Welcome Connor!

My newest nephew, Connor, was born at 7:37 am today.  He's 7 lb 12 oz and 20.5 inches long.  I can't wait to meet him in person!

Time for a Reveal

The hardest part about a reveal is keeping layouts under wraps! E-scape and Scrap released two new collaboration kits this week - Doodlicious by Julie Mead and Ruth Davis and Summer So Fine from the Nifty Designer Series. They are both jam-packed with papers and elements, with enough variety that you create layouts without searching other kits for missing elements. I had a lot of fun working with both kits, here are the results:

Doodlicious - a fun kit filled with doodle-inspired elements, offered both in color and in black and white. To sweeten the deal there are quite a few matching papers included in the kit.

Layout 1 - Blessings Caught on Camera
Logan's first tooth picture shoot yielded just as many non-tooth related pictures as it did first tooth pictures, lol.


Layout 2 - It's Her First Car
Tabatha picking up her Honda Civic. I think this kit equally screams kids and teens, the doodles are so whimsical and really fit a variety of themes.



Summer So Fine - a collaboration kit created by all the designers at E-scape and Scrap themed around summer and the great outdoors, filled with papers, elements and even word art. There are a number of floral elements included in the kit and I focused my layouts on these.

Layout 1 - Bloomin'
This picture of John and his parents at Epcot's Flower and Garden Festival was one I have been planning to scrap since the moment I took it, and the elements in this kit fit so well with the floral arrangements in the picture.


Layout 2 - Topiaries
I had to do a second Flower and Garden layout, there were so many elements in the kit I wanted to use.

Baby Logan Is Here

We've been waiting for him all year! Baby Logan arrived on Monday, November 2, at 12:18. He was 7 lb 8 oz, 22 inches long, and entered this world via C-Section. And though she's still working through the pain, I know Nicole (and Dana) are just thrilled to have him with them at last. Dad and I drove up on Monday once we'd heard the news and spent the week getting to know him and spending time with the family.

I managed to (just barely) finish Logan's baby book before we had to head up to Alabama to meet him. I promised Nicole I would make his baby book, and after the length of time she had to wait on her wedding album I didn't want to show up without it. That being said, I am a true procrastinator and waited too long to start as usual. Luckily my creative mind works well under pressure. I went with a jungle theme to match his nursery. Originally I thought I would do a baby book like the ones you buy - fitting the first 7 years into one book. But that didn't really work out for me, lol, it was too overwhelming to get more than one year into the book. I'll just have to give them another book next year, to capture all the joys of the 1 year old baby. The book I gave them covers birth - 12 months. I'm really excited with how it came out - my initial thought was to use Disney's Jungle Book items, but just like with the nursery there are a shortage of actual Jungle Book supplies. I did find one set of stickers with Mowgli and Baloo that I used throughout. The rest of the supplies came from the animal section at Violette's. I chose 3D stickers to cover all the different jungle animals (EK Success and Jolee's "The Wild Collection"), animal print alpha stickers (Reminisce), and two pieces of patterned paper to compliment each animal (most of the animal patterned paper is from Reminisce's Safari line). Die Cuts With a View cardstock, both Fall and Neutral stacks, were my mainstay to work with these jungle animal patterned papers and embellishments, as well as Karen Foster and Junkitz brads and journaling cards from My Mind's Eye. There were other supplies used too, but for once I didn't take the time to catalog my supply list, I was too busy creating layouts. Here are a few of the pages that were included in the album:

The cover page - I've always loved these journaling cards by My Mind's Eye, so I had to include one of those. The colors in this lovely sunset paper inspired my color schemes as I worked on the book.

This two-page spread is dedicated to the day of his birth - the birth certificate or pictures can go on the left side, and pictures can go on the mats on the right. The calendar, from the Maya Road sheers collection that my friend Claire gave me, can be marked with the date of his birth and his and Nicole's hospital bracelets can go in the library card pocket.

When I was looking through my jungle purchases I immediately fell in love with the zebra paper for this two-page layout on Logan's first visitors. The herd of zebras just screams "Welcoming Committee" to me, and that's exactly what we were. The Creative Imaginations lined paper is attached to form a side pocket, where congratulations cards and other papers can be tucked.

The giraffe paper is one of my very favorites, the colors on it are so rich, and I paired it up with the glitter cardstock that I found. This two-page layout is for Logan's homecoming - the jungle nursery pictures should look great on here. Of course some more journaling cards were in order as well, this album gave me some practice on how to incorporate those into layouts.

In order to allow Nicole and Dana to capture important moments and events in Logan's first year, I felt I needed to include some strictly journaling pages as well. I used PowerPoint to create these chart pages - some of them have room at the bottom for pictures or memorabilia, such as the Hearing & Speech Page on the left, while some of them required all of the 12x12 area, such as the milestones for baby's first year on the right.

Here is Baby Logan:

And here I am with my newest nephew:

I'm back home now and I miss everyone already! Of course at the same time I'm glad to be home to see the rest of my family - it's hard to have loved ones spread across the country.