This Just In

Little Man turned 9 last Friday.  We had a nice party for him on Saturday afternoon, with lots of his family and a couple of friends in attendance.  I had said on Facebook and I’ll repeat it here–I know the current trend is to have birthday parties at the gym or at the bowling alley in our neck of the woods, but I like parties at home the best.  There’s just something that is so memorable and un-prepackaged about them.

I decided to scrap the photos from Evan’s birthday using a digital scrap booking kit that I got from Sweet Shoppe Designs.  It’s called “American Made” by Heather Roselli and it worked beautifully.  Lest you think I designed these gorgeous layouts myself, I want to let you in on my secret weapon:  I used premade PSD templates from the fabulous Cindy Schneider, also of Sweet Shoppe Designs.  I splurged and bought this bundle the first day it was out, and I got a great deal because it was on sale too.  Even at full price, Cindy’s templates are totally worth every penny.  I love to make layouts without having to think too hard–just plug in the papers, the elements and the photos.  The templates allow me to express my creativity from a springboard that makes it easy and fun.

These are my finished creations:

This year’s birthday “theme” was obviously Stars and Stripes.  The “goody bags” were little tin pails that I filled with glow stick necklaces, party popper fireworks, patriotic pencils and red, white and blue star shaped marshmallows.  There’s a pic of these in the first layout above, but here’s the photo itself so you can see how cute these turned out.  They were inexpensive to make too, each of them costing only about $2.75 each, including the pails.  I went with marshmallows for the treats because they are fat free and gluten free, and are just a tad bit (at least in theory) healthier than straight up candy. They were a big hit with the boys.

After all the birthday festivities, Little Man put all his Nerf gear on for me and struck a pose like the boys on the boxes of the Nerf guns.

“I am a force to be RECKONED with!”

Nerf Commando!

So Saturday kicked off the first day of a busy but fun weekend for me.  I’ve been rather MIA on the blog lately because I’ve been busy doing the things that I would blog about.  I still have June to catch you all up on…the summer is flying right by!

How is your summer going in your neck of the woods?

S.