with a new stamping tool. My Creative Memories tools are always at the top of my favorite tools list because they are such high quality. They are always very thoughtfully made--and made to last! This new one is no exception. I love it!

Here are a couple of cards I recently made with it.

And here is a look at the system. It starts with their stamp positioner which make is super easy to get perfect stamped images every time--no flaws!

The stamps come in four different sets, each with a different theme.

Be Young, which matches their awesome Be Young line and new Be Young Cricut Cartridge.

Birthday Set

 For Her Set

 For Him Set

 The stamps can be used by themselves or paired with an outer ring. The stamp pads come in solid colors or in paired colors like one in blue and green to make it super easy to stamp a double color image.

Here you can see I used the stamps separately, and matched with the outer ring. These stamps are from the Birthday Set.

And here is a look at the for him set. I used one stamp all in a row for a border across my card and then a paired set on top of that, and one more at the top of the card.

Now the fun part! I have an additional set of everything pictured below--all four stamp sets and the stamper, plus four additional stamp pads (Chocolate Brown, Aqua/Cactus, Honey/Berry, and an additional Black) value of $142--to give away.

All you have to do is leave me a comment below and I'll enter each person into a random drawing for this set! This drawing will close at midnight on Friday 6/15/12.

Thanks for visiting today!

Cricut Birthday Box

Wow--the last first part of June is just flying by. We have had such a busy time--first with the end of school activities and now with settling in to a summer routine. It hasn't left much time for blogging, but I'm back today to share a project I did for the Cricut blog a little while ago. 

I had an assignment to use my Cricut to design some birthday gift wrap. This was perfect for me as it always seems that when I need to wrap something up the only type of wrapping paper I can find is Christmas or super hero themed (ah, life with 3 little boys). This assignment gave me the chance to make something far away from both those themes so next time I need more "girly" wrapping, I"m all set!

For this gift box I used one of my newest favorite cartridges, Tags, Bags, Boxes, and More 2, to cut the Pizza box. I used the pizza box as the base for my gift box. The finished size of this particular box is around 6″ square by about 1 1/2″ tall, which makes it a great box for many small gifts. To make it that large I did cut it in two pieces as opposed to the main cut which makes the box in one cut, but makes a much smaller box (this cartridge is designed with this feature to make this easy).

I wrapped the box with two bands of patterned paper which I stitched together with my sewing machine and then wrapped with white crochet thread. I cut the “Celebrate” sentiment from the Paper Lace 2 Cartridge and added it to the paper band with pop dots. A little bit of Stickles glitter on the sentiment gives it more sparkle.

Next, I cut two flowers with the Art Philosophy Cartridge and added them to the left of the sentiment. Two leaves from the Mother’s Day Bouquet Digital Cartridge are tucked behind the flowers and both the leaves and the flowers got a little brushing of the Stickels glitter for added interest.

Lastly, I decided to add a little tag to the bottom right with an additional sentiment. I cut the tags from the Art Philosophy Cartridge and the the font is from the Street Sign Digital Cartridge. I added the tag and the tag layer to the gift box with pop dots for added dimension. 

It was a very fun project to make and I can't wait to have a reason to give it away!

Thanks for visiting today!