Baby and me...

I decided to scrap those awesome 4D u/s shots we got recently by showing what both me and baby looked like at 31 weeks. I'd say baby is faring a lot better than me LOL! This is a Fancy Pants layout, and the patterned paper and transparency are both from the Road Show line. Those alpha rubs are some of my favorite FP rub-ons ever! And that flower near the photo of me is actually from a set of FP rub-ons from way back when, and I thought it worked perfectly with the color scheme - was trying to incorporate blues and pinks ;-)

Thanks for all the supportive comments about us not finding out baby's sex. You'd be amazed how many people make it clear that they think we're crazy lol. To each his own, right? Oh, and Jessica asked about names. So far we have Lucas and Emma in first place, but knowing Tony and me, we could change our minds at the last minute... we did with Chloe! We didn't know her sex either and had decided she would be Maya if she were a girl. Well, at the last minute, we changed to Chloe, and poor Noah was so confused. For the first few weeks of Chloe's life, he was calling her baby Maya!!

Happy Friday, everyone! Had a great day here visiting with old friends with high school that I haven't seen in years. So much fun! Hope you all have a fantastic weekend :-)

Getting ready for baby...

I LOVE not finding out the sex of my babies. It truly is an amazing experience for us, each and every time. I know being surprised isn't for everyone, but I wouldn't do it any other way for us. However, one of the challenges is not being able to really set up the nursery before the baby gets here. I am not a gender-neutral kind of gal, so I usually wait until I know my baby's sex to buy the bedding and decorations. Since our babies always stay in our room for awhile, anyway, it's not such a big deal, but I do get eager to get things going ;-) This time around I decided to make this sign for baby's door. I thought the blues would work if it were a boy, and I thought the flowers and beads would make it work if it is a girl. Of course, Tony things it's way too feminine, lol, so I think if it's a boy, I may have to take the beaded hanger off ;-).
Papers and letters are American Crafts, stickpins are Jenni Bowlin, and I got the wooden plaque and beads at Michaels.

So, it's CHA time! I'm so jealous of my friends who are there, as I had a blast at the winter show! Maybe next year! I'm loving lots of the peeks i'm seeing, though, so I can't wait to get my hands on some of the new stuff coming out :-)

Hope everyone's week is starting off well!

One more...

Whoopsie. I totally forgot that I had one more JBS Playdate layout to post. Let's chalk that one up to pregnancy brain (yes, I use that excuse for everything ;-) I took these pics at a playdate we were on a few weeks ago at the tire park that we love.
This is a short and sweet post, but I couldn't leave without posting some of my fav pics from the splash park last week.
My mom joined us :-)

I absolutely love this one.
And now i'm off. It's just too freakin' hot here for me to concentrate on any one task for very long lol. It was 105 yesterday! I think mother nature has confused Maryland for Arizona. I sure hope SHE gets rid of her pregnancy brain soon ;-)

Some Jenni Bowlin loveliness!

When is working with JBS products ever not lovely?? I seriously adore Jenni's products - there has never been a release that I did not love! This Playdate line was no exception. Not only was I lucky enough to have a sweet friend send me some (thanks again, Doris!), but JBS sponsored some of us on the AMM DT this month. So... I got to have fun playing :-)

I love this photo of Noah. We had one of those butterfly release kits this spring, and when we released the butterflies, this one did not want to say goodbye. He decided he'd much rather hang out on Noah's finger :-) To make the butterfly masks, I (carefully) handcut the red rub-on away from its packaging. I then used the negative images of the packaging for masks.


I also love these photos of the kids. These were taken by Cheryl Ametewee (thanks, Cheryl!) on our recent outing to Baltimore.


I can't believe this week is almost over - it has totally flown by! We've had fun keeping busy this week with swim lessons, a birthday party and movie outings (we saw Despicable Me today - very cute!). Oh, and thank you to everyone for the sweet comments about Baby Taylor's newest photo - I think he/she is pretty cute, myself ;-)

One more with the July AMM kit...

Hi friends! Happy Sunday :-) Before I forget, I had several people ask me who makes the cloud pp that was on my layout from my last post - I guess there are other cloud paper freaks out there besides me ;-) Anyway, it's from My Mind's Eye, for those of you who liked it.

This is the last layout I made with the gorgeous AMM July kit. I used some older pics of my kiddos on this one - I like to mix it up sometimes lol. I find I tend to scrap current stuff most of the time, but there are still sooo many pics from years past that have never been scrapped, so I do try to go back to those sometimes, too.

So, my appt went well the other day. Baby is measuring big (no surprise there!), but not overly so, so they are not concerned. And since i'm having a scheduled c/s and don't have to push this baby out, it doesn't bother me any lol. They did switch the machine over to 4D towards the end, and I got some amazing views of my baby! I never had a 3 or 4D u/s with my other two, so that was SO cool for me! It's incredible how much you can actually see! Anyway, those of you who are friends with me on Facebook may have already seen this, but here is my favorite shot of my little one...

Hope you all are having a great weekend and staying cool!

More nostalgia...

I think, until recently, I had only ever scrapped one photo of myself as a baby, and that was comparing my baby photo with Chloe's. But I recently found the photo I scrapped the other day, along with this one, and I was inspired to scrap some baby me layouts. This photo has actually always been my favorite baby photo of myself - there's just something about it that I love. And my uncle took it, which I think is cool :-) Anyway, I used the awesome July AMM kit for this one, too.
I cut out a bunch of the clouds and then popped them up for some dimension.

Oh, and the journaling says, "oblivious to the world, my hand in a box of food. Yep... still me!" Tee hee.

