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May 16 2012

Little Shoes for Little Walkers

These last couple of weeks have been exciting as our little Bunny has been taking more and more steps and learning to walk. It’s been really cool to watch the process from standing up on her own to taking those first few tentative steps to the delight on her face as she has walked farther and farther from where she started.

My mom has been highly encouraging us to get her a pair of shoes. Correction: a proper pair of walking shoes.

We went out this weekend to buy Bunny a pair of shoes, and ended up with two from Stride Rite.

She didn’t like getting her foot measured or touched, especially by a stranger (the sales associate). I cannot believe it, but she wears a size 5(!) shoe.

They didn’t have the shoe we chose at the store, so while the sales associate was making phone calls to have the shoes shipped to our house, my mom, the Bunny and I looked at some pre-walker Robeez shoes. As I went through all the different boxes, our little girl pointed to a pair, indicating that she wanted to hold it.

It wasn’t in her size, and I kept looking at other selections and showing them to her. She wasn’t interested, and actually threw a couple of the boxes to the ground! Thankfully by the time I got to the bottom row of the display, they had a pair in her size and of course we bought the shoes for her.

She loves her panda shoes and will point at them and raise her bare feet up (when she wakes up from naps/sleep) to ask us to help her put them on. It’s the cutest reaction because she adores them and whenever one comes off, she will bring it over to us to help put it back on again.

Bunny has had shoes before, but this is the first time she has really shown an interest in shoes. I think it’s super fun that she chose shoes to her own taste and loves them so.

This morning her second pair of shoes arrived on our doorstep and she enjoys those equally as well.

I didn’t think we would have a little fashionista so early, but apparently we do!

Uh-oh Daddy!

Posted in Bunny, Parenthood

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May 10 2012

Getting Another Kindle.

Since our first Kindle broke,  Brian hasn’t really been doing much reading. Since he was going on his business trip (last week), he suggested taking the Kindle Fire so that he could do some reading on the road.

I pretty much screamed NOOOOOOOO!

What would I read if he took my Kindle?

And so after some back and forth and even after he got me to relent and give him the tablet, he decided he wanted a Kindle of his own.

We also decided to do this two days before he had to go on his trip, and so we ended up buying it at Target:

I love that we are both reading together.

And that I don’t have to share my Kindle Fire.:-)

Posted in Books, Brian, Technology, Vera

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May 04 2012

Just me and my girl

Brian has been traveling for work almost all of this week. It’s been pretty much me and the baby, with an evening visit from my mom so that I can head out for appointments. It has been a surreal change of pace without Daddy around to help, play, and bond with together. Not only that, but I miss the hubby’s coffee-making skills. I follow instructions and still end up with really, really, really strong coffee.

I have learned that when it is just me holding down the fort around here, it is very important to get to bed early! Because you know, just because the baby wakes up around 6:30AM the last couple of days, and then last night you don’t get to bed until 10:45PM, she might surprise you by waking up at 5:30AM.

Good thing for the really, really, really strong coffee.

Posted in Everyday, Parenthood, Vera

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May 03 2012

Creating a Baby’s First Year Scrapbook Album

My book arrived nice and printed last week! Correction: My baby’s book arrived nice and printed last week.:-)

The hubs has been getting little snippets of the book when he can:

84 pages of baby deliciousness.

This was truly a labor of love, and I am so glad to be mostly finished (more on that mostly part later).

I had my book printed with Shutterfly because I wanted a 12×12 digital photobook and I have been pretty happy with all the other photo books I have printed there. Plus, it was 50% off and I had a extra $10 off coupon. Oh, and free shipping too. That pretty much sealed the deal for me.:-)

I worked on the album off and on for four months, but I think I worked on it mentally for over a year!:-)

I struggled with deciding how to lay everything out, how I wanted to tell the story, and how much “stuff” I wanted to include in it. Ultimately I decided to do an overview of each month with my letters. Any specific stories or events I wanted to go more in detail with I would include in her baby book.

Once I decided on that, I thought the most effective way to get a snapshot of everything would be to use the digital Project Life layout template. I bought Tiny Templates 01 and 04 from Designer Digitals and Togetherness Paper Pack and Candy Candy.

This is the first page. I’m going to hand-write a little note in there for our little one:

The next page is my birth story:

From there it progresses in order. Every month I wrote the Bunny a letter and took a snapshot of her in a onesie with number stickers:

On the left side of the next page I included highlights, milestones, and things I wanted to remember from the month, sort of a month in review format. Some specific photos had a little bit more journaling paired with them:

Okay, so it feels wonderful to have it all done and printed. But. I am not done. I wanted to get two copies printed (one for me/Brian, one for baby to take with her when she leaves ::sob::). This was the first test run and notice those flags on some of the pages? Well, I didn’t think about the bleed/print area when I was working with the text, so I’m going to have to go back and switch places with some of the photos and journaling. Not a big deal, but it’ll take a little bit of time.

Since the book is still so fresh in my mind, I also want Brian to go back and really read the journaling to make sure there aren’t any horrible grammar/spelling errors.

Not counting all the time/energy of documenting everything, the total cost of the book from digital paper products to printing it with Shutterfly: around $85. Plus or minus a couple dollars here and there. So, it came out to be around $1 per page. Not a bad deal!

Now once I get a more updated book I’ll have to decide if I give the baby the new copy or give her this one.

Hmmm….

Or maybe I’ll just get two printed!;-)

Posted in 101, Books, Bunny, Projects, Scrapbooking, Vera

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May 02 2012

Why I Love Digital Scrapbooks and Photo Books

I love our current library/playroom because I wanted a space to keep my scrapbooks. I had kept them in the bathroom linen closet of the third floor for the first two years of living in this house! There was no way we could enjoy them or flip through the photos. Plus I hate to think about the crazy hot temperatures affecting my books by sitting up in the third floor when we kept the vents closed. Now they are all happy and fit perfectly in the Expedit shelves. We have already pulled a few books to flip through since bringing them downstairs, and nothing makes me happier than seeing my family look through the albums.

(Side note: Yes, that is baby’s first year album! I’ll share that tomorrow!)

Well, I have quickly realized that I don’t really want to devote the same amount of time, money, or space to creating scrapbooks from traditional paper and products. I don’t really want to have all our shelves eaten up by scrapbooks and then I don’t think our future generations will want to lug every single scrapbook I have made around with them. And if I think about myself, I really don’t want to lug them all around either.

But I still love telling stories, taking pictures, and documenting it. I have made about 7 or so digital books the last couple of years, and we all love to pull out a book to flip through. I started scrapbooking in 2004-ish, and since going mostly digital, I love it and my family loves it!

My nephew loves looking at our 2010 Disney album book and our Bunny loves the 2011 Disney album. They just flip through it over and over studying the pictures.

One of these days I would love to get a company to scan my traditional scrapbooks and get it printed into a digital book. As I have been working on simplifying parts of my life, I love how everything is contained in a book and look at how little shelf space that takes up!

Posted in Organizing, Scrapbooking

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