happy valentine's day (almost).

the kidlets will miss the valentine's party in their classes tomorrow because we will be heading to my hometown for some mardi gras weekend action. ek was sort of sad about missing the party, but when given the choice, there was no question she wanted to hit up the parades.

luckily, their teachers said we could bring our cards in today and they'd collect cards for my kids tomorrow that they can get on monday. i procrastinated on these (should have made them over the weekend), but they turned out ok. the kids watercolored on paper, which i then cut into hearts. we needed 40 valentines total, so there was no way to let them cut out that many. i cut up some card stock and wrote their names and then emme and i rubber cemented the hearts on. call it good. ek can write her name (kinda), but it takes up basically a whole page and takes her 5 minutes to write it once, so i couldn't figure out how/when to get her to write it 23 separate times. sigh.

how to blurb a blog.

this is a DIY post. what what?! it's mostly for emma, but i thought maybe there are some other people who might want to do this too.

i've been making our blog into a book since 2010, so this year's will be our fifth book. it's awesome. it is totally the best/easiest way for me to record/keep track of our lives (mostly) and have something pretty and nice to show for it. plus, i think it will be a nice thing for the kids to look back on in years to come since, let's face it, it's mostly about them.

so. here's a brief tutorial on what's worked for me. i use blurb's booksmart application and have loved it so much/been so pleased with the results, i haven't tried anything else.

step one:
go to blurb.com and click on booksmart under the "create" tab.

step two:
download booksmart!

step three:
the booksmart app will launch and you should choose "start a new book". one of the best things about this software is that it auto-saves your project so you don't have to freak out if things are buggy. i will say the software can be kind of slow/buggy, but just give it a minute...it's going to space.

step four:
slurp your blog! i use blogger and just enter my email address and pw for that and click continue.

step five:
choose the blog/blogs you're making into a book. i have a second random blog that i don't publish from or talk about, so i de-selected that one and clicked continue.

step six:
select all your entries. this is awesome the first year (select all! yay!) and less awesome in subsequent years. i choose select none and then manually check all my posts for the year i am documenting. click continue!

step seven:
get coffee or tea while photos are importing. this can take a while, especially for a whole year.

step eight (optional):
if you forget a post or posts, you can highlight them in the left tool bar and click "add to book" and it will add them. make sure you have selected where you want to add them (chronologically or whatever) in the book or it will be a pain to move the posts. this year, i started the 2014 book in june and uploaded the first half of the year then and just added the rest of the year. it may help to batch-add posts (highlight 5-10 at a time, then click add, and so on) if you have lots of posts because it is pretty slow during this part.

if you are uploading everything at once, it just takes a while, but you shouldn't have to use the "add to book" feature - you'll just select your template and go from there. i always use the viewfinder template/theme because it's simple and clean and i like it. but there are some other nice ones too.

tips:
you'll get some warnings/heads up stuff from blurb. they'll tell you your book has 9 million pages and you'll need to pare it down. duh, you haven't even started editing yet. just click ok and move on. cool your jets, blurb.

step nine:
edit! you really will need to go page by page. editing is neither quick nor painless, but it's also not awful. the drop downs under each post have the text and pictures separated so you can move them when you pick the layout you want for the post. i use the text layouts for my pages of wordiness and then throw in cute montages from all the picture layouts usually at the end of the word parts of my posts.

possibly the best thing in booksmart is the edit layout piece. it's helpful to start with a layout that looks close to what you're looking for, then edit from there. you can adjust picture sizes, text boxes, etc. then, you can save your layout and use it again and again by going to "my page layouts". this is especially great for stuff like instagram photos which are square and don't fit into the pre-fab photo templates in the existing layouts.

and that's basically it! i usually do my covers last and i delete extra pages as i go. my 780 page book will likely be pared down to about 120-200 pages. at the end, you select what type of pages you want (matte, glossy, etc). i think i've always done matte on standard paper and been totally pleased with it, though i'm sure the premium paper is a lovely upgrade. 

