Elmo Wins!

Mehul has decided he loves Elmo best. So, Elmo it is. Some of the items we got are these. Besides these, there were some other party favors like stickers, swirly straw, crazy ball, etc. Each kid will also get an Elmo mylar balloon. Hope they like them!

Curious George, or Elmo? Or, Finding Nemo?

These are the themes I'm trying to decide for Mehul's 2nd birthday party. He'll have 2 parties, one at the daycare with Cupcakes and juice boxes, and another at home next weekend (or the weekend after). I'm thinking of doing the daycare party with a theme. Although, I might do both with different themes. Wouldn't be the first time I changed my mind at the last minute.

The daycare has strict policy about food, though. They don't allow cake or candles. Only cupcakes, with an ingredients label on it, so I can't make them (I was contemplating that). Now, if we can decide on the theme, we'll get the items tonight or tomorrow night. Friday and Saturday will be *very busy* days. I'm not announcing anything on my blog because it's a surprise for some people. Shhhhh.....

Back to the themes - At first, his favorite character was Elmo. Loved Elmo. Still does. I remember we took his singing 'emmo' doll on our vacation to India. He danced when emmo sang.

Nemo - DH's SUV has a DVD player, he watches Nemo all the time when he's in the car. When he gets into my car, he's instantly disappointed that 'mooomie' isn't there. He saw moomie at the aquarium and was pretty excited.

Curious George - Recent addiction. We let him watch the cartoon on WETA when he sits down for breakfast. Now, when we put him on the chair, he demands 'Geoge'. It's cute.

The daycare party will be at 3PM on his birthday. That is the time everyone gets a second snack after the afternoon nap. I bet he'll be excited to see Mommy and Daddy drop in the daycare with food!

The other party will be at home, with lots of family friends and their kids. I have his dress for this party. Too cute. I don't know what I'm wearing for this one yet. Plenty of time to figure out :)

About Lifting...

I have seen a lot of people taking inspiration from other peoples work. In scrapbooking terms, it's called a scraplift. I rarely, if ever, do lifts. I generally don't see the point in doing that. I'm perfectly capable of coming up with a unique design by myself. Ofcourse, this is not to say that the people who like to do lifts can't come up with designs, maybe they enjoy doing that more!
That said, there are some LO's that make me go "WOW, I want to do THIS!" One such layout is this LO by Nevache. When I sat down to scrap day before yesterday, I pulled out Miki's Piazza kit, and the papers in her kit seemed to be perfect for the lift I've wanted to do. I don't think it's a real looking as hers, but I love it. Here it is

Memories

About the photo - It's one of the very few photos of my childhood that I have. Most of them were destroyed in a fire back home. This is my sister (left), friend (center), and me (right) in our backyard. I only have like 2 more childhood photos of me other than this!!

Brown Background, Scrapbook Front and Side - Miki Ferkul's Piazza kit
Eyelets: Piazza kit
Journaling Tag: Piazza kit
Iron Element: Piazza kit
Old Notepaper: Vicki Stegall Midsummer Night kit
Stitching: Gina Miller
Tied ribbon, Lace bow - Michelle Coleman Gypsy Rose
Masking Tape: Ztampf Soul Searching kit
Paper Clip- Ztampf
Staples- IOD Essentials
Ribbon- Fishscraps
Michelle Coleman's Hand Stamped Alpha
Font: Bradley Hand ITC

Such a fun Saturday

So, I wake up saturday morning after sleeping in a little. Start preparing breakfast, set Mehul on his chair for his breakfast. After I set the kettle to boil some water for tea, I had a couple of minutes, so I boot the laptop. I have been addicted to my laptop recently (since I started scrapping). Girish is seriously complaining these days, he says he'll hide the laptop someday. He's right, I have been scrapping a *lot*. When I'm not scrapping, I'm browsing a particular digi-scrapping board. I'm not staying on the point here LOL...On that board, a couple of days ago, I had joined in praising a particular designer (Vicki Stegall, for those who must know LOL). She said something about sending a gift to us who praised her and made her day, I didn't think twice about it! So, Saturday morning, I have a private message waiting from her. I get my gift! A gift certificate to her site - www.oscraps.com. What's more, she send 2 coupons for my friends. I have already shared them! How very generous is that?
What's more, she is making me some charms good for boy layouts since I asked her if she had any in her store. She Rocks!
I do a little dance and tell Girish about it. He's surprised too, although he doesn't dance like me LOL
After a little while of browsing, I hop over to ScrapArtist. And, there is a message waiting for me there! Completely Random. A new user who has just joined there took the time to PM me and leave me some praise on my layouts! What a day!

