a bag of chips

New CK KOTM by Becky Higgins.

I got the chance to play around the new Creating Keepsakes Kit of the Month designed by Becky Higgins. This one is all about babies! And that is prefect timing, really. With my not-so-little Nadia turning two years old yesterday, this kit gave me the darling products I needed to get busy scrapping more about her birth and adoption.

Lisa's kits are always amazing and contain tons of cute, quality products, but this baby kit is beyond generous! This kit was much larger than I anticipated and contains enough products to make layouts, cards, mini-albums, and it even includes some fun time capsule stuff. What I liked most about this kit is that it was very easy for this adoptive parent to use. So much stuff out there isn't all that appropriate for adoption scrapbooking, but this kit was very flexible. There's even a page for becoming "official" which suits the photos I have of finalizing Nadia's adoption.

The other thing I like so much about this kit is that it is for either a boy or a girl with lots of darling pinks and blues, but also lots of gender-neutral greens and yellows to suit any baby album project. All the patterned papers are double sided with one side for boys and the other for girls. So once I finish up more of Nadia's pages, I can start on Makena's and then on Aidan's. With as much as there is in this kit, I'm pretty sure it'll last through all three.

Below are three of the layouts and one little ringed booklet I created using the time capsule cards:

Just about everything I used on these LOs are from the kit, with the only exception being the kraft paper and the scalloped edge punch.

And here's the project I did with the time capsule cards:

Front

Back

For this project I sandwiched some thicker kraft cardstock between the information card and a piece of the patterned paper or journaling card from the kit. I then took my wallet-sized prints from Nadia's first two days and put them on the back of the info cards, using one of the puffy stickers for some baby flair.  I tied some of the kit ribbon onto a binder ring and voila! A quick and cute little trivia booklet about what the world was like in September 2006.

For the info I included on each time capsule card, I Googled what I wanted to know, like "hot fashions in 2006". I got a bunch of great hits and varied my resources for each card, then included the resource on the card.  Here were some of the places I found what I needed:  www.rollingstone.com for Top 10 Movies; www.billboard.com for top music and musicians, although www.grammy.com would have been just as helpful. www.nytimes.com is great for bestsellers, www.babycenter.com gave me the top baby names from 2006, www.tvguide.com or www.tv.com is good for television trivia, and, believe it or not, www.time.com gave me the hot fashions of 2006 (remember skinny jeans?).  I loved this little project and I look forward to doing the same with 2004 and 2002 for Makena and Aidan.

Becky's Baby Kit ships October 10, and pre-ording is now available. If you are having a baby, have babies, or know someone who is adopting or having a baby, this kit is a must-have for no-excuses baby scrapbooking. For more awesome examples of Becky's kit in action, check these blogs out:

Mary MacAskill

Mandy Douglass

Elisha Snow

Maggie Holmes

Allison Kimball

Candice Palmer

Marnie Flores

Elizabeth Kartchner

Back to regularly scheduled blogging later this week.

Thanks for listening!

She's two!!!

And I'm actually okay with it. More okay than I thought I'd be. I have loved watching this amazing creature grow and become the sweet, adorable, funny little goofball that she is. Makena and Aidan adore her and it's been so rewarding to see their relationships with each other grow and blossom through love to hate and back again.

Nadia has her daddy wrapped twice around her pinky finger, an arrangement that seems to suit them both perfectly fine. She still loves her carbs, and watch out if you bring bread that you didn't plan to share to the dinner table. She also loves fruit, green tea ice cream, pizza, rice and spaghetti, edamame, cooked carrots and cauliflower, Cheez-its, Craisins, and coleslaw. She's adding more words to her vocabulary every day, and is saying them all more clearly now. She's also mastered those fabulous long, loud and somewhat violent two-year-old tantrums. Hey - you gotta take the bad with the good, right? She's wearing a size 8 shoe and a 3T in most clothes now. She's sorta starting to show interest in the potty, but we're a long way off from heading down that road just yet.

We continue to be blessed with the addition of Nadia's birthmother and her two other children, Nadia's biological brother and sister, to our family. I couldn't imagine our family without them anymore than I could imagine our family without Nadia. We continue to spend time with them about every two weeks or so, and many times more often than that. She is an amazing young lady who has knocked my socks off with how much she has accomplished, how independent and resourceful she is, and what a good mother and birthmother she is to her children. I love her to pieces and will never, ever in a billion-gazillion years find the words to thank her for what she has given us, and for what she has given her daughter.

