I love birthdays...

I love birthdays. I love the cake...the cards...the presents...the surprised looks on my boys' faces.

What's not to love about a birthday? Well, the stacks of pictures that seem to pile up after a party is one negative! I realized earlier this month that I have birthday pictures unscrapped for both of my boys going back to 2005. I realized I avoid scrapping birthday parties. I just end up with WAY TOO MANY photos! Then I noticed I have party pics for cousins piled up, too!

So, I decided to pull out a collection of birthday themed papers and scrap until I ran out of paper. The first line I selected was the "Surprise" line by Scenic Route. I've had these papers for months, but hadn't even attempted to use them yet!

I started with Kevin's birthday last fall - his 7th. I was even able to use the negative space from a giant Rusty Pickle chipboard "7". I did painted it up and dotted it to match the papers. The fun felt accent at the top of the page is by Creative Imaginations.
This was the year I realized I took too many photos at birthdays. I tried to cut back on how many I take, but also started doing photo collages to make my pictures smaller. By fitting 2-4 photos on a 4x6 or 5x7, I'm able to get more images on a page like I did in this page also for Kevin's 7th."Lucky Number 7" is a page for Blake's album about Kevin's "friend" party this fall. I completed this page for a challenge by millermath/Debbie over at Personal Scrapper. For Blake's 10th, I didn't have any more of the large chipboard numbers so I improvised and used letters to make a "10" out of a lowercase "L" and "O". By mixing it with smaller mis-matched chipboard letters, I'm hoping no one will ever notice!Both boys got lucky last fall and each had two birthday parties - one for family and one for friends. We won't do that every year!I even scrapped a page about my birthday last year! The "Making Memories" ribbon is acutally packaging off of a Making Memories brand apron that I won as a crop prize! I can be thrifty!

After I finished this year's birthdays (except for Tom's...I'll get to his sometime!), I went back through the photo boxes and made this page for Kevin's album about Blake's 8th. They've both changed SO MUCH!

Finally I made a page with SR scraps of my cousin Emma's party in 2007. It also happened to take place at a benefit we had for my cousin Tiffany who battled brain cancer. It got a little emotional scrapping the group photo with her. I can't believe she's gone. (FYI: "KILL TED" came from the t-shirts/bracelets we all wore to show support as Tiffany fought to "kill" her tumor she named "Ted.")

With the SR Surprise line exhausted, I remembered I had the Basic Grey "Cupcake" line that would also work for birthdays. I scrapped Kevin's '06 birthday party at during his Storyhour at the public library.

Now I'm throwing in a non-birthday layout, but it's cute and one layout I can mark off my to-do list. I don't know how many times I've tried to work with these pics from 2005, only to put them back in the photo box. The Cupcake line had a sheet of paper with trikes on it. I could use that!!!
Back to birthdays...

On a recent trip to Archiver's, I found three sheets of patterned paper by The Paper Company that I really liked. Remember: THREE sheets. 12x12 sheets. REMEMBER that!

First I scrapped these 2 2-page 12x12 layouts for Kevin's album. These photos are from his cousin Dane's party in January 2008.

Then I made a page for Blake's album about Kevin's birthday at home this past fall.
I decided to finally tackle the MANY, MANY, MANY photos I had from Kevin's "friend" party last fall. Luckily I had used a photo editing program to make collages (smaller sizes) before I had them processed!

I completed THREE 2-page 12x12 layouts and a single 12x12 from the friend party.

I love how they all turned out. They were too fun. Remember I did all of these with just three sheets of 12x12 patterned paper. A little goes a long way. (I need to remind myself of that the next time I shop for paper!!!)

I also used a coordinating transparency from the same line to complete a page for Blake's album about his cousin's birthday party in January.

Now I have all of these great times documented and in albums. That feels great!

How can you have 2 boys and not enjoy sports?

With two boys, we stay pretty busy with sports. Sometimes that's just playing ball in the back yard or shooting hoops in the driveway, but often it's also on an organized team. Needless to say, I have more than plenty of sports photos to scrap! Last month, I pulled out some sports-themed scrapbook products and went on a sports-scrappin' spree.

The paper line was an older Love Elsie line by KI Memories. I really didn't have that many sheets of the paper, but it was all double-sided and I had picked up coordinating embellishments on clearance. The paper line went well with kraft cardstock, so I was able to make several layouts.

First I documented a fun tradition in our home. The boys love to fill out NCAA basketball brackets with Tom! These shots are from 2008. Poor Blake thought his team Louisville had a real shot of winning this year, but we watched them barely miss out on going to the Final Four yesterday afternoon. Sorry, Blake! The boys wrapped up basketball season at school at the end of February, but I just got around to scrapping the '08 season. Last year was Kevin's first year getting to play on the community league at school. He'd been sick and missed the practice before the first game when they handed out uniforms, so he was wearing a plain white shirt at the first game. He stood out in the pictures nicely though!

After a few years of taking pictures of Blake in sports, I've finally realized that I don't need shots from EVERY game. After a while, they all look alike anyway! I did much better with my photos from Kevin's basketball season last year. I was able to finish up his season with just a 2-page layout.I pulled out Blake's 2007 basketball pics. I've put off scrapping them because his team had PURPLE shirts! There aren't many sports-themed products out there with purple in them, so I kept these pages simple with just basketball felt accents.

While looking for more sports photos, I decided that photos from last year's field day at school would match the products I was using. It was fun to see how Kevin had changed in less than a year. Good memories, too. He was the 3rd fastest boy in his Kindergarten class last year.

Seeing his classmates play tug-o-war was another fun memory!
Last year the school had a different day of the week for each grade's field day. That gave me the opportunity to enjoy the events with both boys. It was fun on Blake's day to see him participate in EVERYTHING. He did great and really enjoyed his popsickle reward.

And how can I scrap 'sports' in our house without including baseball? These shots are from fall league 2006. Last but not least is one of my favorite memories from 2008. We went to visit my grandmother on her 85th birthday and somehow she and Kevin ended up playing "ball" with an exercise ball in her kitchen.

After all of these pages, I still had some scraps left over, but I was itching to move on to birthday pictures. I'll get them posted later.

The boys are on spring break now, so we are getting ready to head out for a fun day in town. Unfortunately we won't have the best weather this week.

What makes me happy TODAY...

I woke up this morning happy, thankful. I guess two nice, warm days can do that for you. After the boys left this morning for school, I was thinking about all the things that make me happy. Aside from the constants (the boys and Tom) here's what I came up with:

1. My new pillow. Seriously. Love it! Only $5 on sale at Target a couple weeks ago. Pure happiness.
2. Having the weather to open the windows and hearing the birds outside. Hearing birds always makes me think of my Mamma & Pappa's house. Good memories.
3. Nathan's Hot Dogs! Yum. I had my first one on our honeymoon at an airport and fell in love. The Walmart of all places in the town where we used to live has one. I went over there for the dentist yesterday and stopped in for one. I should have bought two!
4. No cavities! Ever! I always dread going to the denist. Not sure what I'd do if they ever told me I had a cavity...
5. March Madness is here. I'm looking forward to getting the brackets this weekend. It's so fun following basketball with the boys.
6. A clean house. Simple.
7. Getting a new photo order. I love looking back over what we've done together as a family. I even changed out one of our 5x7 frames in the living room to showcase a new informal family photo.
8. Baseball season...drumroll...is nearing. Team selections are this weekend and practices will start up.
9. Walks with the boys around the subdivision.
10. Sitting on the deck.

I should note that our 70-degree weather has passed. It's 46 and rainy today. But I know the warmer weather (and happiness!) will soon return. I have a lot to look forward to.