Rest of the day wasn't as exciting, though. We went to Lowes to look for Refrigerator and Washer Dryer for our new house. Placed an order for Maytag Refrigerator - It is the only bottom freezer fridge with french doors and water/ice dispensor. Oh, and we got it in silver. Washer Dryer are front loading types from Whirlpool. I'm counting down days till we move!

Another (mostly) Apprentice Layout

My Son My Mehul

Credits:
Papers, Elements from various SA Apprentice entries

Background: Ashalee Wall
Eyelet Stitch: Robyn England
Crochet Flower: Lori - Diamante Designs
M Stamp: Donna B. Miller
Binder Clip: Melissa Rose
Tag (grunged by me): Ashalee Wall

Other kits:
Paper Clip: IOD Essentials
Square Buttons: Vicki Stegall
Envelope: Maya
Ribbon: Fishscraps
Paint Strokes: Michelle Coleman

Diamante's Chocolate Dream filter on the photo
Post office stamp by Me!

SA Apprentice Challenge

While I'm not participating, I am rooting for several of the apprentices. There are so many great entries, it's going to be really hard for the admins to choose who gets to go to round 2. I know my picks and hope that all of them get to go to the next round. I would love to see what they come up with.

BTW, here is a link to the freebies designed by the Apprentices Gorgegous stuff.

One of those that I'm rooting for is Diamante Designs. I'm hoping to do LOs with other's entries too, but I'm having trouble downloading some of the freebies. I know the admins are on top of things, as always.
Here is her entry for the SA Apprentice Challenge I came up with this LO with her entry.

Mom and Mehul

I wrote this poem a little while ago. I rescrapped the photo and the poem with Lori's (Diamante Designs) SA Apprentice Freebie. Hope you like it!



Credits:
All papers, elements: Diamante Designs. The twisty tie and stamp are in her latest SunKissed kit at 3 Scrapateers. Adjusted the color of notebook a tiny bit to suit the LO.
Paper Tear: ztampf

My Big Announcement

As of today, I'm on two Creative Teams! And, I didn't have to apply. Over at DST, there was a thread about who was interested in being on CT but lazy to apply, ME! LOL. I got a great response. Sadly had to turn a few away. They are all great designers, but I only have a limited time to scrap, so I was only going to choose one or two.

First - Miki Ferkul (MicroFerk Designs). She sells at ScrapBook-Elements, ScrapBook-Bytes, and Scrap Outside The Box. I am in love with her designs.

Second - Diamante Designs. Lori is an awesome designer. She sells at 3 Scrapateers. I just received the confirmation from her!

Check out their products.

I feel...Creative LOL

Here is my first LO by Miki's Pavilion kit

My Dreamy Boy

Everything here is from Miki Ferkul's Pavilion kit. I created the staple from the alphabets included in the kit. It's my new favorite kit as it's so awesome, and I'm not just saying that because I'm on her CT. It can be found at Scrapbook Elements.

All About Mehul (and his Cousin's LO)

Mehul loves to play with my purse. As soon as I come home, I put it next to the couch. It's never found at the same place in the morning. He picks it up and roams around. Then, he settles down with it and starts examining the contents. What is it that's so interesting about it? Tonight, he did the same. He took my wallet out and left it there. I didn't feel like cooking tonight so we decided to get Subway. Before we got out, I had found the wallet and put it back in the purse, but he didn't see me do that. When I was locking the door, he started yelling 'Purse Purse'. I waved it in front of him but he was still pointing inside. I opened it and took the wallet out. He was concerned that my wallet had been left inside!!! How thoughtful is that? For a 2 year old, that's pretty good :)

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He's starting to string 2 words together. Exciting time! It's weird to hear him try to speak sentences.

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What happens when the child speaks Spanish and the parents do not? Yes. He started yelling 'Aawaaaaaaa' 'Aawaaaaaaaa' and it took me a long time to understand he was asking for Water. In Spanish. That's about the only Spanish word I know, curtsey his daycare teacher. Fun times ahead.

