Who needs professionals?

I take my baby boy to the studio to get his picture taken every month as close to the 9th as I can. The last 2 months, I had the same photographer, who had the hardest time getting him to smile! So, this month, I decided to just take the pictures of him myself. I waited until the sun was going down, made sure he had a full belly and enough sleep, and took him out in the backyard. I was armed with a toy, my camera, and my wonderful mommy powers. I know his very favorite songs, and the funny voices that will make him look at me in adoration. But none of that mattered. Once I had him in the great outdoors, sitting in the most interesting of grass, he was totally sidetracked with God's creations and hardly noticed my cute little songs and I were even there. Long story short, I took him out twice overall this week. I clicked just over 60 photos. The second day wasn't planned as a photo shoot, but since he looked so adorable I had to leave him in the care of his sister for a few seconds and run in to get the camera. I was able to get a few more keepers the second day. A big part of that is because I had the help of his sister, who I positioned behind me.
So, will I take his picture next month. Oh, undoubtedly! But it won't be his "monthly" photo. I'll leave that to others. Why? Mostly because I already know that it's going to be impossible to choose between all these pictures I took. I'm already envisioning several pages with a collage of pictures taken those 2 days. Yawning, making his angry face as he pulls out the grass, (he was mimicking me pulling weeds. He thought that was the funniest thing!) leaning to look around me at his sister, his serious expression as he looked at the world...yeah, I think this is going to be more expensive than Penny's.

Scrap Happy!

Princess Camp and scrapping

Last week was my 3rd Princess Camp. I started this from an idea my daughter had when she was 4 and now we have camp once a year. I always take a lot of pictures. I have a system where I clear my memory card before camp, so that I have enough room. I have learned a lot in 3 years of hosting camp, but I still make mistakes. This year, even my new rechargable batteries ran out and I didn't have my backups charged. I had to use regular batteries, which of course don't last as long. Although I had put my pre camp photos onto a disk, I hated to erase them and figured there would be enough rooom on my memory card. I ended up filling up my card during the photo shoot on Princess Dress up day! Then I ended up hurrying to clear my precamp photos while the girls waited to get their pics taken. Poor planning!

Besides that, it was a great week! A lot of planning, a lot of work, but worth it all! I had a lot of help. It seems like the longer I do this, the more help I have needed and received. I am very, very thankful.

Now that Princess Camp is over, I have a little more free time, and was able to catch up on the baby's album that I have for his professional pictures! The last time I went in to get pictures, we did over half of them in his diaper in their tub prop. They turned out so cute, that those are the ones I ended up getting! So much for the cute 4th of July outfit I brought him in! I was able to use bath stickers and make a really cute 2 page spread. It just so happens that I had paper that perfectly matched the background in the picture, so this is one of my favorite pages in a while. I would post it here, but it has his name in the title "Rub a dub.....in the tub!" and I'm funny about posting my kid's names online. I won't do it. I used up every bath sticker I had, bubbles galore. It was a lot of fun since I am usually a sticker miser.

I'm starting a princess camp digital album, and now to get caught up on the kids books! Whew! I took albums on our beach vacation once and got all caught up in the evenings after I put my daughter to bed. Unlike at home, I don't have a million things to do in the evening on vacation, and if I were going to choose the one thing I love to do, that's what it would be. So why not spend my vacation that way?!

Scrap Happy!

Be Discreet!

Ok, so every mommy has taken the photo where you see the baby bum, right? My daughter went outside when she was 3 or 4 in nothing but a pair of rain boots. You better believe I took a picture of that! But I had her turn her back to me and place her arm across her bum, so she isn't showing anything. When I put it into her album, I made sure to use the photo corners so that we can remove it from her album and put it in a safe place if we need to. In the future, I'm aware that she might be embarrassed of that photo. My mom has a photo of me dancing around in nothing but a pair of sunglasses, which I am wearing on my waist! I was 2. But I was so mortified of that picture, and always kept it hidden away. It wasn't until I had children that I could see how innocent and funny that picture is.

