With Mother's Day being this past weekend, my thoughts have turned towards motherhood. I love being a mom. I have always wanted to be a mom. While I would dream of a house full of kids, I never imagined the challenges I would face as a mother. I envisioned story time, cuddles, family adventures and vacations. Never did I imagine a wheelchair, learning disabilities, and being a widow. But God was faithful, and while my dreams of being a mother did come true, they just looked very different.
These pictures of Zach and I were taken on his 7th birthday. He was so excited, was my little party animal. He wanted a dance party! His enthusiasm was contagious. I needed it, because since Dave's death, the boys' birthdays are some of the hardest days of the year for me. But I did what any good mommy does - I put a smile on my face and danced with my little man.
After dancing in the living room, my mom snapped these photos of Zach and me. I did not realize that he was going to kiss me! I had knelt down to listen to him talking a mile a minute about something when he leaned in and gave me a kiss. I particularly love the last photo in the row. He was squeezing me with all his strength. He always gives the best hugs, and it was the best part of the whole day! Pictures like these capture the memories that are even better than what I had imagined before having kids!
Scrapbooking Tips:
Because these were special photos, I wanted to create a special layout. I had a bunch of sketches using 6x6 paper pads from Allison Davis that I was excited to use, and I knew it would be a labor of love to create this particular layout.
This was a time-consuming layout. I cut down scraps into one-inch strips, and following my sketch, I created the patchwork background. The stitching alone took hours, but I would work on it while watching movies with the kids. One great thing about this layout is I was able to use up so many scraps from a 6x6 paper pad I had used for card making.
Because the background was busy with a lot of details, I wanted to keep the embellishments simple. I pulled out my Mini Flower Dies from The Stamps of Life and more paper scraps from cardmaking. I layered various flowers and leaves in three of the corners. I did accent the center of the flowers with adhesive pearls.
As I have mentioned in previous blog posts, sometimes I redo certain elements of my layout that I just don't like, and I redid the title on this page. My first title looked like this:
What I did not like about it was it blended into the busy pattern on the paper. At first I had used pink stickers for the whole title, but the "for" blended into the pink background. To rememdy that I added the white letter you see pictured above. I still did not like the finished result though. After all the hard work I put into this layout, I decided to take it out of the album, and cut a title with the Silhouette. This is the new title:
The darker purple stands out so much better, and I like the more feminine look to the title. The color matches the embroidery floss I was using, so an unintentional benefit is that I think it helped create a more cohesive look.
If you have extra special or sentimental photos, don't be afraid to create an extra special layout. I know Zach doesn't understand now, but as he gets older and looks back, he'll hopefully see and recognize all the time and energy I spent preserving this precious memory. He can't say I didn't love him - or his kisses!
Supplies Used:
Cardstock: Bazzill
Pattern Paper: The Stamps of Life
Flower Dies and Pearl embellishments: The Stamps of Life
Title: Cut File
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