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Flower Girl

This is a LO of my neice Arushi. She's so cute!

You can download Jason Gaylor brushes here

Credits:
Background (recolored), ribbon (recolored), string of beads, flower, pin with tag, stamp, staples: Michelle Coleman's Chelsey Dreams kit
Brushes : Fresh Foliage brushes by Jason Gylor
Notepaper: Lauren Grier

Some missed layouts

These two LOs somehow slipped through the cracks. Better late than never!

Cherish

This one's is a real favorite of mine. The photo brings back very happy memories of having Mehul at home, all to myself. I also love the new kit by Michelle (as everything else that she's ever created!)



Credits:

Papers, Plastic Flowers, Funky Flowers, Blue Bow, Peace sign, Blue and Gray tags: Michelle Coleman's Feeling Groovy Kit
Journaling Paper: Maya's Promise to Write kit
Tag: Modified from Nancie's Quiet Love kit
Staple, Swirly metal, safetypin : Michelle Coleman
Ribbons are mine

Zoo

Credits:

Paper: Summer Celebrtion kit from ScrapArtist
Notepad: Summer Splash kit from ScrapArtist
Plastic Flowers: Feeling Groovy kit by Michelle Coleman
Sunglasses: Summer Celebrtion kit from ScrapArtist
Ribbons and Fabric Tabs: Summer Splash kit from ScrapArtist
Doodle: Angie Briggs freebie
Hand Stamped Alpha: Michelle Coleman
Floral brush: Jason Gaylor
String of beads: Gina Miller

Shalini

Weekend was nice

It started raining here on Thursday and didn't really stop until Saturday. We had planned to go to the Baltimore Aquarium over the Labor Day weekend - Saturday or Sunday. We had planned a Potluck on Sunday so the only option was Saturday. I had almost made up my mind to not go, but DH insisted that we should. It's indoors so we went anyway. And I'm so glad that we did. Mehul had a great time watching all the fish. I'm happy to announce he *can* identify Nemo LOL and he calls it 'Moomie'.

They also have a Dolphin show that used to be free with the admission ticket, but now they have an extra charge for that. I don't really know if it is worth it anymore. We have seen the show twice before, and this time we felt there was a lot of talking and very less Dolphin Action. Mehul still enjoyed the Big Fish splashing water on him! Yes, we sat in the Splash Zone. The water was salty. Yuck!

While returning back from the Aquarium, we called some family friends over. They stayed the night and we had a great time talking and relaxing. Had the Potluck on Sunday. My 'Pindi De Chole' recipe was a hit! I'm making them tomorrow again so we can freeze some for lunches.

I've been at a client site for the last two days. It's a long drive. I might have to go in again tomorrow or next week. Can't wait for this work to be over.

I did do a layout yesterday.

Dreams

Journaling: Eyes are an Ocean in which Dreams are reflected.

Credits:

All Papers: Michelle Coleman's Savoir Faire Kit
Eyelet: Christy Lyle's Tagbook Treasures
Stitching: ScrapArtist Summer Splash Kit
Beaded Heart and Oval: Gina Miller
Paper Tear: Steph Krush
Tag: Candy Coated Mini Kit Freebie by Michelle (on her blog)
Eyelet: Tutti Frutti Kit
Deckled Edge Frame: Ronna Penner's Vintage Snapshots
Brush Overlay: Michelle Coleman's Lighter Shades of Pale Kit
Saddle Filter on Photo by PhotoBlast
Font: Misproject

Wrapped Ribbons

I did this LO on Monday. Everyone is loving the wrapped ribbon on the tag so I have included the instructions on how to do this in the DigiScrapping Tutorial I'm writing. The Tutorial would be posted this weekend. Stay tuned.

Precious Child

Credits:
Papers: Michelle's Savoir Faire
Large Tag: Sweet Shoppe Designs (grunged up)
Wrapped Ribbon: Michelle's Tutti Frutti kit
Small Tag, Button: Michelle's Gypsy Rose Kit
Metal Flower, String: Michelles' Feeling Groovy kit
BookPlate: Nancie's La Belle
Photo Corners, ribbon: Ronna Penner's Monochromatic kit
Also used Michelle's Hand Stamped Alpha.