Rainshowers & a Few Baby Book Pages

We’ve hit MONSOON season here in Utah.  The weatherman has said we’d have “monsoonal moisture” the last couple of days and today… well, yesterday we had gale force winds and a doozy of a rainstorm and this afternoon we’ve had even more incredible gale force winds and one heck of a hail and rainstorm.  This wasn’t just a downpour… it was an angry rain… it came down and pelted the flowers and plants in my garden and caused a great river to flood our gutters.  It was BEAUTIFUL!  There’s almost nothing I like better (weatherwise) than a GOOD angry rainstorm with loads of lightning and thunder.  Today’s storm only lasted a short while, but it was amazing… and I’m hoping those black clouds up north make their way down south… :)

So since I had a few minutes today I thought I’d share a couple of photos of the pages from the big baby book I was working on for the last while.  The book was shipped and Nikki finally received it and told me she loved it and that it was the coolest baby book she’s ever seen. (*BLUSH*)  I’m relieved.. I’ve never made a baby book before and was totally freaked out about it.

She wanted a monkey themed book and sent me a few papers to work in.  I think the hardest part was dreaming up the layouts.  I looked around for baby pages that I thought I could copy, but nothing was working so I started drawing sketches on papers.

Here’s a snapshot of one of my piles of sketches:

The baby book pages are not very complicated, just lots of thought put into details and LOTS of machine stitching and little monkeys with googly eyes.  I think the machine stitching and monkeys took the majority of my time.  I was learning to use my Cricut Expressions machine at the same time I was trying to put this book together.  Talk about frustrating. LOL!  I finally figured out the Real Dial Size button should not be on when cutting layers. LOL!  For some reason I thought I had the Paper Saver Button selected. HAHA!  For what it’s worth.. if you have children or not, the New Arrival cartridge is worth EVERY STINKIN COPPER PENNY you spend on it whether it’s on Ebay (where I picked it up) or some other store.  I have used the heck out of this cartridge (just having fun with it and not necessarily all in this book)!

NOTE: The creamy yellow papers are meant to be “place markers” for photographs.  They are lightly tacked in with a bit of adhesive and are meant to be gently plucked off and used to cut the exact size photo that goes in that space.  I figured it was the easiest way to help a non scrapbooker cut their photos to fit exactly.

ANyway, enough rambling… I’ve got to go locate my pickle recipe and canning supplies so we can get ready for bottling some dill pickles tonight after dinner and a wedding reception. FUN!

Here’s  snapshot of the stack of finished pages.  I think there were 30 total pages including one that she bought on Ebay as her monkey inspiration page.

Here’s a sneak peek of the first page (I posted this on facebook a while back):

Here’s the very first page (I’ll share the rest in no particular order).  I love the stork delivering a monkey.  The original artwork on the cartridge literature had him delivering a “baby”, but I thought the monkey would be more fun :)  The stitched ribbon is turning into one of my specialties.  I just love the bunched up, stitched ribbon. It’s fun and easy to do!

Here’s a page for baby and her bff, a beagle named Brandy. :) Every baby who has a pet in their home just HAS to have some photos with it! I loved this “bff” paper (don’t remember who makes it, though, lol!) and loved the stripes with it.

And a couple of detail shots:

               

 

Here’s another fun and cheery page for “baby’s mealtime” of choice.  How many of us have photos of us as wee ones with our face planted squarely in a dish of “pasketti” after completely crashing out? Tee hee!   I LOVED these monkeys… they are seriously fun and cute and I couldn’t resist doing googly eyes on all of them and hair on a couple of them.  The hairs are Maya Road fibers.  The rub ons are .. I can’t remember, but really fun. LOL!

And a couple of detail shots: 

                            

I’ve gotta finish editing the rest of the pics and will do it as I have time here and there.  Thanks for checking in with me today!

~Inky Smiles!

Busyness of Our Lives

I ran across this quote today.  I've been really thinking about "the important things" and what I focus my energy on and have been trying to redirect some of that limited energy on some very important things.

“We become so caught up in the busyness of our lives. Were we to step back, however, and take a good look at what we’re doing, we may find that we have immersed ourselves in the ‘thick of thin things.’ In other words, too often we spend most of our time taking care of the things which do not really matter much at all in the grand scheme of things, neglecting those more important causes.”

~Thomas S. Monson, “What Have I Done for Someone Today?” Ensign, Nov. 2009, 85

I have, however, focused some energy on a couple of fun projects in the last couple of weeks.  I will be photographing them in the next couple of days so I can share them with you!

Inky Smiles! 

Quietly Checking In...

Hey friends! I promise I have not totally dropped off the face of the planet... just been a little busy, both in life and craftiness.

What I've been up to:

1) Getting the house ready today for out of town guests.  I haven't seen my friend, Elisabeth, since before I was married... at least 11 years.  I also have not met her 4 children yet!  So stoked!  The house went to pot over the last month with everything going on so I've been tackling "forgotten" messes. LOL!

2)  Went to visit my family in Iowa for nearly 2 weeks for Dad's 60th bday celebration.  It was loads of fun and I took way too many photos.  

3) Came home from Iowa with a nasty case of Bronchitis, which I am STILL recovering from.  I have an inhaler for the wheezing and have been slowly trying to shake this horrid cough.  It seems to be worse at night when I lay down and try to get some rest. ERgh.

4)  Sadie had surgery to replace her CCL (which is like a human ACL) two days after we got back from Iowa.  We're not sure how she tore it, but according to the dr it was a doozy of a tear.  We think she just tore it from running and playing too hard.  I spent two weeks doing physical therapy with her and trying to keep a normally active doggy "contained/resting/still".   She still has quite a while that she has to stay calm for... argh..  Did I mention that this particular task is like trying to nail jello to a door??  I'm sure many of you who have experienced toddlers can empathize.

She is doing very well now.. we're waiting for the hair on her back left quarter to grow back.. Poor dog looks like mom started to give her a hair cut and then gave up. LOL!  Thankfully the 4" scar on her knee proves that's not the case.  Really, I'm a good furrmommy.. just taking care of my poochlet.  She had her 2 week check up last week and the vet says she's ahead of schedule on recovery... but full recovery isn't expected until at least another few months.  For now she's outside only on a leash and we can take her for short 10 min walks, which will increase to 20 -30 min walks over the next few weeks. YAY!  The poor girlie is dieing to go back out and play with her human and furr friends.  She's also doing well on her diet.. about 7 lbs lost so far which is half way to her goal. YAY!  (Now if I can keep up with her it would be GREAT!)

4)  In between everything I've been trying to work on a 12x12 baby scrapbook for my cousin.  It's monkey themed and traditional paper.  The traditional paper part has been a challenge for me because I'm in love with super fast, zero mess digi scrapping. LOL!  The book now has 24 pages and just a few more to add in so I can take photos of it and mail it this Friday.  I will be posting photos once Nikki receives it.  I don't want to spoil the surprise for her.

5)  Brent and I celebrated our 11th anniversary in July.  It was somewhat low key because I was so sick and actually totally SPACED it.  I blame the medicine and painkillers. I felt so bad.  Brent gave me the HUGEST bouquet of flowers that we took apart and put in 3 separate vases.  It was a TON of flowers.  They were so beautiful.   We went to dinner at PF Changs and enjoyed a nice, quiet evening together.   I love Brent and am so thankful that Heavenly Father gave him to me.  He's the best friend and husband a woman could ask for.

So that's it in a nutshell.  I better get back to working on the last odds n ends.

~Inky Smiles!

 Erin