You Are My Sunshine 1st Birthday Party

 

Happy April, friends! March pretty much tried to kill me with various ailments (tonsillitis, food poisoning, allergies, aches and pains), so I'm happy to be moving on to a fresh month. And look what I finally have to show you! I had way, way too much fun planning this party. I'm excited to share some of the pictures with you.

 

I told my husband I wanted the frosting to look like clouds, and well, my husband is awesome. He definitely delivered.

Tissue Paper Tassel Garland

Suns from the "Create a Critter" Cricut cartridge

Banner from the "Something to Celebrate" Cricut cartridge

Party Hat Template

Now I'll give a little run-down of the party. We sang "Happy Birthday" and let Elle have at her smash cake, of course. I loved how she daintily picked off slices of mango before tasting the icing. She is definitely my girl. She needed a little assistance to actually break into the cake.

 

We kept our guest list small to cut down on the cost for food and party supplies, so we had mostly family and a few close friends in attendance. The result was an intimate gathering of people who have been in Elle's life since she was just a few days old. Since the birthday girl couldn't quite make a wish of her own, I asked everyone to record a birthday wish for her in a journal. I hope to make a tradition of filling this book with birthday wishes each year. 

Another fun thing we did was ask the guests to bring an object to represent an occupation Elle might choose in the future. We got this idea from some friends in our old ward. Apparently it's a Bulgarian tradition to sit your one year old in the middle of a circle of objects and predict their future based on what they choose. Sounded fun to me!

Based on the objects, her choices were veterinarian, paleontologist, dentist, engineer, starlet, teacher, chef, artist, or ophthalmologist. The outcome was clear: she went straight for the calculator (representative of engineering). We did the test a second time to see what her second choice would be, and she went for the protractor (Dad had sneaked in two objects for engineering). Only time will tell if the test is right...

The next day I realized that I'd forgotten to put the party hat on Elle even once during the party, so naturally I had to remedy that ASAP. I put her in the brand new dress she received for her birthday, fed her cake, which worked out perfectly because we had A LOT of leftover cake to eat up, and played with the confetti. I'm pretty sure it was one of the most exciting weekends of her life. ;)

If anyone's interested, I created a Pinterest board to keep track of many of my online supply purchases and recipes (without a visual of what I'd purchased, my head would start spinning). I did what I consider to be extensive comparison shopping when it came to things like striped paper straws, baking cups, etc. and I found The TomKat Studio to have the best prices. My order also arrived super quick! Can't beat that.

2012 Year in Review Infographic

2012 was the year of the infographic, right? Seems like it to me. The design nerd in me is a big fan, and when New Year's Eve rolled around and I still hadn't checked off "write end of year letter" from my to-do list, I decided that an infographic was the perfect way to go. It may have helped that Merrick recently reminded me of this letterpress card I pinned a long time ago.

This is our third year to send out an end of year card to friends and family (second year to send them via email to save money), and if I do say so myself, this is the best yet. Definitely blows last year's out of the water, but that's not saying much since I threw it together while sick and very pregnant.

I'm glad I went with the infographic. It was much less daunting than the thought of sitting down and trying to write an essay about the whole year. And I looove the way it looks. And since I subconsciously used the color scheme of Elle's* baby book, I can print it, and it will fit right in. =)

Source List
1. Fonts (in order of appearance): Perpetua Titling MT, Sail, Pigeon, Quaver Sans, Mensch, Piron V2, Homestead, Pea Bethany's Doodles, Pea Igna's Doodles, Pea Bhea Script (Many of these can be downloaded for free here or here.)
2. Arrows--this includes a tutorial on how to add brushes to Photoshop that I wish I'd read years ago. I love when people share their talents for free.
3. Graphics: I just googled what I wanted + silhouette and found them (baby silhouette, house silhouette, cruise ship silhouette).
4. I pieced together my own photo template using Paislee Press's DIY Project No. 1.

*I've decided that Elle will be my daughter's nickname on the blog for privacy's sake. Also, watermarks. I don't like them, but the reality is there are weirdos out there who steal pictures and pretend they're their own. I wouldn't blame them. Look at my baby. Hello, cuteness overload. But I'm going to do what I can to prevent stealing.

First Glimpses

My Pregnancy in Photos

 

The text says:

"For the most part, being pregnant was not what I expected. Your dad and I both braced ourselves for the hypothetical “worst”--lots of vomiting, over the top emotions--but the truth is, I think I make an excellent pregnant person. Yes, nausea was my daily companion throughout the first trimester, but I didn’t actually throw up until 12 weeks, & then it was only a few times. Instead of having crazy mood swings, I felt happy and confident. I count those as huge blessings!  Most importantly, you & I stayed healthy. It seemed like it took me forever to actually “show.” As proof of that, I didn’t officially announce my pregnancy at work until I was 6 months pregnant! Even though people continually told me that I looked “so small,” I gained an appropriate amount of weight, & my doctors were never concerned with your size. That was probably the weirdest part of pregnancy for me: having so many people comment on my changing body.  I attribute feeling & looking good for so long to lots of walking, both in my daily activities at work & weekly modified workouts at the gym. My favorite part of pregnancy, the thing I miss most, is feeling your kicks and wiggles, but I don’t miss you pushing against my ribs or my bladder."