I've been like this from day one with both of my kids. I didn't want their gender showing in photos of their birth! I just don't think it's necessary! Even when I take pictures of my cuties in the bath tub, I always make sure I cover their gender. I used a washcloth up until now, but found that a rubber ducky worked well for this picture of my little guy totally relaxing in his bath.

I don't know if many parents take pictures of their kids on the big potty, but for me that was a HUGE milestone in my daughter's life and I couldn't pass up a shot of her going to the bathroom like a big girl! Once again, nothing is showing, but her proud little face has a big smile on it. She knew she was making mommy happy! (It's in her album, but probably has corners.)

There is also the classic photo of baby lying on their belly, sans clothes. I took my infant's photo from the side, and she isn't in focus. All you notice about the picture is her adorable smile!

There are a lot of weirdos out there. Be careful what pictures we take of our kids. Be considerate of their feelings as they age, and think of how they might feel later if someone comes across that picture on your camera.

And to the loving relatives out there who might not think a thing of taking pictures of their nieces, nephews, grandchildren, etc. while they aren't fully dressed. "They're just cute and little!" you might say. Of course you would never want to offend your loved ones, so ask the parent before you click that photo of the children playing in the tub. I personally feel that people should ask me if they want to take a photo of my kids fully clothed! (Not relatives and close friends, but anyone outside of that circle.)

Scrap Happy!

Vacation

Last summer, we went on a vacation to California. Here are some of the photos, sideways and regular, of pages that I completed. No, these are not all of the pages I did! Not by a long shot!

Lombard Street : When getting photos here, I noticed that a lot of tourists were stopping and getting their picture taken at the very bottom of the street. In fact, I took a picture there as well. Once I did, I realized that you couldn't see the road at all hardly! So, we walked across the street and had our picture taken by another tourist. If you feel bad asking someone to take your picture, then just offer to take theirs. Usually, they will immediately offer the same. I wanted to put all of my photos of Lombard St. onto one page. How did I do that? Clever cropping! I drew my own wiggly road and used a wedding sticker for the car. Sometimes I crop my stickers to fit what I want. This is one of those times.

I'm trying to show the textured paper which I used to cover most of this page. I also had taken a pic of the street sign, and cut it out for the center of my page! (My placing of the road sign also cleverly blocked a bright, red "Wrong way/Do not Enter" sign that was at the bottom of Lombard.)

The Golden Gate Bridge: This was such an easy page! I didn't even use a sticker! I just used a page from a vacation pallet from CM, and wrote my title with two contrasting colored pens.

The Redwoods: I had PAGES of photos from the awesome redwoods. To keep them all tied together, and because I didn't have "redwood" themed stickers, I used natural pages, and some vellum with leaves on it. I have had this vellum literally for years. I had no idea what to use it for until this. It pays to hang on to your papers. On each page, I didn't use much else, just leaf stickers, and I matted pictures here and there. I fixed up this title, by using a tag sticker, cutting a green paper "leaf" and putting a title sticker over it all.

The Beach: This focuses on a page element, rather than the whole page. I added some letters, stickers and embroidery floss to this tag sticker to make my title.

Here is another pic of a redwood page. Very simple. Simple gets pages completed! Remember that! "Simple Pages, Completed albums."

Scrap Happy!

Patriotic pages

Happy 4th of July! I put some patriotic page layouts on here. I apologize that they are not straight , but blame blogger. I tried 3 times, and I guess you will have to tilt your head! I didn't include some pages, due to the fact that they were upside down!

Here is a title. Using letters of different sizes.

Above and below is a page I did when my brother came home on leave from Iraq. I made dogtags from silver paper and used the inside of silver letter stickers for the chain. To make the camo, I simply tore up paper and fitted it along the side of the page to make a border. I trimmed one edge of it to make it even.

For a trip to an amusement park around the 4t of July, I used scraps of red white and blue paper (and vellum)and punches out stars of various sizes to make borders for each page. I also had a few stars to the center of the page and here and there. I had 5 pages of the amusement park and used this idea throughout all 5.