good luck and let me know if you have any questions!

emme's first birthday party.

i have been a fence-sitter about one year old birthday parties, but when we found out justin's brother and family were going to fly in for the weekend, we decided to just go for it.  i have been psychotically busy with work and emme's transition to school and everything else with day-to-day life, so i was not nearly as organized as i hoped to be for the event, but family and friends were super gracious and we had a good time despite my spaciness on certain fronts.

the first thing was that i wanted to create invitations, but i wanted to keep the party pretty small.  this led to me only ordering a few invites and probably forgetting to invite people i probably should have.  alas, next year!  the invitations:

the next thing was decorations.  i found an idea on pinterest and decided to go crazy with it, so thanks to some late night scissor and glue stick action by me and jb, and some additional glue stick and hot glue fun by marilyn, billie, and kk, we created the emme wall.

finally, there was the ever-important issue of dessert.  since i've been calling emme bunny and/or bunny cake since day one, i wanted to make something bunny inspired.  the idea (also from pinterest) looked WAY easier (and cuter) than mine turned out, but they were made with lots of love (and i absolutely know what to do better/easier next time).

mom helped me make a big chicken and sausage gumbo the night before.  her gumbo is always SO delicious, and this one was no exception, as we RAN OUT of food during the party.  whoops.  clearly something else i forgot to factor in was additional food options and a back up plan.  emme ate gumbo and loved it, though.

my parents stopped and got balloons for the party as well.  they were a big hit with all the kids (and are still FULL of helium and emme is relishing having them on her high chair for every meal).

and then, there was the quintessential singing and cake-eating.  emme did not disappoint.  she ate her whole cookie (she tried to shove the whole thing in her mouth at once, but eventually settled for large bites) and then moved full-force into the cupcake and icing.  i think it's safe to say she was a fan.

everyone was super generous with very cute, fun, clever gifts for emme.  she is having a BALL discovering all her new things.  she also loved having most of her family in town to celebrate with her - her cousin maddox, in particular, is so good with her and helps her figure things out and tells her how pretty she is non-stop.  it's unbelievably sweet to watch.

i'd say year one was pretty successful.  we have loved every day of it.

craftacular weekend.

i am still recovering from this weekend.  rather, i need to recover, as i don't know if that's really started yet. it was a great weekend, but super busy and with emme kay up at night because of that pesky tooth, i am beat.  i also need to maybe do some sort of physical exercise to help with my energy levels, but i digress.

friday night, we met the riders for dinner out.  it was fun to see them, as always, but we were a little later than originally planned and e was not a fan of missing her bedtime.  no matter, she went down without a hitch, and loved being in a high chair and part of the whole dinnertime scene.

saturday morning, aunt kerry anne came over and we went for a stroll since it was pretty much the most gorgeous day of all time ever.  ek loves her surrogate aunties and ka is a true baby whisperer.

after that, we headed to shady grove to meet the pippins family.  more outside time, but my favorite part was watching ava make emme laugh.  it was adorable.

saturday afternoon, aunt genna came over and we had more outdoor porch time.  blowing bubbles and watching the dogs and catching up.  a great day.

saturday night was a craft explosion.  i am taking a class at the stitch lab in june (yay!!) that justin gave me a gift certificate for for mother's day.  i had a few dollars leftover from the class, so i picked up a little bit of this adorable alexander henry fabric and made a little somethin' somethin' for the little miss.  i'm really pleased with how it turned out, especially for how easy it was!  i also sewed a pillow from a shirt i bought justin in dubai that is too small (apparently the middle east sizes things differently).  i don't have a pic of that here, but it was the easiest project EVER, and super fun just to have my machine out and making stuff.

sunday we took the dogs and emme to the park, where emme wore blue jeans for the first time (some cute hand-me downs from one of kk's bosses).  she also wore a precious texas onesie my cousin made for her.  we had lunch at mike and kim's with the perques.  laing's homemade pizza on the grill is always a treat.  after that, justin shot a wedding (ceremony only) in the evening, i put emme to bed and frantically cleaned the house to get ready for the week.

 all in all, a whirlwind.  but a good whirlwind.  it was really nice to catch up with so many friends and to enjoy the pristine weather.