For the record, I did tell my boss right away at 3 months so that she could plan for my maternity leave. However, I did hide fail to mention my pregnancy to the principal and assistant principal at one of my schools until Thanksgiving! There just didn't seem to be a good time to bring it up before then...

Baby on the Way

Well, my baby girl is a month old today! I can't believe it! Now that I'm on maternity leave I spend almost all of my time at home. It's weird. It's been a bigger adjustment than I anticipated, but I am getting used to this slower season in my life.

Being at home has allowed me to get back to my design roots. This week I started working on creating my daughter's baby book. I'd like to start blogging here again, so I'll be sharing pages from her book as I complete them to tell our story.

My first page goes back to the beginning, to when we first found out we had a little one on the way. =)

The text at the bottom says,

"Those early weeks of pregnancy were filled with worry for me. One of my pregnancy hormone levels was low, so I took supplements daily and had my blood drawn weekly throughout the first trimester. On June 29th, my doctor requested an ultrasound to make sure you looked healthy. That afternoon I wrote this in my journal:
        'The ultrasound made me feel MUCH better! The nurse and doctor said the baby is measuring about 6 weeks. We could see its little heartbeat flickering on the screen. It was amazing. The nurse said its heartbeat is 114, which is a little low, but since I'm only 6 weeks, its heartbeat is probably very new. I got my first baby picture too! I'm so excited that this is really real. I'm ridiculously happy that everything seems okay. I just hope the little guy or gal continues to grow!'”

Happy New Year!

I don't know about you, but I'm excited for 2011! I've been thinking about goals in a new way thanks to these ladies. And I'm working on a list of goals known as 101 in 1001. It should be ready to share by Sunday.

In the meantime, I just wanted to wish anyone who reads this a happy new year!

This year we sent out New Year cards to some friends. (If you're interested in receiving one, send me your address!) I spent a TON of time at the beginning of this week making the card along with our very first family letter. Even though it was a huge time suck, I loved every second of putting it together. I want to spend more time doing things I love in 2011, how about you?

Dots
Paper
Photo Strip 
Script Font (at the bottom of the card)
Heart 1, Heart 2
Date Stamps 
"Happy" Word Art
"New Year" Word Art
Faking Letterpress in Photoshop
Wording Inspiration
"Wishing..." font: Myriad Pro

Christmas Cheer

I told myself I'd do something fun and creative today, and here she is!

Pictured: table runner & berry tree {Target}, ghetto fab lime green glitter tree {courtesy of my mama}, our pantry door with wreath and some tin decorations we won at a White Elephant party last year, my little tin stocking and panda stocking hanger {courtesy of my mama}, poinsettia tree topper {I want to say Kohl's}, more berry trees and JOLLY sign {Target}, snowman {from my mama} and pillow {purchased tonight at Kohls for $15!}, santa {from my mama, I'm pretty sure, or Kohl's} and ceramic tree {courtesy of my granny, she made it}.

It took entirely too long to make this page, and I'm going to blame that on the new Photoshop. 
1. I had to figure out how to "pop out" my pictures, so that I could drag the layers onto my template. Seriously, how long had it been since I'd last digiscrapped?
2. I think I killed it towards the end. It was just being SO pokey! So, so sloooow. Very frustrating. And to think I wanted to have this done before Henry came home from work. Yeah, right. What I'm trying to say is, I hope someone besides me will appreciate my little creation.

Free Date Night

I made this "one free date night" coupon for my brother-in-law and sister-in-law for Christmas. It was fun to make, and hopefully it will be fun for them to use!

P.S. I got a new camera, my first dSLR, can you tell??? I am SOOOO excited about it!

Digital Scrapbooking: How to Get Started

On my last post, Thais asked how I learned how to digital scrapbook. I thought I would answer her questions in a new post in case someone else is curious.

What software do you use to scrapbook with?

When I first started, I used Adobe Illustrator. Now I use Adobe Photoshop CS2 (PS). It seems like most people use either Adobe PS or Photoshop Elements (PSE), which give you a lot of flexibility with your layouts, but of course you don't have to use those. According to the Designer Digitals website, Corel Paint Shop Pro, Microsoft Digital Image Suite, ACDSee Systems Photo Editor, and LumaPix FotoFusion Scrapbook Essentials are other common photo-editing programs.

And how the heck did you learn it? Books? Tips? Anything. I REALLY want to get into it.

I learned mostly by trial and error. I used a few online tutorials, which I will get to in a second, but for me, the biggest thing was finding out where to get free materials. A friend pointed me toward Two Peas in a Bucket, and I found other freebie sites on my own (see my "Goodies" sidebar).

Once I had materials, I just started layering things on top of each other in Illustrator. There are tutorials out there that will walk you through each step of making a digital page, like this first digital layout tutorial from Designer Digitals.

One of the most important things I did learn through a website was how to use a template. I think it's safe to say that 99% of the layouts I've made in the past year were created using templates. They are just so easy to use...once you know how!

This seems like a pretty good tutorial on how to use a PSD template. If you don't have PS or PSE, you'll need to use a software that can work with layers to use a template.

Here's an example of a page I made using a template I downloaded for free.





I made the lemon meringue pie page using the Circled Template 2 from Fei Fei's Stuff. Easy as pie, and the results are so pretty (in my humble opinion).

So, the main thing is purchasing a photo-editing software (or you can try trials of PS and PSE) if you don't have one already, and then, once you learn a few things you'll be right on your way!