Time passes by

I'm sitting here with a mug of ice cream, sniffling from a cold. I'm thinking of scrapbooking. Wishing that I had started earlier on my daughter's album. Knowing that there is no way I could catch up so that I could show her album off tomorrow at her birthday party. I only wish I had thought of that several weeks ago. I just went in to Snapfish and ordered 131 photos from March, April and May. These are for my daughter's album, as her brother has the online album. Lately I notice that there are less and less pictures of me. I just hate myself in glasses and these stupid bangs I despised even as I had them cut. I hide behind the baby whenever possible. (I'm sure you are thinking that the ice cream I'm eating isn't helping things. But I am losing the baby weight, and I walked today...so I can eat a mug of ice cream if I want!)

My little girl is turning 7. I don't feel like I missed it all. I have watched her grow up little by little, every day but maybe 15 out of her entire life. I try to store up the moments, little sayings she uses, things she does over and over again for a time. The pictures are where it hits me the hardest. Once she is asleep and I look through the pictures, I see so much feeling and I think she is so perfect. It's hard to remember that she and I fought over cleaning and clipping toenails this very evening! Then I look back at a picture from 3 months ago and I think, "Wow, she was just a baby!" When did she get a little older in just 3 short months?

I hold my baby boy and beam with pride as everyone has to comment on his hair, his adorable expressions, his sweet baby love. Mommas and Daddies that know, they have been there, tell me that if I blink he will be graduating college like their son is, it will seem just like yesterday that he was that tiny and now he's a father. These are the things I hear every time I leave the house. I know this. I know it because I have an older child. I realize how short the months are that I will be able to hold him. I watch mothers of teenage sons, and think that I'll suffocate if he won't let me hug him when he gets to the "cool" age. I already hear him behind me and half expect to see him running through the kitchen when I turn around to look. I still am guilty of hoping he'll nap so that I can do laundry, clean, teach or scrapbook. There are times where I think how nice it will be when he and my daughter can actually play together. But when I find a little touch of heaven in the smell of his silky, curly hair, I don't want anything to change. I am so blessed in my family, my home, my friends, my car. I thank God for His many blessings in my life. I'm glad that I have pictures and notes from the great days, to cheer me up on the down days. I never want to forget this time.

Stripes

I was inspired to take this picture because both of my kids had stripes on. Plus, my girl had pink and my boy had blue. This wasn't planned, but so cute that I had to capture it. You can see from this picture how big my little guy has gotten in 4 months.

I chose to take their picture on the steps of our deck because it was out of the direct sun and because I could easily position them to be on the same level with me.

Unfortunately, I was so concerned with getting them to look at me and smile, that I repeatedly cut the baby's arm out of the picture. I realized my mistake, and was able to get several where his arm is in the shot, but they aren't as good as this one.

I have been too busy to scrap anything traditionally. The baby is caught up in his online album and in his scrapbook, but I have yet to touch my daughter's. I did find out something exciting this week! The online albums can hold up to 100 pages, not only 50 as I originally thought. So, it may be possible to fit his whole first year in this album. I don't know why that makes me so happy, but it does. :)

Scrap Happy!

Memorabilia

I first want to apologize that most of these pictures are sideways. Blame Blogspot! That said, I don't have time to mess with them, so tilt your head sideways a little and you should be fine!
I don't save everything, but there are little things that I want to keep in my daughter's scrapbook, and there are several ways to do this. Above is a page I did of our trip to Disneyland. I wanted to show off our cute little daily passes, so I laid them out on the side of the page. In the mickey punch, I wrote which pass was whose. I also made a neat shaped pocket for our fantasmic passes. We saved our cute driver's licences because that's something you don't get at Disney World. I also included a picture of us since this is the final page in the book.

The pages above show my daughter's birthday invitation (I always save one) and some of the decorations. (part of her pinata and some streamers.) This is the first time I saved decorations in an album. I just added it right to a CM page. With Creative memories, you can add things like this to the page because their pages are buffered and that stops the acid and lingin from traveling to photos that might be on the same page. That said, on the page below, I didn't want to include the actual invitation to my daughter's graduation because they smelled so strongly and also had glitter on them. I don't like mixing glitter with photos. So I scanned and printed the invitation onto scrapbooking paper. It looks just like the original.