Busy week here with Noah's swim lessons every day and he's now taking a boys hip-hop class one night a week too. We've been doing lots of playdates lately, too, to keep ourselves busy. Tomorrow I have an ultrasound in the morning, my ob appt, and then lunch with my hubby. :-) Did I mention that at my last ob appt two weeks ago, I was measuring 4 weeks ahead?! I've always measured ahead with my other babies (usually by about two weeks), but never by this much! My ob thinks this is going to be another biiiiig baby. I'm still not quite sure how Tony and I, two very average sized people, make such big babies!! Anyway, tomorrow is another u/s to just make sure it's a big baby and that there's not excess fluid or something like that. I'll keep you all posted ;-)

Happy hump day, friends!

Do you use sketches?

I will admit, it took me a long time to warm up to using sketches. I think my problem was that I like to come up with my own designs, and I almost felt like it was cheating to design something based on what someone else created. Although I still don't use them a lot, I have come to really enjoy using them because I now realize that I can still make a layout totally my own, even with a sketch. I usually find an aspect of the sketch that inspires me, and I use that as a starting point to go out on my own.

This month's sketch at AMM is by Tonya Dirk, and you can see the elements that I ran with.

I loved the verticle design on the left, but instead of using a bunch of small photos, I chose to use my journaling cards as embellishments in those spots, and I used just one photo in the spot where the title was designed to go. Instead of using three circles, I enlarged one and used it as my title block.

It's become a challenge for me to figure out how to take elements of a sketch and turn them into my own creation :-)

Btw, that photo is from last summer - I don't think Noah looks that different, but Chloe looks like such a baby to me!!

Anyway, i'm having a blast with the kit, and I knocked on another two layouts today (well, aaaaalmost two lol). At this rate, i'll have lots of blogging material (but I still don't think I can keep up with Doris).

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

AMM July kit!

Oooh, this month's kit is so fun and summery - I love it! I found this photo of me as a baby chilling on the beach, and this kit was perfect to scrap it :-)
I added some handstitching to the fun sun sticker, placed a BG jelly in the middle and then popped it up for some dimension.I can't get the July AMM kit photo to upload straight for some reason (it keeps turning 90 degrees - weird!), but you can check it out and buy it here.

Hope everyone is having a good week! It's still sweltering here - been around 100 most of the week (today we got a break - it was only in the low 90's lol), and i'm just trying to stay as cool as possible! Happy Friday, friends!

Happy (belated) 4th of July (and a layout :-)

Before I show you some of my favorite pics from 4th of July yesterday, I wanted to share this layout using (mostly) the "Wishful Thinking" line by Fancy Pants. These pics are from Chloe modeling her new leotard this past fall :-)
Now, onto the 4th. We celebrated our nation's birthday with our friends and neighbors yesterday. The kids had a bike parade, and then we enjoyed a fun party before checking out the fireworks. It was a great day (despite the nearly 100 degree temps!) :-)

Here are just a few of my fav pics that I took:



I hope that the rest of you who celebrate the 4th had a wonderful day full of good food and good company!

AMM Blog Hop!

Welcome to the Blog Hop! The hop starts today, Friday July 2nd through Sunday July 4th. Each blog will be showcasing a different project inspired by summer and all of its glory! Hop through each blog to check out the instructions for creating each project, then choose a project to recreate. Post your project in the AMM gallery and in this thread. You will have until Friday July 9th at midnight to post your project to be eligible to win an Echo Park Collection pack! More than one project created earns you another chance in the random drawing. Please be sure that projects are created especially for this contest. Good luck!

For my project today, I am going to show you all how to make a pinwheel. I made mine for our annual 4th of July parade that is held in our neighborhood, as I figured my kids would love to hold it (and hopefully it will be a windy day lol).

For the pinwheel, you will need:
a square piece of patterned paper or cardstock (mine is 6x6)
a thin dowel rod
2-3 large beads
thick beading wire
small circle punch
scrap piece of paper

Ok, the first thing you will do is fold your square piece of paper in half. Then fold it in half the other way. Now fold it along both diagonals. You are doing this to make your cut lines easy to follow. You will now cut from each corner edge towards the center, coming about 1/3 of an inch away from the center. It will then look like 4 triangles connected at the center.
I then flipped my patterned paper over. Whichever side you want to see the most of should be facing up. Now, stick a little bit of adhesive in the center (Tip - do not use a glue dot. I tried that first and it made the wire part that we will get to later very difficult. A little bit of a tape runner will do the trick.) Fold one side of each triangle towards the center, sticking it down on the adhesive. It does not matter which side of the triangle you fold in, as long as it is the same side for all four traingles.
Next, punch a small circle and adhere it to the center of your pinwheel to cover the spot where all the folded triangles are joined together.
Now you will need your dowel rod. I cut mine down to about 12 inches (it was thin enough that I could cut it with my scissors). I decided to ink mine up with blue for the red/white/blue effect, but you could leave yours as is, or decorate it with paint, glitter, etc.
Now, take your thick craft wire and wrap it around your dowel rod for a couple of inches. Once you get to the top, string one of your beads onto the wire. Depending on the thickness of the beads, you may need two. These will act as spacers and allow your pinwheel to spin.
Now push your wired dowel rod through the center of the pinwheel (tip: I poked a hole in the center first to make this step easier).
Next, place another bead on top of your punched circle. At this point, I cut my wire down, leaving just a short stem.
Using beading pliers, a scissor or your hands, fold the wire down to secure the bead in place. Voila, your pinwheel is complete!
For your very last step, you will need an adorable little girl to act as your pinwheel model.
She should get very excited when a gust of wind comes along and starts blowing the pinwheel ;-)
I hope you guys have enjoyed this project. It was easy to make, and I think it will make a great addition to our 4th of July parade.

Ok, blog hoppers, go on ahead now to the blog of the fabulously talented Tonya Dirk. Have fun!!