I have been wanting to scrapbook this photo for years now, but as you can probably imagine, finding a paper line that could handle bright orange and sassy pinks all at the same time has been difficult. Oh, I found a few, but they tended to be kind of tacky and umm, much louder than my style tends to lean, so my baby girl pumpkin patch pics remained unscrapped.

I got a quick e-mail about a week ago from Julie of Cosmo Cricket and she told me that she was shipping out the new Valentine line that day. Of course, I was completely stoked to see what she came up with, but I was freaking out excited when this line hit my doorstep and I saw that not only was a fun lovey-dovey line, but the answer to my “little girls at the pumpkin patch” prayers!

Now, three years later, my baby girl is still wearing pink at the patch and is insulted when she is referred to as my baby! Those pretty brown eyes can be equally menacing when she’s glaring at you over things like that. Stop. Growing. Right. Now.

Jonas’ school did a pumpkin patch fundraiser, and since we had to walk through it to get from the school to the car we supported the school quite a bit by buying pumpkins, painting pumpkins, buying treats and generally having a good time. Maggie wore her princess dress the day we painted and I got this shot f her and her little pumpkin.

This is so simple to recreate- just cute two photo mats the same size as your photo, fan them out and lay your pic on top. Run a length of ribbon across the bottom and surround the pic with cute hearts cut from the papers. Sprinkle a few buttons, doodle a few words and journaling and you’re done. I love white space layouts because they come together so quickly and the eye gets drawn right to the photo. Pity they don’t photograph better when you go to blog them! I always have to add a close up.

NaBloPoMo starts tomorrow! I am soooo excited to be posting every day in November! It will be a little challenging with the move (I’ll probably be dropping in via the library for a day or two while we straighten out our internet connection), but I am planing on a bunch of cool posts, lots of scrappiness, tons of Christmas cards since it is that time of year again, and I will be hosting several contests and give-a-ways (we’re talking a couple hundred dollars of good stuff and gift certificates) so be sure to check back here daily in November for some serious fun!

The second I saw this photo I knew it would have to be scrapped. Jonas is such a ham.

I used the brand spankin’ new Cosmo Cricket “Chemistry” paper line, in all its ooey- gooey, lovey-dovey glory, to show off my little goofball stud muffin.

This is a very easy layout to re-create, just cut out your journaling card, punch out your heart die cut, cut your orangey stripes to 4x7, your brown (my fav paper in this line) to 5x8, overlap them, tie some ribbon around ( I used a brown suede and also a Cosmo Haunted orange ribbon), and add your title. Of course, if your pic is a little bigger or smaller, just adjust for size, and learn to love your white space. The crown I cut out by hand, and the title is the new Quickutz “Strawberry” font.

Happy Scrappin’

I have a thing for tiles. On the wall, on the floor, or mimicked with paper, I get a huge kick out of the patterns, planned or found in them. They can be so pretty, and I am the type who looks at bumps in stucco and cracks in ceilings and sporadically placed bathroom tiles and sees faces and bunny rabbits and a million different things. Tiles are kind of my clouds as far as seeing stuff in them goes.

I had used up all but the very last bits of my Cosmo Cricket “Haunted” paper, but still wanted to use up my scraps, so I started cutting them into one inch squares. After I had a huge piles of little mini tiles, I inked the edges, and then glued them together at total random onto this clipboard I’ve had laying around forever. A few coats of a glossy decoupage medium and voila! A Halloween clipboard, and all I had to do was add some fun ribbons, a blackboard bat, give it a smile and done!

I had a few bits left over, and determined to use every last scrap- I whipped up this card based on the same principle. Just add your squares, embellish them with stamps, rubons, buttons and bling and you’ve got a quick little card!

This morning I was in the shower when Jonas burst through the door in a panic holding the ultrasound photos. He yelled, “Mom! Mom! You’re having a MONSTER!”

“What?!” I poked my head out from the curtain.

“There’s a monster in there! Look at these pictures!”

He was horrified, and thoroughly convinced that the scary blob-like skeleton head and body were definitely not human. I grabbed a towel and we discussed how poor the quality of ultrasound pictures were, and how they made the skeleton show up more than the skin.

I hadn’t shown him the photos before because I knew they were creepy, even for ultrasound photos. Most of the blobby blurs barely made sense to me, so I didn’t think he’d get it, or even be able to see some of the finer details. He did surprise me however, clearly identifying the baby’s profile in one and even pointing out the huge growth coming out of the baby’s nose, trying to prove his argument that the baby was surely a monster. I explained that this “growth” was in fact the baby sucking his thumb, and not a strange nasal protrusion indicative of a monster.

I reassured Jonas that the baby would come out looking like a baby, but I’m still not sure if he really believes me. After all, he does have photographic evidence to the contrary.

I took a break from the cleaning and organizing one day this week and whipped up some felt play crowns. They are adorable, and pretty easy to make. You can get the pattern and instructions right here.

The King and Queen of Autumn were happy to model their new dress up pieces; the King was really enthusiastic and when I said, “here, let me take a picture of your crown,” this is what he gave me.