For this BBQ on the 4th page, I kept with the red, white and blue theme, but used a red check instead. This gave my page a picnic feel.

I used black pages for this last layout. The way the pictures are slanted makes it fun~! I took the sparkler pictures during the day, and I think that's why you can see them so well. These fireworks are die cuts, but you could easily make fireworks out of paper. I decorated my fireworks with a pen to make them a little more exciting.

God Bless America! Celebrate and Scrap Happy!

Amusement Park Pictures

Tis the season for amusement parks! We went this week, and I have some picture tips and ideas here for you! I always like to get a family picture. This means I have to ask a random stranger to take it. First, I have us stand in the area where I want the picture taken. If you have time to be picky, look for one with a huge camera. This shows you that they must know what they are doing. I like to get a picture either right as you enter, full of excitement and hair that is not yet windblown, or towards the end of the day, when it's still pretty light out but the lights have just been turned on. This makes for a festive picture.

I like to play with my camera in lines. This picture was taken while in line, by my husband.

Here's an action shot of my little girl, hanging on tight! I took this shot almost every time she came around to make sure I'd get a keeper.

Here's a posed shot. The lighting was favorable and she looked so cute!

I zoomed in on my husband and baby boy for this one. I was in line to ride with my daughter. I don't even think they knew I was getting their picture. I liked how they were interacting.

Here is my daughter in line, and in her own little world.

While waiting for the ride to start, I had taken a couple pictures of my daughter and husband smiling at me. For this one, I had the brilliant idea to make it look like they were actually RIDING on the ride. They were good sports, and it made them laugh for the picture, too.

This isn't even a ride, but doesn't it look like my boy is waiting for it to start and zoom off?

The cutouts. Ok, what is the point of this? Well, last year, we took a picture of Daddy in the "Andy" cutout. Once you take a picture, my daughter thinks it's a tradition, and runs to pose as soon as she sees a familiar prop. It did turn out to be adorable!

This picture actually IS a tradition. I take this picture of my daughter every year. It's cool to look back and see how much she grew. It was so much fun to take my son to Storybook Forest and hear his excited little noises as we walked through. He liked it more than the rest of the Park.

Other tips:

When an attendant comes around to check your seat belt, don't hesitate to ask them to take a picture of you on the ride. I've never had one tell me no.

Carry your camera and extra batteries, film, memory card in a small case right on your person. Make sure it's hands free.

If you want to plan ahead, have your family wear colors that will go together and not clash. This makes it easier to scrapbook later and you all look like you belong together. One year, we wore red white and blue. This made for fun pages and amusement parks are the epitome of summertime, as are the patriotic colors!

On the other hand, I like to wear bright colors on my daughter so that she is easy to spot when she is climbing up tall nets and running across bridges and the like. These make for fun pictures, too. (especially with cotton candy in the shot!)

Scrapbooking amusement park pictures can be a challenge, since it can be hard to find stickers that match your theme. You will probably have to think outside of the box. I know for a fact that Creative Memories doesn't make amusement park stickers any more. Try to match your clothes, and remember that stars always work with amusement park pics.

Scrap Happy!

Live, Love and Leave a Legacy

A friend of mine went to heaven this week. She was a mother, and not much older than I am. I find myself staring and thinking. It's hard to grasp the loss of her, since she was such a presence. I can still hear her laugh! She has left a giant Krissy sized hole, especially to her kids, who are in their young teens. Kris was an awesome scrapbooker. I enjoyed looking through her albums, as she had a gift. She was also very up to date on her kid's albums, even though she started scrapbooking I want to say less than 6 years ago. She has left countless memories in those books for her children, and they have already realized what a treasure that is. I have to say that this has been another life lesson on sharing your love, because you just never know how long you have left on earth to tell people how much they mean to you. I don't know how long I will have with my kids to leave an impression on them how important they are to God. I care that they have scrapbooks to enjoy now, and cherish later. I want to do my best at continuing that for them, so that they will have something that they can hold after I'm gone. It's something that will remind them how important they are to me.