11 weeks.

emmeline will be 11 weeks old in a couple hours - celebrate. i've been leaving most of the blogging responsibilities up to mommy and figured it was high-time i contributed something profound to the intraweb blogosphere... so here goes. i responded to a craigslist posting (never a good idea really) for a company looking for a photographer to do a product shoot on the cheap. i'm in the process of building out my portfolio and figured why not. the company sells workout clothes for meat heads. not like normal clothes - i'm talking about strange booty shorts for ladies and tight shirts for the mens. these are the kind of shirts that look like they would cut off circulation to every part of the body. they're supposedly rolling out a ton of new stuff and sent me about 9 items they needed shot against a white background. so i jumped in the fo', hit the juice in my ride, and went to the local camera store for some quality lighting equipment. by local camera store i mean home depot... and by quality lighting equipment i mean energy efficient LEDs. picked up some sweet foam board from hobby lobby at half off and set up a mini studio in our living room. while everything was set up, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to snap some shots of emme (babies really love bright lights). so here are a few of the pics i took of this child.

the first book and 10 weeks tomorrow...

2010 started out rather slowly on the blogging front - i was really just getting the hang of it and deciding if this was a medium i wanted to invest some time and energy into.  but after getting pregnant, i found it to be a perfect way to document what was going on in our lives.  this blog has been, in some ways, inspired by the blogs of my cousins who have been faithfully documenting the lives of their families for years now.  last year, my cousin lindsay wrote about her blog books and showed pictures of what they looked like and i am so excited that this year i got to make our very own - hopefully the first of many.

anyway...the book can be made at blurb.com - essentially, you "slurp" your blog into their awesome templates and then you can edit and tweak and format to your little heart's content and then get it printed.  i opted for the softcover 7"x7" book - i love the handheld size, and i always end up ripping the cover of any hard back book with a dust jacket.  it finally came in the mail this week and i swear i have never been more pleased with what $35 can buy.  it also makes me want to write more and more and post more pictures for our 2011 book.

in other news, things are still going great with emme kay.  she is starting to figure out her fingers and likes to stick them in her mouth.  the beanie is still the soother of choice, but i am hoping that she starts liking her fingers/thumb enough to sooth herself that way when the beanie falls out (i.e. nighttime and nap time).  she had a phenomenal week of sleep this week - 2 10-hour nights, a 9-hour night, and only one wake-up the other nights.  i haven't weighed her in a few days, but she was just over 12 pounds the last time i did.  our pediatrician said 12 pounds was a kind of magical threshold where little ones can sleep the whole night long, so maybe that's why she has suddenly become a champion sleeper?  whatever the reason, i am loving getting a full night's sleep.  a few more nights of this and i may have caught up from the first two months....

stuff emme is into right now:
- baby yoga
- dance time, ideally in the moby or bjorn
- anyone singing/dancing for her
- bath time (we have solved the crying post-bath issue and now it's just fun for all)
- mirroring faces

every morning when she wakes up, daddy goes and gets her out of her crib, changes her, and brings her into our bed.  i nurse her and then lay her on her back between the two of us for what we like to call morning exercise.  she is crazy smiley and kicks her legs like a maniac (i like to call it riding her bike).  she can also be really pensive, depending on what kinds of toys we dangle or faces we make at her.  this morning, justin snapped a few shots of her expressions.

finally, i have been meaning to share that jb has been putting effort into getting some photography gigs and it's going well so far.  he created a website: www.jtbvisuals.com and has done a couple of little jobs (second camera for a wedding videographer; merchandise stills for a fitness company) this weekend, and we hope it's a sign of fun and exciting work to come!