He’s got a future in something there, but I’m not sure what yet.

I plan to make a few more of these, but i am going to tweak the pattern to make them taller and add some appliqued decorations. These new ones will be for Christmas, as Jonas has been asking for an outfit to play “King of Narnia” in. I have decided to have all of our gifts this year be handmade (some homemade, some purchased from those more skilled than I), and/or organic/ecologically friendly.

During this move I have declared war on the plastic junk we’ve been collecting. Aside from legos, my children rarely touch their toys from the mass produced toy aisle. They are always after their art supplies, dress up clothes and books, and so we are making changes in that direction to help facilitate creativity and good health. When you add the toy recalls for lead and other toxins to the overall unhealthy clutter, less is more and natural just seems so much smarter, doesn’t it?

Every year our church hosts a big Halloween party. This is the first year I got myself a costume and dressed up. I am a fine lookin’ pumpkin. . .or perhaps I’m Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater’s wife. I’m really not sure.

The gym is always decorated and there are tons of games for the kids to play. Jonas loved the apple eating contest.

Maggie loved running around yelling, “I’m a butterfly!” Over and over and over. She was also very in to the face painting table, so I took the liberty of painting her a fancy butterfly mask.

Jonas had a pirate eye patch done to match his costume. We had a last minute costume change with him, as Indiana Jones costumes are sold out pretty much everywhere.

I was happy to get the pirate costume though, because I know it will be completely worn out in our dress up clothes bin. That’s the nice thing about getting my children costumes, I know they will be used more than one night, in fact, they will be used until they are handed down rags and then probably imagined into something else!

All in all, it was a fun night. We had Trunk or Treating at the end (that’s where the kids trick or treat in the parking lot and people hand candy out from their cars). My children got way too much candy and I have already had to lock some away. When we really Trick or Treat on Halloween, we are going to be on total candy overload, but I am solving that problem by sending Daddy a big candy care package all the way to the Middle East. All I had to do was mention Mike ‘n Ike’s and Hot Tamales and he was very supportive of that plan. Vive le sugar high!

The ultrasound went great, and we are definitely having a little boy!

The tech had his work cut out for him, as the baby was flipping and rolling and kicking and squirming all over the place the entire thirty-five minutes of the scan. I brought my friend Cori along and we just laughed and laughed because every time the tech tried to get a decent shot of him he would either wiggle away or pop his right hand up in front of the ultrasound wand as if to say, “No paparazzi please!” Every shot we saw had this tiny hand in front of everything else, and it didn’t matter which angle we came at him or which body part we were trying to scan. Jonas and Maggie often feel this way about Mom’s camera, so someone must have slipped this little guy the word that the picture taking was going to be out of control. He’s already got his defense up!

We were also laughing because when we finally got a shot of his face it was at a face forward, looking up angle so it looked exactly like a little disembodied skeleton head that liked to suck his thumb! It was totally creepy, like a little Halloween hello. The best part was when he took his thumb out of his mouth and kept sucking. His little jaw was going up and down and so the little skeleton head looked like it was talking or laughing at us, “heh heh heh heh heh!” Cori, myself and the tech were laughing so hard I’m sure the people in the waiting room were all thinking, “What the heck?”

Ultimately, we got no cute profile pics and no adorable shots, not even the ever present hand, because the machine ran out of photo paper about two seconds after we got there. We did, however, get this:

Creepy, it’s the new cute. Ha!

Right after the ultrasound we went to pick Jonas up from school. Jonas has been begging for this baby to be a boy since from about two years before we even conceived. Now, I was convinced that he was a boy, but I was a little worried for Jonas because I knew how badly he wanted a brother. Girl news would not have been taken well.

When I picked him up he immediately asked if I knew yet. I asked him what he wanted it to be and he said, “a boy.” I told him that it was and he jumped for joy. I have never seen such a genuinely happy look on his face, for a moment I wondered if he was going to cry! He have my tummy a big hug and a pat and then ran over to his teacher and shouted the news. He spent the rest of the evening calling family and telling them the big news.

So it is a boy, and I am thrilled!

I’d like to know the answer to that too. I have had five or six ultrasounds to date, and at least two of them were late enough in the pregnancy that we should have been able to ascertain gender, but so far we’ve been out of luck.

Now, I have had serious boy vibes this entire pregnancy, and I have much reason to think that the hormone balance of our house is about to be swayed in the favor of testosterone. Also, I was right about my first two bubs, so my mother’s intuition seems to be pretty good. I am confident enough to have ordered a handful of blue airplane cloth diapers in newborn sizes, and I’ve been addressing the little kicker with a boy’s name. I am also carrying this one very low, so low, in fact, that I often feel like I should go stand on my head so he (or she) doesn’t fall out, which is exactly how I carried Jonas. All this aside, I could be wrong. It does happen, every once in a blue moon that I am wrong, and so I willingly concede that this could be one of those times.

My next ultrasound is Friday, and so I am hoping that we have a cooperative baby and a savvy ultrasound tech and we can get some answers. The good thing is, already having one of each, I honestly don’t care at all about gender this time. I’m in it and loving it either way.

Anybody want to guess?