The Mushy Gushy one.

When did this:

Become this:
There is only 8 months between these two pictures. I still can't wrap my mind around how fast she is growing up. Now I know that she's only 18 months (next Sunday), and that 10-12 years from now when she's about to be a teenager, the impact of this rapid passing of time will be a lot more significant. But I am already learning that the time we have with our children goes oh so fast. And I pray everyday that I am raising her the way God intends me to. Because the things I do today will shape the person she is to become, and that is a responsibility that I don't think anyone fully understands until they have their first child. Being a parent is hard work sometimes. Being consistent is hard work sometimes. But it's funny how we don't mind the hard work and we do it anyway because love for a child runs so deep.

I don't usually put music on my blog, but this song has made me tear up more than once over the last few days. It's the new single by George Strait. And yes, the pregnancy hormones are on overdrive. :)

Just walked down the street to the coffee shop
Had to take a break
I'd been by her side for 18 hours straight
Saw a flower growin' in the middle of the sidewalk
Pushin' up through the concrete
Like it was planted right there for me to see
The flashin' lights
The honkin' horns
All seemed to fade away
In the shadow of that hospital at 5:08
I saw God today

I've been to church
I've read the book
I know he's here
But I don't look
Near as often as I should
Yeah, I know I should
His fingerprints are everywhere
I just slowed down to stop and stare
Opened my eyes
I saw God today

Saw a couple walkin' by they were holdin' hands
Man she had that glow
Yeah I couldn't help but notice she was startin' to show it
Stood there for a minute takin' the sky
Lost in that sunset
Splash of amber melted in the shades of red

Got my face pressed up against the nursery glass
She's sleepin' like a rock
My name on her wrist
Wearin' tiny pink socks
She's got my nose, she's got her mama's eyes
My brand new baby girl
She's a miracle
I saw God today

Some Layouts

Not much exciting going on this week. Just a quiet week at home for the most part. Just thought I'd post the pages I've done in the evenings.

• This one's for scrapjacked. Based on a page by Janine Langer. Her stuff is amazing.

• For this one I used Valerie Salmon's sketch #54. I've just recently discovered her sketch site and will be using it more!

• And then lots of Love, Elsie products on this one. I also have been wanting the new Fiskars border scallop punch. Rumor has it that Target has them across the country, but I've checked both of ours in town and no such luck. So, I used a corner rounder without the guard and my crop-a-dile to create the scalloped border with the small holes.

• 

That's about it for tonight!

Easter Weekend

This past weekend we traveled up to Nashville for the annual Lads to Leaders convention that our church congregation participates in. It is a Bible-based youth leadership program. The kids compete in various areas such as public speaking, Bible-bowl, Puppets (putting on a short puppet skit), song leading, and many other things. I grew up participating in the public speaking category, and now I help coach our youth group girls in this. So, the whole family made the trip. The convention is held at the Opryland Hotel. And while it is a fun place to stay, you can easily walk miles in one day the place is so huge.

When we got to the Hotel Friday afternoon, Natalie hung out watching Disney channel for a few minutes while we got settled and unpacked. I don't remember what was on, something with music though, because she was busting out with her white girl dance moves.



We had a balcony room, overlooking one of the gardens, so we went out on the balcony to take some pictures. I got tickled trying to get Natalie to smile and at least look at the camera, so we are really cheesing in these.



On Saturday John hung out with Natalie while I went to hear a couple of our girls speak, and then I had to judge the 9th grade girls competition in another division. (There are so many participants that they split everyone up into four divisions.) After I finished with that we headed over to Opry Mills mall to eat at the Rainforest cafe. While we were waiting John took Natalie on the carousel.



After our worship service Sunday morning, we walked around the hotel taking a few more pics.




And that's the recap with photo overload.
Been working on some scrappy stuff tonight, now I'm ready for some sleep.
Hope everyone is having a good week!

Oh That Hat!

I have quite a few pictures to share from the weekend, but here's a preview.

Natalie doesn't like wearing hats, or having any kind of bow in her hair. I was trying to get her to wear her Easter hats that her Grandmomma had gotten her, so I put one of them on myself.
Doesn't she look thrilled?






More to come...

Double Digits and a couple of Layouts

Today, my baby countdown moves into the double digits with 99 days to go. It's actually going to be a little less than that because since I know I'm having a C-section, I already know it will be mid-June. This 2nd time around is going so fast. With your first I guess you have a tendency to obsess over the pregnancy, because it's brand new. But this time, since it doesn't feel like it's been that long ago since I did this pregnancy thing, it's flying by. I'm slowly but surely getting things prepared, but we are gonna have to kick it up a notch in the next couple weeks to get Natalie moved to her new room, so I can then get the nursery prepared.

