My attempt at pottery barn plaques **FINISHED**

I actually finished these weeks ago, but I haven't had time to post the pics yet. These did take some time to make but I LOVE the finished product! Well worth the time and effort and I actually like my version better because the only ones PB offered were for girls.

Latest Scrapbook Pages

My latest scrapbook pages. I am so behind! I have really enjoyed going back through these pictures though :)

Catching up on my memory keeping

I used to be obsessive about scrapbooking ALL of Rees' pictures. I'm not sure when or why I started to slack off but I'm really regretting it now. I am playing catch up now and it's really overwhelming! I do love to scrapbook and now that I do it digitally I enjoy it even more. I'm going backwards doing the more recent stuff first then working my way back!

Easter memories...

Second post of the day

I just really wanted to share the digi scrapbook page that I did today. I am in love with the bath time pictures I took of Rees yesterday. I put together a frame with four openings and hang it in the bathroom it is so cute then I decided I better scrap it too. I really liked the way the vintage look I gave the photos blended with the colors I used for the page.

scrapbook love

Rees has been a sleepy head today. He didn't get up until 11:30 (when I went in and woke him up) then he went back down for a nap at 2:00 and he's still asleep so I have had the luxury of some uninterrupted scrapbooking. The pages with my dad and Rees are some of my favorite pictures from the year. That was over the course of the day and I can't describe how much fun we all had. Just one of those days that sticks in your memory. I love how my page turned out too.

personalization makes me so happy

ANYTHING that has my name on it is awesome in my book! I adore anything that's personalized and I try to always personalize gifts. My sister is hands down the best sister in the whole wide universe. Her and I have such a wonderful, amazing, forgiving untouchable love and respect for each other that I feel she makes me a better person. Her and I did not get along until I moved out of the house and to this day I regret the horrible way that I treated her while we lived together. There is just too many years between the two of us and that made it hard to relate to each other while we where in our "formative" years but now that we're both grown ups we are best buddies, so with that said I wanted to get her something special for helping out with Rees this summer. She is such a wonderful person that I always put a lot of time and thought into her gifts and these turned out so cute I wanted to share some pictures. I found THIS cool site that would allow me design a mouse pad (with my digi scrapbook elements) and upload MY design and they printed it. I didn't really like the designs they had to offer but the capability to upload your own designs is great. So I designed a matching set which included A tote bag, a coffee mug (for her hot chocolate) bookmarks for her class, a mouse pad, stickers to go inside her books that say This book belongs to Ms. Rees and a notebook that I hand made with a cool template from Sweet Shoppe Designs that you simple edit in photoshop and then print, apply some modge podge to the cover of the comp book front and back then put a book on it to weight it down for an hour and tada you have a great inexpensive PERSONALIZED gift! Take a look....

You can click on the image to enlarge is you want to see more detail.

Another favorite picture

Last night before the rain hit Rees and I were outside just bummin around. Like I said last night nothing special (so I thought) we were just out and about. I had my camera as I usually do and was snapping away as Rees went from one thing to another. Then this morning when I checked my pictures out I was so happy!!! I caught and innocent moment, do you all know how hard that is??? I instantly fell in love with this picture and after a little photoshop lovin (I can't resist tweaking on pictures to make them more dramatic) I just love it. So I guess something great did come out of yesterday!

Following this nice innocent picture was Rees pulling all my flower heads off those flowers and carring them around in a cup for an hour! But anywhoo, I am getting ready to take One year pictures for baby Jackson so I'll post again later!

We had a a sick little man

Sunday Rees was super cuddly, he wouldn't let us putting him down he justed wanted to hang out on our laps which has never happened before. Don't get me wrong I really enjoyed it but I know something wasn't right. So Monday morning at 4 am he woke up burning hot. I took his temp and it was 102.3 so I gave him a bath along with Tylenol and put him in bed with us. After the bath he thought it was time to start the day so he was jumping around in bed and wanting to chit chat he didn't really act sick but he was burning up. He was chilling too and that was heart breaking, I hate to see that! After a couple hours we all went to sleep and then we got up at 9 and went to the Dr. I felt so silly. The doctor said I'm not sure what's wrong he acts fine. Which he was being pleasant but still not being "Rees". So the Dr. sent me home with nothing! But, throughout the day he got to feeling better and by late evening we went outside and just bummed around...obviously he was feeling better.



Then to relax after he went to bed I scrapped! I am still only up to my April pictures, I just can't believe I'm this behind. Here are a few that I did.





This is a real fish that I went and got just to do these pictures. I love how they turned out. I made a 10x20 collage and put it in his room. and at one point he caught the fish and had it in his hand outside the bowl!

