6 x 6 Ring Albums

12 x 12 D-ring albums are huge.  Huge isn't even the word.  They are enormous!  They have their place.  I have two of them.  I use one to store pictures that I think I want to scrap, and the other one is used to store pages, when I'm not sure which album or order to put them in.  I like my 12 x 12 albums for myself.  I like that I can fit lots of fussy details on that size of a page.  I like that I can sit with a 12 x 12 and work on a page for an hour or so.  It is, however, a difficult size to work with for gifts.  Especially when you're going to be mailing your gifts like I do.  I've tried 8x8 post bound albums for gifts, and they're fine, but I know that I find it obnoxious to take apart a post bound album  to put new pages in it, so I can't expect friends and family to have to do it.  Likewise, it gets a bit expensive to keep buying new albums.  The next thing I tried were the 6 x 6 mini album style that you get at Michael's.  Those were nice because they're crazy cheap, but I have to make them separate, self-contained projects.  It doesn't work to just print off extra copies of the pages that I've made for the girls' books.

Enter We R Memory Keepers.  They make 6 x 6 D-ring albums now!  I think that I'll be giving those out for Mother's Day this year.  I will have to modify my layouts a little bit (mostly just putting journaling on the page opposite the layout, so that it's legible), but they'll be able to fit 40-50 layouts each, and they'll be really easy for the grandparents to add new pages to the end, instead of getting a whole new book every Mother's Day, Christmas, Birthday, etc.  The other nice thing about that size is that it's easy to print 4 6x6 pages as a 12 x 12 and cut them apart to save money on printing costs!  So excited!

It was a party!

Ok, so I know I've been MIA lately, but this is a really busy time of the year.  Last week was my daughter's second birthday.  That was a big deal!  We went all out.  It was a Minnie Mouse themed party.  I made polka dot outfits for all the girls, and a polka dot cake, and hung balloons from the ceiling (helium is wicked expensive these days).  We had such a good time, and Lilah loved every bit of it.

It took 4 bottles of food coloring to make the frosting that color.  It tasted awful!  The dots are just melting chocolates that I stuck on.  I couldn't find a cute candle, so I sprayed some adhesive on one of those striped, primary-colored ones and covered it in glitter.

Have you noticed that they changed Minnie's costume to pink?  I think the red and white is so much cuter, so I just went with it.  The only problem was that I couldn't find a Minnie balloon with a red bow, so I put Mickey above the cake table.

These are the outfits I made for the girls.  No patterns!  I started with Lilah's dress, I used one of her dresses to get the shape and size of the pieces, and then altered it to include the ties at the top.  The trim around the bottom is just hot glued on though.  Then I did a circle wrap skirt for Michaela.  That was super easy and looked totally cute over a white onsie.  Then I made the aprons for the twins.  They all looked so cute!  We just couldn't convince them to all get together for a picture!

I can't believe that my girl is already 2 years old.  It's a total privilege to be her mom.  I hope she looks back on things like this that I do for her, and she knows how much I appreciate her.