Goodbye to the Cricut Circle

A sad day for those of us who designed for the Cricut Circle. Today is our final day as designers working for Cricut. They have made some changes as to what is included in the Circle and the designers are now no longer needed. 

I have just loved designing for Cricut! It has been such an amazing opportunity and I have met so many wonderful people as a result of it. I think that is one of the hardest parts of seeing it come to an end--saying goodbye to a truly fabulous team where everyone has been so great to work with. I will also miss the Circle members. They have been such a warm and inspiring group themselves and I will miss getting to know and design for them as well!

I thought that today I'd share Claire's Room with you. I used my Cricut so much in putting it together for her and it seems like a good way to show how much I love (and will continue to love and use) my Cricut.

I wish I had thought to take before and after photos. This room used to be Spencer's nursery, and then for awhile all three boys slept in here with some bunk beds. The walls were blue on the bottom and had a brown stripe going around the room The top half of the wall was a cream color. Once upon a time there were cute animal decals and stars on the walls, but over the years the boys pulled those off in pieces and left the walls quite a mess. There were also several dings in the wall from the rough housing that naturally follows three boys with bunk beds. To say this room needed a little TLC was an understatement.

We started by painting the upper half of the walls a light creamy yellow, and then by adding bead board wallpaper to the bottom half. I LOVED working with this wallpaper! We picked up a couple of rolls at Lowe's and it made a huge difference in the feel of the room, it was also super easy to work with--going onto the walls with ease! Lastly we added some white chair rail around the room.

After getting the walls in shape I started by painting tons of shelves, frames, a dresser, and a cradle (not pictured) white. I wanted to paint the crib white as well, but being 8 months pregnant and knowing it was 90+ degrees outside ended my plans for that!

 So instead of painting, I got to work with my Cricuts and stated on the decorations. My favorite project was the vinyl decor for the walls. I used my Imagine and lots printable vinyl to cut out the images for the walls. 

 I looked at lots of options for vinyl decor online but couldn't find anything I liked in the colors I wanted, so I used my Imagine to print my images in the colors I wanted and some of my favorite cartridges (Walk In My Garden, Live Simply, and Hoot n' Holler) for the shapes.

I loved how it turned out and how much atmosphere it adds to her room!

Above her crib hangs her name made from Hobby's Lobby's Chip Decor and covered in papers cut to the perfect size with the Cricut Chip decor cartridge. It was so fast and easy to cut and cover these chipboard letters with this cartridge! I love it! The roses on the letters were made with the Cricut Craft Room Exclusive, Mother's Day Corsage.

I also used the Chip Decor Cartridge to cover these smaller chipboard letters again from Hobby Lobby.

On this side of her room hangs a ribbon and bow holder. 

I used the same cartridges as the ones for the wall vinyl to design it plus Simply Sweet for her name. Again, flood filling my papers with Imagine patterns helped everything to match.

On the shelf across from the crib are some wall art frames I made, again with the same cartridges as the rest of the room, but this time using up some old Chatterbox papers that I loved, but didn't have a good use for--until we found out we were having a girl!

Each frame is about 10" x 10" and came from the dollar store.

And lastly I also used my Cricut to make these pompadours. I cut hundreds of flowers out using the Mother's Day Bouquet Cartridge and pinned them to some Styrofoam balls.

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Thankfully I had it all finished up just in time for her early arrival! 

Thanks for letting me share her room, and for all the wonderful experiences designing for the Cricut Circle! I will miss it so much!

Bluebonnet Hike

Hi everyone! Just a quick share today of another of my layouts for Scrapbook.com. Back in March we were able to spend a few days camping with some family. We had a great time and one of the many fun moments was a hike that unexpectedly ended in a beautiful bluebonnet patch. I used the new Echo Park Sweet Day Collection  and my Cricut for the title.

The journaling reads: "One of my favorite parts of our camping trip was the afternoon hike we took. We picked a random trail to follow and it ended up being a beautiful hike! Little did we know we would stumble upon a gorgeous patch of bluebonnets at the end of it! It was fun taking pictures with the cousins together in the flowers, especially since it was the girls first time seeing a bluebonnet patch! 3/12"

Thanks for stopping by today!

Beach Blasters

Just before Claire was born we had a family reunion here in Texas. One of my favorite days from the reunion  was spent together at the beach. The cousins had a great time playing in the waves and building in the sand. They also had a lot of fun with these water guns.They spent a good amount of time trying (mostly in vain) to spray the seagulls who were intent on stealing our lunch. This made for a lot of fun and a lot of laughs as we adults watched the kids try to ward off these would be lunch thieves. 

The papers and stickers here are from the Echo Park Paradise Beach line and the title and sea horse were cut with my Cricut. 

The journaling reads: "When grandma packed these water guns for our beach trip I'll bet she would not have guessed just how much fun you cousins would have with them! You spent a good amount of our day at the beach using them to scare off the seagulls that seemed intent on eating our picnic lunch. I think you all thought that trying to blast the seagulls with your water guns was some of the most fun you have ever had at the beach! 06/12

Thanks for visiting today and have a great weekend!

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!