They asked me to be....

... a GUEST DESIGNER!! I am so excited, and have been wanting to spread the word since I found out a few weeks ago, LOL! Sweet Pea Scraps asked me to be their March guest designer! So here's the kit (more pictures of it up on the blog)...


... and here's some of what I did with it (journaling under each layout):

All of my life I have made up songs. I've done it since I was a little girl. They're usually silly, nonsensical songs, too. What I never would have guessed is that these songs would have such a calming effect on my baby girl. When Eliana is crying inconsolably, I start to sing. Anything. And when she hears my voice, she starts to calm. The longer I sing, the calmer she gets, until she finally falls asleep. All I have to do is sing.

The first time they saw you.

Robert and I are almost 4 years apart in age. Growing up, that was a pretty significant gap. Now that we are both adults, though, we get along great and love to spend time together whenever we can. It's not often enough.

At 28 years old I feel like I am on top of the world. I have been happily married for 7 years. I have a wonderful husband and a beautiful daughter and I am happy. We live in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains and have a beautiful house with a big back yard. We have been blessed with so many things and sometimes I just have to stand back and take it all in. Life has valleys and hills, and right now I am on top of the world!

Some days Ellie needs cookies. And on those days she lets me know by pulling the giant Costco-sized container of animal crackers off the pantry shelf and carrying it into whichever room I happen to be in. Then she sits down near me, making sure that I can see her, and unscrews the lid, then reaches in and takes a cookie. She shoves it inter her mouth and makes and exaggerated "MMMMMM!" sound. Usually she puts the lid on the cookie container until she wants another, then opens it up and the process starts over. It is pretty funny to watch. First because the container is half the size that she is, yet she can carry it all over the house. Second because she knows how to get them for herself, yet feels that she MUST eat them in my presence. And third because she has yet to make a mess in this whole cookie process. That is pretty much the only reason she gets away with it. That and because she is so cute when she does it.

You would never guess by looking at this picture that it was 50 degrees out. But it was. It was teh perfect day to build your first snowman, so we did. Well, Daddy did. I took pictures. You just sat around, pointed, and told Daddy where to put the snowballs. You liked sitting in the snow, but not standing in it, and certainly not walking in it. In fact, if you wad to walk in the snow, you would just stand still and say, "Stuck! Stuck!" until I came to get you. And then you would give me this look. It was not cold, and you were not stuck, but there was nothing we could do to convince you otherwise.

This cracks me up! Every time she rides her horse she says, "Doodleloo doodleloo doodleloo". It's hilarious and took me a while to figure out that she was trying to sing the finale to the William Tell Overture since that's what I hummed the first time I showed her how to ride a stick horse!

This is the first time I ever held you.

I'm pretty unhappy about how badly the photos turned out - there is so much texture and sparkle to these photos that just doesn't come through the camera lens. But I had SO MUCH fun with this kit! And I actually scrapped some of Ellie's hospital pictures... something I hadn't been able to do yet! And I'm happy with how the layouts turned out. No, I LOVE how the layouts turned out. Mine, and everyone else's I've seen done with this kit. Well, okay, that is only one other person, but check out Jana's layouts and tell me they don't blow you away! They're awesome, and if I had a second kit I would scraplift every single one of them. I did find it amusing, though, that Jana thought it was a very soft kit, while I thought it was one of the brighter ones. How she got so many soft and subtle layouts from the same papers I got funky layouts from I'll never know! Oh yeah... another note... I got to use my Copic markers from the kit club on the Doodleloo layout! Woohoo! With all the things I needed to accomplish by the end of the month I haven't played much with the markers yet, but I'm in the process of cleaning my scraproom right now (says the lady who is still typing away on her blog...) and once it is clean I'll be playing with Copics! Anyone know where to get a cheap blender pen?