Momma's Helper

After sweeping our foyer and kitchen I propped the broom against the wall to do something else. Turned around and saw I had some help.




Love that look of concentration in that last one. She loves to help me. When I unload the dishwasher, she really likes to help me with the silverware. She'll take out each piece one at a time and say "tank you" as I take each piece. She's also recently started taking our dirty clothes and putting them in the hamper for us. I'm going to enjoy every minute of it because I know a day will come that she won't like to help out.

Last night I worked on a couple of pages, and I am so in love with this page of John and Natalie. I know most dad's adore their daughters, but I am constantly amazed over the relationship John and Natalie have. Especially since he was so sure he DIDN'T want a girl before we had any kids. He loves her so much and I can't help but love him even more for it.

Anyway, used some prompts from a couple of challenges to get the idea for this one. This week's word is "Grow", and at Dixie Pieces there is a color combo challenge going on to use only black and white with a splash of "1" other color.

Also really trying to use up some older supplies I have on hand. So I used some older KI Memories paper for this one.

Like a Deer in Headlights and Other Random Things

I use the flash on my camera these days next to NEVER. So when the flash went off for this picture, I think she might have been a tad surprised.
Here's another good one from the picture taking adventure on Saturday:
You may notice that she has a big bruise right in the middle of her forehead. Oddly enough it doesn't show as much in the pictures as in does in person. It looked HORRIBLE the day she did it, and she didn't even cry, so we're not even really sure what she did. It happened on the day I was working in the nursery and her new bedroom, so my guess is that she was playing (aka standing/jumping) on her new toddler bed and fell and hit the railing. Anyway, she is one tough cookie.

And another one where it's pretty obvious she was so OVER IT:
And my latest page:

The not So Good Ones

Unedited and in true form,
In an attempt to take some 18 month pictures:

We tried to keep her happy with raisins. And so we have the shot with who knows how many in the mouth.

And this is my personal favorite, just because it's a great picture, but uh, well, the prop/raisin container seems just a tad out of place. LOL!

There are way more like the above, but we did also get this one:

And oh my, I didn't realize I was getting so big:

What we've been up to..

• Spent the past weekend out at D&T's. Telah and I scrapped the night and day away while our hubbies conquered the WoW.
• Our Sunday routine. Church; lunch with the folks
• Went to a Stampin' Up party with Amy and discovered the company carries more than just stamps.
• Worked a few hours on Monday while John and my father-in-law moved the exercise equipment out of Natalie's new bedroom
• Made a run to a nearby fabric store because I really have the itch to sew
  
• Worked most of Monday night and today in Natalie's new room and the nursery
• Unpacked all my newborn clothes and can't believe I'm about to have a baby that tiny again.

That's it, in short and sweet bullet form. Natalie is napping and she'll get up in time for us to head to the dr. for my 30 week appt.
And here's one of the layouts I did this past weekend. It's the only one I've taken a picture of so far because I wanted to get it posted to Scrapping the Music before their deadline. Will share the others soon.

I feel Crafty, oh so Crafty

For a couple of years now, I've said that I was going to learn how to sew. Just shortly after I got pregnant with Natalie I had these grand plans that after she was born, I would learn. She's 18 months old now and I still had not made time for this goal of mine. A few months back Target had a really good deal on a basic Singer model sewing machine. So I bought one. I think that was in January. Last night, it finally came out of the box. I have several friends that are very good at sewing and thankfully they were willing to help this beginner. I've sewn once in my life. That was back in 9th grade home economics, and I made the most hedious looking red blouse with white heart buttons. I wish I still had it just to show you what it looked like, but it either graced the trash or goodwill long ago.

So, last night, thanks to Alissa and April and all of their help, I made my first diaper/tote bag.


It's even got pockets! I like this material for the most part, and I've got more clearance table material that I already cut the pieces out of, so I can give the practice run one more go. But now that I know I won't make a complete mess of it I'll be getting something I really like to make a new diaper bag for baby #2.

Have a great weekend!

ScrapMojo

I have found yet another challenge blog. This one called scrapmojo provides prompts that are very unique and make you think outside of the box. The latest challenge was to use Office Lingo and/or office supplies. I had some journaling I wanted to do to document some things happening with Natalie, so this is what I came up with. If you want to read the journaling and can't see it, just click the image and it will bring it up in another window.

Just for Fun

Still editing and going through the ton of pics I took from my impromptu photo shoot the other day.

Just had to share this one: I have two things to say.
>Look out for that hair.
>It's not nice to make fun of mommy. ;)

Recent Pages

I haven't posted any pages in a little over a week, so here's some recent ones. Some of these I did last Friday night at our monthly crop and some are from yesterday.





