Ready, set, scrap

I knew my mom was up to something! Upon coming home from the hospital she said she couldn't give me any details but that I needed to take at least one picture each day for the first month of Ellis and Logan's life. Okay, not too hard considering I felt like we were taking pictures all the time. Then, just recently, at their one month "birthday", she told me to write a letter to each of them. It could be as private as I wanted and no one would be reading it unless I allowed them to myself...okay, that wasn't as easy. Where do I start? What do I include after spending only a month with them -- a month where all they did for the most part was sleep, eat, and poop? What I thought was going to be hard, wasn't really as hard as I thought. Without sharing the actual letters, I pretty much included things I noticed about them already (Logan seems to enjoy music and he is the more laid-back one, while Ellis really enjoys cuddling and is a bit more dramatic), my hopes for their future, how I feel so blessed to be their mom, etc. Not too hard once I got started on them.

This week when we all went to visit her, she handed me two boxes. The first box included "ready to go" scrapbooks (the front "page" has embossed baby feet on it -- hard to see in the picture)

The first few pages:

Then, there were a couple pages that already had a caption to go along with it:

Then, there were blank pages -- one for each day for their first month! At the end, there was an envelope for me to put their letter into, followed by a quote about the family:

Wow -- can't get any easier than that, can it? Although I enjoy scrapbooking, I hadn't given any thought to how I was going to scrapbook their lives yet, but this was a great start. Then, it got even better. I assumed the second box had the second scrapbook in it, but nope -- the second one was under the first one in the first box. The second box had a TON of embellishments including alphabet stickers, beads, journalling papers, date labels, a little doggie (representing Bella!), other "activity specific" embellishments (for bath time, cuddling, etc.) a journalling pen, and adhesives

To me, this is just awesome. Since I pretty much lost my "craft room", all my craft supplies are in closets and although they are not too terribly hard to get to, its not exactly inviting to want to pull everything out, find a place to put it all (usually spread out on the floor of the office or the dining room), craft for a little bit, then put it all back -- oh yeah, did I mention having to figure out how to do all of this while still taking care of two babies? For this, it is all ready to go -- two boxes are all I need, along with the pictures and letters, and I can pretty much do it anywhere without taking up too much room and dreading the "take ALL my supplies out just to put them ALL back in an hour or two" issue. Plus I don't have to worry about the "oh great, I just took EVERYTHING out and now they are crying and need to be fed, changed, and have play time" problem. There is literally no set-up time needed. Can you tell I'm thoroughly excited about the easiness of this project, especially with all the cute embellishments that I don't have to worry about coming up with on my own? Ahh...now when do I start?!? =) Anyone need a cropping/card-making day in the near future?

Thanks again mom! I am so excited to start, now that I don't have to worry about where to start. I already ordered some pictures and am waiting for my second delivery in the mail in the next few days. Once I'm done, I'll be sure to share some pictures of the end result.