We had a party at our house on Saturday, and we all had a wonderful time celebrating Her Highness with a jumper, cake and ice cream, and family and lots of great friends, old and new. It was a perfect day in honor of our perfect girlie. And last night, just our party of five headed to Chuck E. Cheese for some fun on her birthday.

And as much as I've come to accept and appreciate my new two-year-old instead of resenting the passage of time and the evolution of our last baby into a walking, talking, toe-the-line, spitfire little girl, it's still beyond my ability to rationalize how time has moved so quickly from this:

(two days old and about to be discharged from the hospital, having a little rest on daddy)

To this:
(Taken yesterday on her birthday.)

Happy birthday, my darling girl. We love you!

I made some cards!

In honor of upcoming World Card Making Day on October 4th, the kind folks at Stampin' Up! sent me a Simply Sent card-making kit the other day to try out and talk about here. So I tried it out last night and boy, I'm ready to talk about it!

I'm seriously card-challenged these days, which is hugely funny since I got into the whole paper crafting thing in the mid-90's after attending a Stampin' Up! demonstration (my oldest stamp set is from 1998). I even had a year-long stint as a demonstrator about eight years ago. With scrapbooking front and center and the challenges of three kids, a house, a husband, a photography business and a partridge in a pear tree, my card-making days have been very few these last few years.

So I was very exciting to receive this kit! The kit contains six sheets of lovely textured cardstock in three colors, a sheet of coordinating stickers, and two sheets of double-sided coordinating patterened paper, a few buttons and two very generous lengths of grosgrain ribbon in coordinating colors. They also included the coordinating stamp set and two coordinating stamp pads. (Have I said the word "coordinating" enough? Well, that's because one of my favorite things about Stampin' Up! has always been how all of their colors are consistent and so well coordinated. Takes so much of the guess-work out of creating darling projects.)

I was able to create all of these cards in about 90 minutes and I still have plenty of supplies left to make four or five more. I love how simple and easy it was to put these together. The Simply Sent kits come with an instructions booklet with three card ideas. I sort of did my own thing but used the booklet for inspiration.

And the timing of this particular Simply Sent kit couldn't have been better. I have a friend who is due with a baby boy any minute now, and my best friend's son is having a birthday in a few weeks. And in addition to the kit items, I also used the totally awesome Stampin' Up! scallop border punch. I freakin' love that thing! Toss out your scallop edged scissors and get this awesome new punch. (I do wish they also made this with a wider and a thinner scallop, too. My life would be complete then!)

If it's been a while since you've been to a Stampin' Up! demonstration or bought some of their products, you're in for some surprises. One of the big things to change at Stampin' Up! recently is that most of their stamps are now die-cut. No more cutting your own stamps, no more guess-work, no  more hand cramps from hours of cutting rubber. The cutting part is done for you now. That, right there, is all the more motivation I needed to get my ever-lovin', card-makin', rubber-stampin' rear in gear. The other huge change is that you can now purchase Stampin' Up! products through a demonstrator's website - no need to attend a demonstration to place an order. You can find out more about how this works and to find a demonstrator here, and you can view the current Stampin' Up! catalog here.

So don't forget about World Card Making Day and make some cards! And if you make some cards and share a link to view them in the comments section of this post, I'll draw a random winner to receive the darling "Starring You" stamp set that coordinates with this Simply Sent kit.

Have a great day, my friends!

Confessions of a slacker blogger.

Where the heck have I been? What the heck have I been up to?

Well, honestly, no where noteworthy, nothing fancy, no good excuses. Just life. A life that seems to scream by so fast that by the time I lift my head up to look around a solid two weeks have flown by. I'm sure you can relate on some level to what I'm talking about, right?

I've been busy with magazine assignments, photo shoots, and running my three rugrats around to three schools (this three schools thing has already been the subject of quite a bit of grief, and it's only the fourth week of the school year. ugh.).

And I've been busy with birthdays. There are two September birthdays in particular that I must talk about now. Two very big, milestone birthdays in our little family. On September 9 my husband turned fifty years old. Yes, that's right, 50. Five-oh. He's really old. He's an AARP member now and has been getting lots of mileage out of saying that I'm one now, too. I guess if he's getting old, he's taking me with him. I'm old by proxy. Thanks, dear.  We had a wee small party (at his request) in our front yard with some friends. It was really a very nice day:

Happy birthday, my handsome love. You complete me. Ditto. You rock, you old fart.