I realize that this may be a bit of a downer, and I'm sorry. But while I'm sad, I'm also inspired and I hope that you will be inspired to create lasting memories for your kids, as well as capturing those memories in photos and laying them out like a story of your life that needs to be told.

Try to Scrap Happy!

Step by Step Scrapbooking

I decided to take the day off today and scrapbook. I asked my husband yesterday if he would mind being in charge of the kids so I could. After church, and grocery shopping, Oh...and lunch, I finally sat down to scrapbook. As you may imagine, I was not able to scrap uninterrupted, but I still managed to get 5 pages done. The hardest part was just starting! While I scrapped, I thought of my blog, and took pictures of my work in progress. If you follow these simple steps, you can get your photos into albums eventually! 1. I lay out all my pictures on pages, to see how they fit and which pictures will go together.

2. I crop, usually just cutting off background things that take away from what I want the focus of the picture to be. If it distracts, it's out of there!

3. Now I go through my stickers and papers and pick out any that I think I may want to use on this page. I kind of get an idea of what I'm going to do either the step prior to this, or as I'm looking at embellishments. I usually chose my papers based on what my daughter is wearing in the photos. However, this is my daughter meeting my son, so I went all blue!!!

4. It's time to put it all together! I use my tape runner to secure the papers I've chosen and my photos to the page. Use enough tape so that the pictures won't move around. For a 4x6 photo, I like to use tape in 6 places.(as shown here.)

5. Paper and pictures are on. Now it's the fun part! Stickers!

6. You don't need too much. I just used a title sticker and pins. I used my pen to draw stitches around what will be my journalling block.

I dressed up my title sticker by punching out a circle of the dragonfly paper and putting it under the title sticker.

7. It is really important to journal. I like to save all my journalling for later. One quiet day, I just sit down and journal all the pages I have already scrapped. Sometimes it takes several days, but I like doing them all at once so I don't forget what I mentioned and end up repeating myself.

If I were to set aside an hour a day to scrapbook, I know I could catch up on my daughter's album .

Scrap Happy!

Fly little one, Fly!

My kids
I just like this picture. It was taken without a flash.

Learning to ride

This is our shadows. Mine and my girl's.

So happy with herself as she rides without assistance!

Some very exciting things have been happening in my life! And no, I'm not talking about the Pens winning the Stanley Cup, although that was exciting, too! My little girl learned to ride a bike this very week! It was thrilling to watch her! I started out holding her, slowly switched to hover mode, and soon was running along after her, and now, I just stand on the street and watch for traffic so that I can verbally warn her to get off the street. This was a life lesson. While I wanted her to ride on her own, I was very nervous when she did. When she told me she wanted me to stop holding her, I knew she could do it, and I felt a thrill knowing that she was going to make it! It was very, very exciting.

The other excitement was my little boy trying food for the first time. I first gave him various fruits to gum as I held them. He has really seemed to like this, as well as the cereal he eats right up. I enjoy introducing him to the world. I like watching the fire crackers reflect in his eyes, and hearing him laugh his deep boy-giggle as I tickle his ribs. I love how he tries to catch the bubbles I blow for him, watching them with a serious look on his face. I have to be alert or he'll get his chubby hands into everything I get too close to him. I know that if he swings his pudgy fingers through the hot water as I'm watching dishes, he'll be burnt. But he doesn't know this. The hard part is letting him learn life's painful lessons. I want to protect my kids from everything, even though I know it isn't possible.

I have fallen dreadfully behind on my daughter's album. The other night, I stayed up and laid out all of her pictures onto pages so that I can start working on her album again. Today, I saw that more photos had come in the mail. ( I used York this time (free shipping deal) and wasn't impressed. I will be going back to Snapfish.) So, I said that seeing the pictures in my mailbox made me want to scrapbook all day instead of cleaning the house as I had planned. My daughter said that she knew what I would be doing while she was at her Gramma's! But I told her, " Just because that's what I WANT to do, doesn't mean I'll be doing it." I didn't get to scrapbook, but my house is cleaner :)

I want to take and post pictures of my work in progress as I design and complete album pages. I will start soon!

Scrap Happy!

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!