Layered Embellishment Clusters

Here’s another layout I put together last week with Kate’s assistance.

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I’m actually quite pleased with the embellishment clusters!  I don’t love the title, but it was Kate’s main contribution so I’m keeping it.  🙂

I should be getting a new box of goodies today!  Tracking shows it’s out for delivery.  🙂  It’s mainly stuff for December Daily and I’m excited to get it and start playing.  Especially after missing last year.

Scrapping with Kate

Kate wanted to scrap with me this weekend (be still my heart!) so we made this page of her doing story time for the twins.  Usually she wants to make her own pages, but I think she’s discovering that I don’t always share the coolest supplies with her.  Whoops.  😉  She decided that we should make this page together.

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She was super excited when I let her do some journaling ::gasp:: on the page with one of my pens!  She also took her time and used her very best penmanship.  I love that I have a snippet of her voice and her handwriting in my scrapbook!  I’m going to make a point to have her do some project life cards too.  🙂

I have 2 Six Month Olds!

The babies are 6 months old!  How did that happen?!?  We started solids today (actually a week ago, I’ve been slacking a bit on the blog) which was super exciting.  We started with avocado because it’s soft and nutritionally dense.  With Kate, we did Baby Led Weaning (here’s a book if you’re interested) and we loved it.  Basically, you skip purees entirely and just let the kids eat real food.  Xander was all for it!

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Kate was all about helping.  Don’t worry, she didn’t actually shove food in his mouth.  lol.

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I love his expression in this one.  He’s like, “Why did I just put that in my mouth?!?” 3 seconds later, “OMG, give me more!”  Do all babies react to solids like this or is it just my kids?

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Mia was more of a challenge.  We didn’t want to spoon feed her, but she wasn’t quite ready for BLW either.  After discussing it ad naseum with her occupational therapist, her speech therapist, and her nutritionist (wow, that was crazy to type out) we decided to do kind of a hybrid approach.  Our goals are to explore food and have fun, we’re not bothered about them actually ingesting anything, which makes it easier.

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Our speech therapist suggested using her chewy stick (it’s like a therapy teether) sort of like a spoon.  We also loosely mashed up her avocado instead of giving her big chunks, but we didn’t puree it.  Since it’s not smooth, we’re hoping to avoid texture aversions later.

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We’re also following her lead as far as when she wants more and when she wants the chewy in her mouth.  It’s a lot more work than straight BLW (which is like the lazy parent version of solids and I love) but we feel like she’s still getting a few of the benefits without being so worried about her choking.

Incidentally, I freaking love our high chairs.  They’re pricey, but we were lucky enough to have received both as gifts.  One we still have from when Kate was a baby.  We didn’t think we’d be able to have more kids, but I just couldn’t bring myself to part with it because I loved it so much!  And after seeing daily use for almost 3 years, it still looks almost new.

 

Pink and Gold Obsession

It’s no secret that pink is my favorite color, but gold?  I resisted that trend for a long time.  I finally gave in and I’m kicking myself for waiting so long.  Pink and Gold 4 Lyfe!

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I did some pink stars with a bit of texture medium and then  sprayed some hearts using my heart stencil and some Heidi Shine.

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It was subtle, but I like the way it turned out.  The cardstock is actually teal, not sure what’s up with the color in this pic.  That’ll teach me to try to be all fancy and use my real camera!

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Also loving the vellum with gold!  And the gold washi!  And my adorable cousins.  🙂

October Goals

Let’s see how we did with the September goals, shall we?  🙂

  1.  Scrapbook October- Done!  In fact, I love my new Crate Paper goodies so much that I was wishing I had more pics from last October to play with.  Luckily it’s October again so I’ll have new pics to play with soon!
  2. Scrapbook May 2015- Also done!  I love scrapping more current pics.  🙂
  3. Project Life- Well, I did 5/6 layouts, so I didn’t make much forward progress, but I didn’t fall further behind either.  I’m counting this one in the win column.
  4. Blog- I fell down a bit on the blogging last month.  Things have just been so crazy around here!  I’ve decided just to give in and start posting iPhone pics of my layouts.  The quality isn’t as good, but the reality is that I have limited time and I’d rather scrap than edit photos of layouts.  lol.  At least I have a plan moving forward.
  5. Register for the Buddy Walk- Done!  In fact we have a team and everything.  We might even get shirts.  🙂
  6. Reframe DAD pics- Not yet, but I bought the frames so that’s a step in the right direction.
  7. Decorate for Halloween- Done!  I <3 decorating for Halloween.  🙂
  8. Decide on Halloween costumes- still working on this one.  I’m pretty sure the babies are going to be bats, but I need Kate to commit to being a witch first.  She has until Wednesday to decide!
  9. Finish cross stitch project- If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I got a lot closer to finishing this than I thought I would!  Still, not quite done yet.  It’s being put on hold while I focus on Xander’s stocking.
  10. Layout list for August- Done!  It’s almost all iPhone pics.  Need to bust out the real camera this month!

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Look at my adorable babies!  I took this pic on Friday and I had to scrap it right away.

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I used my stencil to make the hearts, and then I did some splatters with my gold Heidi Shine.  I matted the pic with what might be my last piece of my favorite paper from the October Afternoon Witch Hazel line.  Then I added in a bunch of pieces from the Crate Paper After Dark ephemera pack, a bit of washi from Target and some sequins.  I love it!  And I just uploaded some more pics from this weekend to play with.  I might end up staying caught up with October.  lol.

Speaking of staying caught up, I need to set some October goals.

  1. Scrap June 2015
  2. Find a Christmas line I like
  3. Scrap December 2014
  4. Scrap January 2015
  5. Layout list for September 2015
  6. Project Life
  7. Xander’s Stocking
  8. Twins’ Halloween costumes
  9. Kate’s Halloween costume
  10. Blog