All I've got done in 30 minutes

Okay so I baked a cake (for my cake smash shoot tomorrow), folded a load of laundry, put it away (that's the part I hate the most), put in more laundry, fed the cat, watered the flowers, made the bed and most importantly made a scrapbook page! I am finally done with all of Rees' birthday pictures Wheewwww there were so many! Now I can start on the month of April pictures. I can't believe I am this far behind. But anyways here's my page and I have to go get ready for the day I am spending it with my wonderful sister!

My new favorite site

I was surfing this morning while eating breakfast and ran onto this amazing site! I have loved these designers for a long time and I didn't know that they design digital items now too! Heidi Swapp & Rhonna Farrer are so creative and I have been buying their scrapbook products for years. Now they make home dec stuff and blog wear all kinds of really neat things. Check out THIS link. When you get there go to the New section and then hit their blog too! They have some amazing stuff, I am so inspired right now I better work on a scrapbook page for the baby book (well now I guess I should call it the toddler book:)

A great resource

Does anyone want to learn how to make scrapbook pages, picture collages, enhance your photos or anything else that you can dream up? Photoshop Elements is the program you need. This is the "baby" version of Photoshop and it costs like $139 compared to $800 for the full version. Which is on my DREAM list (I'm likely never going to own it) but elements works so well that I'm content with it. It is difficult to learn at first but once you gain the basic knowledge of how the platform works it's like building blocks. There is still a lot I don't know but it's fun to play around and figure new things out as I go. This is the program I use to edit all my pictures and I build my collages and scrapbook pages with it too. You can download it for free right HERE. I think it's well worth the effort to at least download the free version and try it out. I use it to design my blog headers and paper for the sides it's so useful! I have found so many fabulous resources that I have learned so much from that I thought I would share a few. So first go dl the program then check out these websites.

1. Misty Cato...lots of beginner stuff to get you started.
2. Digi Photography for moms... lots of tutorials for actions (you'll learn that a little later on)
3. Of course good ol' Youtube for vidoe tutorials
4. Coffee Shop One of my very favorite websites that I visit everyday.

So I hope this gets someone started to understanding the program and taking advantage of all the useful things you can do with it. I get asked a lot about how I do things and this program is the backbone of everything that I create so if anyone has any interest in tutorials or free actions, etc. let me know and I would be happy to share!

Inspired

So I have been feeling nostalgic this weekend so I have been reading through Rees' baby books. I can't believe how big of a boy his is in such a short period of time, things just fly bye seems like there is very little time to appreciate the little things. That's my "mid-year" resolution, might as well make one the new years resolution sure didn't work :( but I want to take a step back from things for a little while this summer and just enjoy my time with Rees. Before long he's going to be talking and grow even more independent, which I am having a hard time with to my surprise. I can't believe he won't even let me feed him anymore Aghhhh!!!!! I need to slow things down a bit and go back to my roots....SCRAPBOOKING! I love the whole documentation aspect of it but it's such a creative outlet which is what my whole life is about. I try to find creative ways to do absolutely everything like gardening, photography, picture editing, card making, cooking, entertaining you name it and I try my hardest to make it "my own" with my creativeness. I really think that's why I have fell head over heals in love with photography and editing because it lets me share my creativeness with others. But, in terms of working (Korner & Photography) I really want to step back for the summer and make it all about the family. His childhood is slipping by so quickly and that's the only thing that really matters to me. I can try and perfect my craft slowly and use Rees as my muse! LOL, we all know that will be a challenge! I have a 1 year old cake smash on Wed. and Senior pictures for a guy next weekend and after that I think I'm going to take a break. We'll see how that works out for me. It truly is a challenge for me to "sit idol" I love to know that I have something to do after Rees goes down for bed or is taking a nap but that also comes with the down side of deadlines for getting pictures ready for proofing and submitting orders and packaging for people so as much as I love it it really does take up a lot of time. So for the next few months I think I'll just do family and friends that are understanding of my plan.

But, back to my roots thing as I was looking through his baby books (which I put together 12x12 scrapbook pages of) I noticed that around X-mas time they started to dwindle down and ended in March. I haven't scrapped since! I can't believe that I really thought I would scrap for the rest of my life at least once a week. And now that I actually have something that is meaningful to scrapbook I quit doing it??? I'm crazy. I really want Rees to have these when he gets older to know how he was raised and how much we love and adore him. So that is part of my break and something that will definitely give me something to do during nap time (I could be cleaning house but what fun is that:) I got a start on this weekend...

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