{Almost 1)

I can't believe how fast the last year has gone. This time 1 year ago I was almost 40 weeks pregnant and sooo ready to meet my little baby. Now, that precious newborn is a toddling, smiling, clapping, laughing little boy with so much personality. He has grown so fast! He will turn one in two weeks - wow!

I only started doing the 'official' monthly photos at 3 months, but I have photos from the right days of the previous months, so here is his first year....

The day he was born - 10/10/10 at 10.27pm

1 month old, starting to smile

2 months old, looking more grown up

3 months old, starting to get cheeky!

4 months old, loving tummy time

5 months old, learning to sit

6 months old, teething!

7 months old, getting harder to photograph since he won't keep still!

8 months old, won't leave the props alone!

9 months old, being taught naughty tricks by Grandad!

10 months old, refusing to look at the camera!

11 months old, walking!

I have plans for the one year photo which involve lots of ballons! We shall see how well that comes off - he might not want to cooperate with me!

{Sarah's Cards - August kit}

I have my thrid and final page from the August kit to share with you today, and I saved my favourite until last!

This photo was taken on my birthday this year and I just love it.  The chipboard from Bella Blvd had loads of cute word pieces that fitted in really well with my page - I wanted to use as many as I could so I lined them up down the side of my photo on top of a pice of paper cut out with a template and pierced along the edge. The background paper was created by first misting and then embossing (in white) a design stamped randomly over the page.

{Sarah's Cards - August kit}

My second page for the August kit from Sarah's Cards uses three photos from our honeymoon - I think we literally lived on cocktails out in Hawaii - not difficult since there are so many to try, and some are like a meal in themselves! They all came with pineapple, so we managed to kid ourselves that because we were having fruit, they weren't too unhealthy lol! 

The sheet I've used for the background went perfectly, but felt a bit flat so I added dabs of red paint to the red circles using the end of a pencil (the rubber tip is excellent for this!). The kit also included some gorgeous chipboard, which I layered up with stickers on this page.

{Sarah's Cards - August Kit}

I apologise for my lengthly absence from this little blog, there's no particular reason I haven't been updating, just the usual excuses of life being too busy etc etc!

The August kits are now well and truely with subscribers, so it's time to share the pages I made this time around. The kit features the gorgeously summery 'Hometown Summer' range from Pink Paislee.

This page I've been waiting to make for a while, but obviously I had to wait until Benjamin turned 9 months old to get the photo. This is him at '9 months in' and '9 months out'! I loved using pictures together on a page that weren't originally taken together. I don't do it very often because I store my photos by date, but I'm going to make a conscious effort to do so, because it really can help to tell the story!

{Monochrome}

It's my turn to post on the all new Sarah's Cards blog today.

Here's a sneaky peek at the pages I'm sharing. Hop on over to see the full projects!

If you haven't already seen it, Lou posted a wonderful challenge a few days ago - a £10 e-voucher for the shop is up for grabs so why not have a go!

{10 things on the 10th}

If you haven't seen Shimelle's blog post today then hop on over & take a look - a wonderful idea to post a '10 things' list on the 10th of every month. As Benjamin's birthday falls on the 10th, what better way to document the previous month in easy bullet points.
Today, my baby is 8 months old, and here is what has happened since his 7 month birthday:

Benjamin, in the last month you have...
1. Got your first tooth..
2. Got your second tooth..
3. Got your third tooth..
4. Got your fourth tooth!
5. Been baptised
6. Had your first go on the swings
7. Learnt to sit yourself up from lying down
8. Started enjoy meat & fish dishes
9. Become a cousin when baby Alexander was born
10. Started to crawl!
Not bad going for just one month!

I also want to include my 10 favourite pictures from the last month. Here they are in no particular order...

1. My birthday - we took a lovely lakeside walk, which had lots of wonderful photo ops!

2. This month you became very interested in bubbles - you think they are great & want to catch them!

3. Your first time on the swings was a huge success.

4. Just because no top 10 of photos was be complete without a finger-sucking photo. You do love your fingers.

5. Your 7 month photoshoot - it was hard work this month, you really did just want to eat the tag!

6. Shoulder rides with Daddy!

7. Your baptism, I love this shot.

8. The amazing baptistry that you were baptised in. (It's the largest in the country so out priest tells us!)

9. You have the cheekiest smile ever, you are going to be such a mischief when you're a bit older!

10. The 'ooh' face is one we've been seeing more & more often. It's usually accompanied these days by bubble blowing & raspberrying.

This post may even make it onto a scrapbook page one day - ready made journalling & photo choices!

{For the Record}

Having just picked up my June kit from Sarah's Cards to work on (it's really stunning and packed full of goodies - subscribers are in for a treat!), I realised that I didn't share my pages from April.

Here are a couple of layouts that I made with the kit, which featured Echo Park 'For the Record' along with plenty of other great items. Not a lot of explanation required here really - the first page is about my dad and his grandson, and how I just love watching the two of them together. Dad isn't so keen on the nappy changing side of things lol, but he adores the cuddles and playtime!

This kit featured an alphabet sheet from Bella Blvd, which has 4 different fonts on it - I loved all the options, so I conbined loads of stickers to make a really long title (or a title-less page with journalling, whichever way you want to look at it!). Already this photo was months ago, and my little boy has changed so much again. Sometimes it scares me how fast everything is whizzing by, and I wish I could just stop where we are for a moment or two, but then Benjamin will do something new like roll over, or sit up by himself and I realise that he is becoming his own little person with every day that passes, and I love that.