Marley's 1st Birthday

Wow! Three posts in one day?! Hmmm ... I wonder who was looking after my kids today? LOL!!

I said I'd try my hand at the Design Dollies Elements Challenge and so I did. It was to make something Birthday themed and I scrapped Marley's 1st Birthday Party. I figure as long as I'm entering challenges I might as well make progress on Marley's Baby Scrapbook at the same time! This is a double page LO but I realized that I did not actually take a picture of it as a double layout. Hmmm... may have to add it later! I'm also entering the first page into the PageMaps Basic Grey Challenge. How appropriate that my papers are all Basic Grey (Cupcake line - which I received from the Design Dollies as part of a blog candy win - thank you Dollies!!)

Left Hand page of LO

Right Hand page of LO

Some details: The #1 is from a set of alphas I found at Homesense of all places! I didn't need another reason to shop there but ... whatd'yaknow!!

This was my first (and only for that matter) birthday cake I've made for my kids (it's been store bought or cupcakes since then!) - the icing around the outside was supposed to be pink in colour but ... it didn't really work out. Oh well. That's what I get for trying to do everything from scratch! The duck looked pretty cool though. Oh, and it was a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting ... YUM!

The pack of BG paper came with a page of sticker embellishments with a ready made title! Sweet! No wonder I could scrap the whole LO in only a couple hours!

I did a little poem as my journalling - it sort of just came out that way! It reads;

"Time flies when you're having fun.

Can you believe that Marley is ONE?!

I made you a cake with a duck.

You blew out the candle for luck.

Cousins were there, fun was had, oh what a year!"

I received these green shiny alphas from Anne at BASB as part of an awesome (and totally unexpected - thought it was going to be a gift certificate) RAK and I just knew the colour would be perfect here! Marley has always loved parties - maybe it started here?

She even liked the cake!!

Well, there we go. Another 2 pages done in Marley's album. Yay! Thanks for looking!

Is it Spring already?

I went for a run yesterday and noticed some crocusses in bloom and thought "isn't it still January?!" We have been having an incredibly mild winter this year (El Nino to the max!) which is nice if you aren't a fan of cold and snow (me!!) but not so nice if you're trying to organize a large event that requires snow, like say ... oh, I don't know ... the Olympics!!! Our average temp this month is something like 7 (Celsius). Anyway, long story short, I thought I'd look in my garden and see what (if anything) was going on.

Here is what I found ...

My Hydrangea bush ...

... some crocus and (I can't remember the name of the other flower - isn't that terrible!) bulbs peaking through their leafy blanket ...

... a big old something or other!

Let's hope we don't get a cold snap or I will have no flowers this spring!!

Today I am thankful for ...

... warm weather to run in ...

... Ibuprofen (ran Tuesday, did a spin class Wednesday and ran yesterday - knee SORE!!) ...

... a 4.5 hours stretch of sleep last night! (don't worry, I know it won't last!)

Bath Time!

Here is the new LO I promised ...

Marley was our first baby and while we did get the "how to give your baby a bath" lessons in our prenatal classes AND watched the nurse at the hospital quite carefully, somehow once we were home and having to do it all on our own on a real live baby ... not so much fun!! The pictures do not show me sitting on the floor in my bathrobe (I guess I was thinking she was going to splash me or something) crying that I was not fit to be a Mom 'cus I couldn't give my daughter a bath! They do show Greg's arm (top right pic) because he ended up taking over! And you'll probably notice we did all this in the kitchen sink - she got to bathe amidst the rice cooker, the coffee grinder, and all manner of potentially toxic things!  LOL! Ah, live and learn!! 3 kids later ... bath time is a relatively painless process. Relatively!!

Here are some close ups of the details and journalling:

The flower was a decoration on a goodie bag our girls received at a wedding we went to in the summer. I KNEW I'd end up using it somewhere!! I cut out the letters from an old cereal box and glittered them myself so closeup you can kind of see the UPC code peaking through but ... I'm going to pretend they're perfect!! I drew and cut the waves out freehand - not too shabby, right? :)

This is for the Design Dollies Colour Challenge which was to use a monochromatic blue scheme. It was actually a tough challenge for me. Having 3 girls I have PILES of pink paper but surprisingly little blue. Go figure! I was a bit worried about it looking too "boy-ish" but I think the flower, the ribbon and the sparkly letters keep it "girly". The sketch is actually a hybrid of last weeks Design Dollies sketch and last weeks Sketchy Thursday sketch which were eerily similar! I was hoping to finish the LO in time to enter it into both challenges but ... life has a way of keeping me from my scrapping!

Okay, one more LO down for Marley's Baby album ... unknown number to go!! The Elements Challenge at Design Dollies is to make a Birthday inspired project so I may skip from week one in her life to her first birthday and attempt to enter another challenge. My goodness! Two challenges in one month?! Can she do it?! Stay tuned to find out!

A Mysterious Blog Hop and Candy Giveaway

I came across this post while on Leah the Orange's site and it seriously piqued my interest. Since getting into this whole scrapbooking thing I've had lots of fun and quite a bit of success participating in Blog Hops, Blog Candy giveaways and other contests. So I'm psyched for this one! Have NO IDEA what it's all about but I'm just glad I found it in time!!

I'll let you know or you can check it out for yourselves ...

On a quick personal note ... I finally finished a LO for the Design Dollies! Yay! I THINK I may even make one of the deadlines this time! It was a challenge but I'll talk about that when I post it. Since it's already past 11PM I'm going to wait to post pics til tomorrow.

Update on LC

Yesterday I posted that LC has 4 teeth ... well, last night she decided to grow another one! Yay LC! Now the grand total is up to 5!