This last one is my favorite that I've done in a while. This week's word over at One Little Word is "best". At first I was gonna do, "the best things in life are free" but that's gonna get used a lot by other people participating. So I ended up with this.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Two Posts in One Day??

Ok, so I know I already posted a quick picture today, but I got click happy with my camera this afternoon and have some more pictures I want to post.

This morning I went to a photography class held by Heather Bookout Photography. It was a basic overview about learning to shoot in Manual mode to get better pictures of your kids. So when I got home this afternoon and after Natalie's nap, I was ready to take some pictures.

One of the tips she gave about taking pics of kids ages 1-3 was to just let them explore. You as the photographer take on a paparazzi type role and just shoot lots of pictures. And this totally makes sense because it almost never works well when you are TRYING to get them to look at the camera and smile. There's way more interesting stuff to see at that age than a camera lens. I took a ball outside with us and had John help me throw it around and play with her so I could hopefully get her at least walking or facing my direction.

I had lighting/shadow issues because the sun kept going in and out of clouds. But I tried not to get to caught up in that because I just wanted some practice.










I took pictures for maybe 15 minutes and took 150 shots. The more you take the better chance of getting good ones. And I am so glad that John spotted the yellow flower and showed it to her, because even though she doesn't look at the camera much at all in those, I love how they turned out.

Wordless Wednesday

Natalie and Uncle Alan. Can you see the smile on his face? This picture makes me happy!

Every Two Weeks and Shoooes.

I had my baby check up today. Every thing is looking good. Her heart rate was 152, so it's nice and strong. At the end of my appointment, he said I'd start coming in every two weeks and I did a double take. Are we to that point already? Wow, it really has snuck up on me. He mentioned again that I can plan on a C-section in mid-June and we'll decide on the exact date as we get a little closer. We still have no clue what we are going to name her. We don't even really have many ideas. I keep thinking some name is just going to come to me out of the blue, but that hasn't happened yet.

Over the past few days Natalie has decided she likes to walk around in my shoes. She'll put them on and repeatedly say "shoes", and then look at me to confirm that I heard her call them "shoes". Except it comes out more like "shuuuus, or shooooos". In this first pic, that's what she is saying, but I don't know why she looks so perplexed about it. LOL!




And then another one of that pretty face and eyes!

Nap Time and Tagged

This afternoon after Natalie and I finished lunch, I told her it was almost naptime but that she had a little bit of time to play. Apparently she thought Pooh and Elmo should go down for their nap too. In this video: She's saying night night at the beginning, and I also got her to sing her abc's through "g" just in case it's only understandable to a mother's ears.

I was also blog tagged a few days ago by Telah:
The Six Words meme.

Here are the rules:

1) Write your own six word memoir

2) Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like

3) Link to the person that tagged you in your post

4) Tag at least five more blogs with links

5) Don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!
OK, here goes:

Will we ever get this finished?

I'm not crazy about posting these pictures with the room in this condition, but I'm gonna get over it. This is Natalie's room, that is still not ready for her to move into. Really the only major thing left to be done is to move that weight system out. John is doing that for me next week, so I'm really close to being able to finish up, but boy do I feel like this project is dragging. Baby 2 will be here in about 10 weeks and I will be so glad when I can show you the "finished result" of both rooms.

A lot of the regular bloggers that I read have already been tagged, so I'm breaking the rules about tagging 5 more people. If you haven't done this and would like to; run with it! Just make sure you leave me a comment so I can see your 6 word memoir!

More Scrappy Stuff

Disclaimer: If you don't scrapbook or have any interest in it, this post may bore you to tears. So feel free to glance at the pics and return to your regularly scheduled program. Can't say I didn't warn ya. ;)

The past couple of weeks it seems my scrapbook style, or what I find appealing to the eye has been changing. That's not necessarily a new thing. I go through phases with how I like to scrapbook. Sometimes I like to tilt my photos one way or the other, other times I want them all straight with clean lines, etc. The latter seems to be what I've preferred as of late.

I have a couple of sets of pictures from last year that I still wanted to scrap. All these pics are from last July, the one time that John got to go with us to swim. I did a 2 pager for this one so I could use more pictures. For the most part I'm pretty caught up. Now remember I don't scrap all the pics I take. I'd be years behind if I did that. Especially now that I take so many. So in the second layout, you'll notice it's some pics that I just posted here after Easter. I love these pics of John and Natalie.


So those two represent the style I've been drawn to, both having a similar design. The framed square background with rounded corners, straight lined photos, etc. So I had to try to do something different just to mix things up a bit. These photos are from sometime last summer too, I still need to look up the date and add it to the layout.

I also want to mention that if you are a scrapper and you're looking for an online community come on over to DixiePieces.com I found them a couple of months ago and joined to participate in an online crop. Everyone over there is really friendly and they have frequent challenges for free scrappy prizes.

That's all folks!