My First Unofficial Shoot

If you visit my blog with any regularity you know I have an interest in photography. I want as much practice as I can get to improve my skills. Today I went to visit T, and was finally able to take some pictures of baby A for her.

Here are a couple of my favorites.




I think one of the biggest things to learn is to take LOTS of shots. I did take quite a few, but I should of taken more. She's such a cutie!!

Busy Week

I have no idea where this week went. I've been busy this week working and shopping Kid's Market. (A bi-annual consignment sale here in town). I blinked and it's Friday.

Just a couple things to share from the week:

• I made my first purchase for the new baby. I'd love to find a matching one for the "Big Sister", so I'll have to look online for that. Thanks Alissa for finding this!
  
  
  

• Natalie's had some favorite toys this week:Her mini piano, her Pooh Jack in the Box, and her magna-doodle. I don't know how I manage to not have a pic of her with that magna doodle. She's been dragging it around everywhere. She likes for John and I to draw on it, while she sits in our lap.
  

• I found some bookcases on craigslist this week, so I am really ready to get Natalie's room done so we can move her over. I hope to get that almost completely done this weekend. I just have been dreading going through the last of the junk we have piled in that room. But my motto is going to be, "I will not be afraid to throw stuff away that we don't use." Now if I can just stick to it.
  

Another Eye Shot

I have two 5x7 Mother/Mom picture frames that I got for Mother's Day last year and I have yet to put pictures in them. So I thought I'd go through some pics and find a couple I like to order for the frames. I found this pic. It's from last November. Her many expressions keep us entertained. But what amazes me, is how her eyes change color. They are a green-ish brown, but sometimes they look so green and sometimes they look so brown. And sometimes my nose looks so huge. LOL!

Picture of the Day

I actually took this picture a couple of weeks ago. Those eyes. They get me every time.
We are almost recovered from our bout with the crud we had. Thankfully John hasn't gotten it. Hopefully it will stay that way.

And.. I have been totally obsessed with scrapbooking this week. Staying up way too late. In fact I'm headed to bed as soon as I post this, and this is early for me this week. I've even been planning out pages in my head as I fall asleep. It's pitiful I know. I can't believe that in my first trimester, when I had such an aversion to anything scrapbook, that I actually worried that I might not enjoy it again. HA! Here are my latest two. First one is for Scrappin' The Music. Based on the Song " I Love You, Always Forever". And the second one is for scrapjacked based on a layout by Jill Horby. That pic of Natalie and John just had to get used twice, it's so cute.

Weekend Scrappin

This weekend, I participated in an online crop over at DixiePieces.com
It was a ton of fun, and I got so much done thanks to their challenge prompts.

Here are just a few of my faves:





You can see the rest of them on my SIS Profile.

We have been kinda puny in out house the past 2 days. Just trying to get over a bad cold and congestion. I hate seeing my baby cough. It makes me want to sit around and hold her all day. On my part it also stinks not being able to take much of anything. I've drank like 5 bottled waters today in hopes to flush this mess out of my system.
Despite Natalie's puniness, she stays in good spirits. This has been one of her favorite toys the past couple days!

Happy Valentine's Day!

The above picture was totally by accident. You'll also notice a white cord next to her head..she was playing with the blind cords.

Let me just say that I have some serious respect for photographers. Especially when they are taking pictures of toddlers. The last time we took Natalie to get her picture taken, she had just turned one. She was standing, but not walking yet. Today, I decided I was going to try to do a photo shoot of her for Valentine's Day. It is SO HARD to take pictures when she can get up and walk off! Regardless of that, here are a few that I was happy with.





That last one of both of us was tough to get. How in the world do you get the camera to focus, to set on a timer. Obviously, I wasn't in front of it when I was trying to focus, because I needed to be able to reach the button. HA! And here's my belly shot at 5 months.

Now I'm gonna get the girl fed and down for her nap. I plan to print out these pics, along with a few others, and make John a small album to give him tonight. Talk about waiting til the last minute!

Once Upon a Time

There was a little girl named Natalie who was waiting to find out if she was going to get a baby brother or baby sister. She wasn't sure what had gone on earlier that day, just that they had watched something fuzzy on a TV and mommy and daddy had gotten excited. But for now, it was lunch time.
So after finishing up lunch. Dad has a little talk with Natalie. "There's something fun we have to tell you Natalie. Soon you will have someone to play with. Now you get to tell our family and friends if your getting a brother or sister."
Natalie wasn't sure what to think when Daddy told her the news, but she was excited to tell everyone, so mommy helped her make a sign, for the announcement...
Mommy is gonna have a baby...........


"Boys are yuck!" thought Natalie. "This calls for a celebration. Bring on the ice cream."