I wonder how many more will come in the next little bit?

Today I am grateful for ...
... flex days ...
... husbands who are such involved fathers ...
... quiet mornings

LC is 10 months old!

Here's where there would usually be a picture of LC .... but due to technical difficulties with my brand spanking new Rebel T1i, the pictures are trapped. As soon as I figure out how to get the software installed properly and the pics downloaded I'll post some. Anyone willing to pop over and troubleshoot my Dell?! GRRR!!!!  My next laptop/computer is SO going to be a Mac!!!

... a bit later ... I found a work-around. Yay me!! There are now pictures in this post!!! Just keep reading!

So ... what can LC do at 10 months? She is still cruising around like crazy on the furniture and walls. She's gotten so good she now only needs one hand to hold on. Paige started walking at about this age so it could be any time now. We've nicknamed her Trouble as her mobility generally helps her find things to cause trouble with ... like emptying the diaper bag/my wallet/my purse, checking out the wine bottles on the wine rack in the dining room (actually moving them and sucking on the ends!), emptying out the plastic containers/water bottles from the pantry, getting into the older girls' pencil crayons and papers ... you get the idea. But then she flashes you her toothy grin and your heart melts! It's a good thing she's so cute!!!

Here's a picture of some of the "trouble" LC get's into ...

Speaking of toothy grins, she got two new teeth this past month. Her top two middle teeth came in so now she spends a lot of time grinding them against her bottom two teeth. Lovely!! She had a lot of trouble with these teeth (read: sleepless nights for Mum and Dad!) so we're hoping the next ones will be easier. So far things are not looking promising!!

This is a nice closeup of LC - you can just see her top teeth! Really ... look closely!

Here's a better shot of those teeth ...

She's also continuing her accident prone streak (definitely Greg's kid!!). After the eye injury in December - that has left her permanently scarred, poor girl - she has so far hit her mouth causing it to bleed (while we were at the Passport office no less!) skinned the side of her nose (on a garbage can - don't ask), and just yesterday fell at the preschool and bumped both the back of her head AND her forhead at the same time! How you ask? She was holding onto one of the little chairs, fell back hitting her head and then the chair fell on top of her hitting her forehead!! And THEN one of the older kids accidentally stepped on her fingers as she was crawling around! But that wasn't the extent of her rough and tumble day yesterday. I was on the computer here in the dining room and she was playing with (read: destroying) my scrapbooking stuff when she misjudged where the chair was and fell face first into it's leg. Yup, more bruises on her face - this time on her cheek. I tell you, she's going to be so tough by the time she reaches school!

 You can just barely see the bruise on her forehead from the preschool chair incident (this pic was taken BEFORE the dining room chair incident) and the mark on the side of her nose from the garbage can incident. Oh, and the scar in the corner of her eye! Yup, that's our girl!!

I don't have a height and weight for her but she continues to outgrow clothes at an alarming rate so I'm guessing she's still 95th percentile for height! She babbles up a storm, can sort of sign "more" and "all done" and did something one day that I swear was "daddy"! Her blanket (thank you Aunty Shalan) continues to be her favourite comfort item and sleep isn't possible without it and her thumb. Not sure what would happen if we ever lost it!

Well, I think I've gushed enough about daughter #3. I'm going to try again to download those pictures again so hopefully I'll get them posted tonight too.

Today I am thankful for ...
... computer literacy ...
... my 3 monkeys ...
... MarioKart and it's power to bring Greg to his knees!! (that's a whole other post though!!)

Scrapping again!!

Well, it's been two weeks since I was able to reclaim the dining room as my scrapping room and I've scrapped a whole ... wait for it ... 2 layouts!!! Yikes! With an output like that I'll probably finish Marley's baby album by the time she retires!!! Getting back into the swing of things after the Christmas holiday hasn't left much "play" time for me. Boo hoo! I've signed up for an all day crop in February so hopefully I can get caught up then. Or by then ... or something!!

Anyway, without further ado, here are my two new LO's. My Aunt had included a photo collage with her Christmas letter this year and it gave me the inspiration to play with the collage function in Picasa. I created a bunch of collages which I hope to scrap soon - these are the first 2. This December (2009) we had lovely cold temperatures with gorgeous sunshine but no snow. I wasn't complaining but the girls were! December of 2008 we had record snowfalls around here and there were quite a few tears this year that they couldn't go tobogganing over the holiday. Mostly on Marley's part! I created one collage of Paige playing in the backyard and another of Marley making snow angels in the backyard and scrapped them both.

Here's Paige - the photo of her asleep in her car seat was to remember how she was when we went tobogganing! NOT in love with the cold, deep snow at all!!!

 Here are some close ups of the details:

I found this pom-pom ribbon and applied some of it along a narrow blue ribbon at the botttom of the LO and cut off the individual pom-poms and glued them onto the tree. I like how it turned out. Gives it some great texture! Below is the collage of Paige.

And here is the LO of Marley's Snow Angels. The pink polka dot paper is from a pack I won in a RAK from Deanne (thanks!!) which is not wintery or Christmassy at all but worked for this LO really well.  The snowflakes are acrylic ones from MAMBI that I thought were stickers but weren't so now I'm just hoping and praying that the glue holds. I've already had to re-glue a few so .... fingers crossed they stick this time!

Some of the details:

And the collage of Marley ...

Well, there you go.

Today I am thankful for ...

... my Wii Fit and time to use it ...

... a nice warm dry van to take Marley to school in (even though it's only a few blocks away) when the winds blow and the rains pound down!...

... McDonald's drive thru (because I didn't feel like making lunch today).