On the picture below, I wanted to include a "baseball card" , so I made a little pocket out of a sticker packet. Creative Memories sticker packets are supposedly photo safe, so I use them to keep little things in.

Here is yet another idea on how to make a pocket for brochures and things. I used an alphabet sticker packet and cut it into a large pocket. I put this right on a page and covered it with a page protector. To dress up the sticker packet pocket (try saying that 3 times!) I simply added some stickers to it.

Here is another example of a sticker packet as a pocket. This way, if I need to get this program out to look something up, I can. Before I put the program in this album, I scanned and printed the song title and list of the girls dancing with my daughter onto bright pink, photo safe paper to add to the pages of her dancing. The bright pink was so that it would match the page design I had for her dance pages.

One more way to hold your tickets or other small things, is just to adhere them directly onto the page, as I did with this circus ticket. I can only recommend that if you are using a CM album though.

Creative Memories used to sell big pages (good for certificates and drawings) and also pocket pages (which I liked for birthday cards and brochures.) You still may be able to find them online. Before Ebay, I would check the CM website under clearance or while supplies last. Pictures of portrait pages and pocket pages are shown below.

I hope this has encouraged you to keep those small tokens that will fit into an album. It can be hard to know how to contain them, but with a little thought, you can!

Scrap Happy!

Posed Candids

All of the pictures on today's blog are "posed candids". I just didn't want them to look posed! I have little tricks I use when I want to get a picture of something I just missed or something I think would make a cute shot. I don't mention a picture at all! For the photo above, I said to the kids, "Everyone is supposed to be sitting on the bench unless it's your turn to bat." This made them sit and hold still! For the photo below, I probably said, "Let's count those eggs again."

I think it's good to have a mental goal in mind when you are going into a situation where you plan to take pictures. If you know some pictures that you want to capture, you will be looking for them. I like to get spontaneous pictures, but this can be very hard to do. Just remember, if you are careful with your posed shots, you can make them look like really great candid photos. It just takes some time and thought.

Think along the lines of the person you are photographing. Sometimes it works to say, "Ignore me." or "Don't look at the camera." Sometimes I pretend that I am looking at and reviewing a picture I just took, or I'm messing with the camera, when in actuality, I'm looking at the screen watching for a great shot. The one thing I don't recommend is lying to your kids. They will catch on, and besides it justs sets a bad pattern. Bribing can be used on occasion. (I'll give you candy if you smile nicely for this picture!) But again, it sets you up in starting a bad pattern so that your kids may always need bribed just in order to behave for photos.

Ask questions about an object they are holding if you want them to be focused on it for the picture. Ask them about something that is behind you/beside you/ etc. (Did Uncle Mike get here yet?) if you want them to be looking somewhere else.

People think that their subjects need to be looking right at the camera for pictures to be good. But that isn't true. If they look like they don't even know their picture is being taken, then you have captured life happening! Isn't that what photography is all about?

Scrap Happy!

meet my friend, Mr. Camera

My little guy has certainly gotten used to seeing a camera in front of his face. He's 3 1/2 months old, but he's met Mr. Camera! When you meet someone, you don't know anything about them. The more time you spend with them, the more you know them, right? It's the same way with your camera. You learn to use it by taking pictures. I often take picture after picture, just to see what lighting is best, or trying out different settings on my camera. In the above picture, I thought there was a little too much light from the sky, and the lighting also made my son have too much shade under his hat.

So, I got down a little lower, just a tad, enough to see under that hat. But this time, I used the flash. While it filled in the shadow from the hat, it made his drooly little face quite shiny.

Fast forward several more shots, and now I have turned my subject so that there is a flowering tree and less open sky. The background is crowded, and my boy looks like he's asking, "What is that thing in front of your face, Mommy?" However, it's the lighting I'm playing with today, and now it's how I want it, so I'm happy. I'll never get these pictures printed anyway, they are just teaching me. But it's fun to learn!

Scrap Happy!