Natalie was enjoying the ice cream, but thoughts of her new baby sister were floating around in her head. "What exactly does this mean?" She wondered. "I'm still daddy's little girl right?"

"Of course, sweet girl." Dad answered. "It just means Daddy's heart's gonna grow a lot."

**********
So much to my surprise, we are having another GIRL! After all, pink is my favorite color.

Guessing Game

The time is here! We find out tomorrow if babyW is a girl or boy. To be quite honest, in the beginning I was really hoping for another girl. I think mainly because, that's what's familiar to me, and plus we have all girl clothes, pink blankets, etc. But after taking the Drano test, it has confirmed my gut feeling that it is a boy. If you haven't heard of this, you take Drano crystals and pour your urine over them. If they turn brownish in color, then you are having a girl. If they stay a green-blueish color, it's a boy. Mine were green. It isn't anything scientific and snopes.com will tell you it doesn't work, but I just had to do it for the fun of it. And also, if you ever try this, make sure you have a separate person take the stuff outside and pour your urine over the crystals because it produces a strong chemical reaction with lots of smoke and pregnant people don't need to breathe that. Neither does anyone, probably..LOL.

So...make your guesses! I wanta know what you think! Another girl? Or will I be shopping for lots of blue over the next few months? And here's a big sloppy kiss for good luck on the guesses!


And my 3 pages I completed with the girls at scrap night, Friday night. Merry Christmas! hehe..



I'm ready to start doing some Valentine pages!

Challenge Blogs

I've said it before, but I LOVE scrapbook challenge blogs. Here are a few from the past few days.

Scrappin' the Music: The song this week is "world" by Five for Fighting. Had never heard this song before, but the lyrics are great. The journaling on the page (lyrics from the song) reads:
What kind of world do you want. Build a masterpiece. Think Anything.
These two are for Scrapjacked. They are celebrating their one year anniversary, so there are a ton of layouts to "jack" and get inspiration from.



That's all for tonight.

Snapshots

Just some random photos from the last couple weeks.

Attempting to put on her shoes:

She loves to brush her teeth:

Helping daddy drain the waterbed (can you tell she was attached to that mickey hat for a couple of days?):

Giving daddy some kisses:

Finally facing forward in her carseat!:

And finally, doing a little dance on the catwalk!:
To explain that last one a little further, every week over at Scrap in Style, they choose a handful of layouts from the gallery and feature them in a special section of the site (called the catwalk). This past week, the above layout was chosen! I have a handful of layouts I've done this past week, that I haven't posted here on the blog. So, if you'd like to see them, just go here to my SIS profile.

Baby news..

Not my baby news.... but my best friend Telah's. I know a lot of you that read my blog also read hers, so get over there and check out their new arrival. :)

Girls Day Out!

This week has been really busy, so I'm just now getting a chance to update about the weekend. On Saturday some of us gals took a road trip to the Nashville area for an all day crop with area SISters. I have been a member of this scrapbooking website since it's debut last May, and it was really cool to get to meet some people in real life that I've only known through the online scrapping community. We had so much fun and I'm already looking forward to the next one! The only downside was that we were there for 12 hours and I only got 5 pages done. How does that happen?? Anyway here's the rundown on my pages:

First two pager I've done in a LONG time. I'm gonna try to do more of these because I can get so many more pictures on them.

Found a new challenge blog called Scrappin' the Music. Every week they post a song as inspiration, and you use some or part of the lyrics to create a page. This one was based off of Bucky Covington's song, It's Good to be Us.

One of my favorite recent pictures of Natalie. The journaling reads: In 5 more months you will become the BIG SISTER, but you will always be my baby. love, Mom.

Another one of my favorite recent pics. While at the crop, we played a couple of games. One of them was a Round Robin. What this means is that you sit at a table with other people and pass your layouts around. You start out with your own layout for the first 5 minutes. Then when time is up, you pass it. Your layout spends 5 minutes in each persons possession to work on. So when you get it back, everybody at the table has contributed to the final result. Hopefully that made sense. Anyway, the girls in my group did a great job with this one!
I have one other layout I did in another game where someone else picked out 3-5 supplies from our own stash and then we got to choose ONE more thing and that was it. We had to create a layout using those few things. I like how it turned out, but it's still just so plain looking to me, so I'm gonna add a final touch and then post it later.

A couple more pics from the crop: My cutesy nametag for our table, and a group shot of us Alabama girls.


With a room full of scrappers, you know tons of pics were taken. If you'd like to see more, one of the other gals from TN posted a bunch here.

Tons of stuff going on at my house this week..new furniture arrived, and as soon as I get the final touches done in our room I'll share before and after pics. I can't believe how different everything looks but I am loving our new bed!