Marley is 8!

In fact, Marley has been 8 for a week now so I'm a bit behind in celebrating her. I did write a heartfelt Facebook status update on the day. That counts, right? LOL!

I have created two layouts so far to remember this birthday. The first one I want to show you is for a PageMaps contest. We were given this sketch

And here is my take on it.

I had a lot of fun with this, used papers from several different companies and some new ribbon that I received last week in the mail. A total surprise package! But more about that later.

Every year we measure the girls first thing in the morning on their birthday. We have been using the door jamb of what is now Paige and Christine's bedroom. I'll show you a close up of the door jamb below - someone (hmmm ... wonder who?) has "decorated" it with permanent ink. ... sigh. Kids! 

But I digress. I went back today and measured exactly how high up the wall her M8 mark is and you can see it above. 51.5" or 131cm for us supposedly metric Canadians. So tall!! Greg's overjoyed. She'll be able to ride ALL the rides at Disneyland in May.

A couple more close ups of the details.

The other layout I did was for the last day of LOAD212. I completely disregarded the prompt as I really wanted to get a jump on scrapping her birthday. Here it is.

And close ups of each page.

Since last year we went a bit over the top with her party (see here) we'd been telling her all year that this birthday would have to be low key. And it was. We had 10 of her friends over (including 2 boys! yikes!) to have pizza and watch a movie - Dolphin Tale - and then eat cupcakes. I really didn't do too much prep. Goody bags were simple - just white paper bags with their names stamped on them - and only a few items in them. There was no craft to organize or games for that matter. The birthday banner made for Paige last year (see here) got a new number on it and was hung in a new place but other than that, decorations were minimal (pretty much non-existent really!) But at the same time, we celebrated Marley in a way that made her feel special and allowed her to spend time with her friends. 

The title for this layout is super simple - her initials and her age.

I also included a copy of her birthday invitation.

Now for those family members that have hung in, here are some pictures from the day.

She was very serious about having her height measured!!

Remember the "decorations" I talked about? Yup. Here they are!

After the measuring it was time for gifts. Here she is opening the card I made. Inside was a Groupon for a horse back riding lesson. As you can see by her reaction below, she was pretty excited!

Aunt Moira, this one's for you. Marley loves her new book! Thank you!! It is a teeny bit advanced for her but we'll take it slowly.

Birthday pancakes!

After all the soccer games were over for the day (it was Sunday after all!) we headed over to Andrew's to celebrate with the Campbell cousins as well as the Nielsen cousins. It was also Jonina's Mom's birthday the following day so we had a joint cake.

Last but not least, here is a picture of my surprise prize. I participated in a card exchange for Valentine's Day with my ScrapHappy group (see the cards here) and won the prize. I had completely forgotten there was a prize involved and so hadn't checked the boards for awhile. Gotta love the surprise mail!!

I used the green velvet ribbon and the dark pink crochet trim on the top layout. LOVE IT!!

That's it. Thanks for stopping by!