The other milestone birthday is that of our Miss Nadia, our last baby. She is turning two on the 29th. I can hardly believe it. I can hardly stand it. It's just not possible that nearly two years has passed since she joined our family. This is big, folks. Mega big, too big for my heart to handle, I'm afraid. I'm already a mess and her birthday isn't for another week. And I'm done talking about it for now. In the meantime, here she is, gettin' her sass on with my sunglasses. She loves sunglasses and almost always puts them on upside down, the little trendsetter. She also loves shoes.

This afternoon I went to see "Mama Mia" with some of my bookclub friends. What a fun movie that was. A raging estrogen-laden chick-flick that charmed my musical-loving and Meryl Streep-loving pants right off. And while out with the girls I didn't think about the three screaming and fighting kids, thirteen dozen loads of laundry and sinkful of dishes I left behind. Nope, not once.

And speaking of chick-flicks, the "Sex and the City" DVD comes out on Tuesday. You bet your Jimmy Choos this girl is getting one.

I'll be back later this week, my friends. Thanks for stopping by!

Fall Photo Sessions + Models Needed

'Tis the season, my friends, for Fall and Holiday photo sessions. If you are interested in booking a session with me before the end of the year, here are my last available dates:

October 4:  Two sessions available, morning or afternoon
October 11: Two sessions available, morning or afternoon
November 8: Two sessions available, morning or afternoon

For information about session fees and other details, click here. For booking your fall session, or to book a maternity and/or newborn session in November and December, send me an email (link is below my photo) and I'll be in touch within 24 hours.

I'm also looking for male and female high school seniors in the San Diego area (or who are willing to travel to me), and a young couple for an engagement-type shoot for some portfolio building. I'm hoping to shoot these early in 2009. Considerable discounts to session fees are offered to models in exchange for time and talent (and just a wee bit of a willingness to play along with my wacky ideas).

In parting, I present Robbie, zen master of the jumperoo.

Back to School Winners!

Thanks (again!) to the Random Integer Generator automatons, these three numbers were picked:

9
16
74

So, a big congrats to:

Cass
Jamie
Gayle

Send me an email with your mailing address and I'll get your goodies boxes out to you next week!

The first week of school for everyone was pretty uneventful. Nadia even started preschool which is the one thing I'm still coming to terms with. Part of me wants to keep her at my side so we can both enjoy her babyness a while longer - she's our baby, our last child. She did very well, and it helps that my best friend (hi, Kelly!) works in the classroom and gave her a familiar face to find and a familiar lap to sit in (which she did for most of her first day). Nadia didn't cry when I left or when I picked her up. If she had, I would have lost it.

Makena was a bit clingy on her first day back to her preschool, but by Friday she was telling her daddy, "Okay, daddy.  You can go now." That's my big girl!

And Aidan is making friends and adjusting to a new school, new friends and new teachers. And, despite the medication, is having some difficulties already. It's a big class (currently 26 kids) and his class is one of four kindergarten classrooms at his school (was there a baby boom five years ago?). We'll be checking in with his doctor to see if his prescription needs to be adjusted after his summer growth spurt, and perhaps it's just a matter of getting his body used to being on the Ritalin again after nearly three months without it.

What's been awesome about him attending this new school two long blocks from our house, is that we get to walk to school together most mornings. I push Nadia in the stroller and Aidan and I chat about spiders and dump trucks and electricity and cheetahs and dolphins and whatever else pops into his amazingly curious mind. I am enjoying this special time with him, and I know he really enjoys the one-on-one time and attention. He's such a great kid, and I'm so very proud to be his mommy.

On the first day of school, Chris took the girls to Makena's first day, and I walked Aidan to his first day. I don't have any photos of Makena on her first day back, but here are a few from Aidan's. (click on photos to enlarge - bigger is better!)
I'll be back next week, and congrats again to the winners!

The Back-to-School Giveaway!

So, to give the new school year a good send-off, I'm giving away at least three goodie boxes filled with very cool stuff. Wanna win one? Leave me a comment below! Ain't that easy?!

And, in honor of the Back-to-School giveaway, here is my kindergartner from a few weeks ago:

Look out, world. Here comes your next class clown.

Lunches are made, naptime bedding and backpacks are packed, everyone's ready. Except me and my heart.  With each step we'll take on our way to his first day of kindergarten, my heart will break a little more that my boy is not a baby anymore. I can't even begin to imagine how hard it'll be when Makena and then Nadia take their turns.

Come on, guys! Stop it already! No more growing up allowed. I mean it!