Here's the belly at 6 months. I just realized all the pics I have this time around don't even show my face, because I've been taking them myself and this is usually what I end up with. I've got to get John behind the camera, so baby #2 knows what I looked like at the time!

And of course I have to add a couple recent layouts. "Ms Independant" is for a challenge at DixiePieces.com We were to choose a layout from their gallery and lift it. I lifted a layout of Kim's.

To Digi or not to Digi

For quite some time now, I have totally rejected the idea of doing digital layouts. One of the fun things about scrapbooking is picking out products and playing with paper, scissors and glue. I also thought, if I ever figured out how to do digital, it would take away time from doing traditional, "real" pages. And what's the point of having a digital image of a flower or a torn piece of paper, when that's not REALLY what it is. With digital, it's just an image; a picture of the real thing.

Despite my resistence, since I had downloaded a trial version of Photoshop Elements for editing pictures, I thought I might as well give it a try. And let me just say I was ready to beat my head up against the wall when I first started. I had no guidance, no clue as to where to even start. Playing around in a computer program with zippo instructions or any kind of clue, can be extremely frustrating. But, thanks to the help of some digi tutorials over at SIStv, I was able to figure it out. It took me 4 hours to do my first digital scrapbook page, and this was the final result.

After I finally figured out what I was doing, it wasn't so painful. While I still would rather do paper layouts, I can see myself doing some digital pages from time to time. I now know it's not too hard to do some hybrid things too. "Hybrid" meaning that you do some stuff/elements/titles, etc. on the computer and print them out to put on your page.

I already had this picture printed out, so I wanted to also go ahead and do a regular scrapbook page using it. So here's the same pic, with the same title, using paper, scissors, and glue. ;)

So if you're thinking about trying digital scrapbooking, go ahead and give it a shot. I've been told that it won't always take 4 hours to complete one page. :)

Eggscited for Easter!

I have just a bunch of pics to share from our weekend. We had our spring picnic at church on Saturday. It was supposed to be an outside event, but the weather forced us to take the activities inside. The kids had such a good time. The Easter Bunny visited, they played games, and had an Easter Egg hunt. I actually haven't got Natalie an Easter basket, so she used one from our kitchen. That seemed just fine with her, as you'll see in the pictures that she thought she was something else walking around with her basket full of eggs that she found.

The hunt actually took place in their Sunday school classrooms. It's been a while since I've been on an Easter egg hunt. But set a little more that a dozen toddlers loose with plastic eggs everywhere, and it gets crazy!









Now I'm just hoping that we have some warm weather for next Easter weekend!

Scrappin'

Edited @ 9:16pm to add new pic at bottom of post.
I have wanted to scrapbook all week, but for whatever reason, as soon as I get Natalie down for the night, the motivation has completely left me. I even got a bunch of new supplies in the mail on Monday, but was just feeling very lazy about it once the nights rolled around. So today, while Natalie was taking her nap, I finally got a couple of pages done.

These are pics I took of her in the snow from last Saturday. Yes, we had snow that lasted until about lunchtime! March seems to be the best time of year for us to get it! This one also started out as my page for scrapjack's latest challenge, but ended up going a different direction than what I had planned in my head.

And this one is using my new March kit from Sweet Spuds. American Crafts has new glitter chipboard letters and I love them! I also ordered some pink and purple ones from 2peas. This picture of Natalie is from last May. It still amazes me how fast she has grown and changed!

And then here are the 2 I got done last Friday night at our monthly girls night.
I used April's Cricut for the word "mouse", and I think I need to do that more often! I like that you can cut the letters at so many different sizes.


One last thing to add. I'm trying out Photoshop Elements to determine if I want to purchase the software. I've learned all of one trick so far. :) Those eyes REALLY look brown now! LOL!

Daddy's Chair and Momma's Laptop

Just a quick post to share a few pics.

She likes sitting in Daddy's chair. And so does our dog. Most of the time if they are ever in it together, they coexist just fine. But I have to watch miss priss because occasionally she will try to push him out.
As far as my laptop goes. It usually sits on the end of the couch and if I ever leave it open and step back to the kitchen, you can bet when I round the corner, she'll be typing on it. And usually the minute she sees me, she jumps back like she isn't doing a thing. Oh yeah. She knows it's a no no.

One other cute thing she's started in the last week, is singing her abc's. It usually goes like this.. "a..b..c..d..e..e...e.." Or occasionally it's just e...e....e.. to the tune of almost the entire song. I gotta get that on video...

Happy Bday Daddy and Uncle Alan

Just a quick post to say Happy Birthday to John and my brother-in-law, Alan.
I would say that little miss N has the men in her life wrapped around her little finger.