Those of you with “baby on the brain” … here are a couple things for you to check out.

Most of you know the name Karlee Fuchs if you’ve been reading my blog since at least December. If not, look to the right on this page, click on December 2007, and check out my 12.17 and 12.18 entries so you can know of this girl’s talent. She makes the cutest bags & accessories. And I just noticed a limited edition (she’s only making 5!) diaper bag that’s SO adorable. Check it out in her Etsy shop. It’s called “Diaper Bag Brown…”

I met another talented gal recently, who does precious baby hair accessories & bibs & nursing covers, etc. This is Taya Jones’ Etsy shop. Her line is called Jonesy Baby. If you live in AZ and want to stop by her next boutique (I understand Karlee Fuchs will be there too, as well as some fun jewelry, etc.) … it’s coming up next Thursday (March 6) evening. You can e-mail Taya for directions. jonesybaby247@gmail.com

Today the snowflakes came down and these sweet Easter baskets are now the hanging above our bar in the kitchen.

I first hung ornaments for Christmastime (see 12.7.07 post) and then snowflakes for the remaining part of Winter (see 12.31.07 post). For some of you, especially in colder climates, it feels too early for Easter. But it’s merely 25 days away. And besides – we’re well into the 70s here in Arizona now and our kids have already busted out the sidewalk chalk. So we’re all about closing out the Winter here.

Oh – and those baskets? Got them at Target … in the “dollar spot”. Can’t beat that. : )

Loved photographing this precious peanut over the weekend for some of our friends. I composed a few of the shots this way in case they wanted to add text in the white space and create a simple – but lovely – baby announcement.

Ariana, who says she “always feels awkward writing a comment…” is the winner of Stacy’s book! So Ariana – I guess it paid off. : ) E-mail me your shipping address and Photo Freedom is on its way to you this week.

bhiggins@ckmedia.com

My friend C.D. Muckowsky has put together a really fun kit for Cocoa Daisy Scrapbooking. Check it out here. She is their guest designer for February and put all of her favorites into one kit. I’ve been playing with the kit myself and thought I’d share what I’ve whipped up. C.D. and I have very different styles and I love that. Just goes to show … you can make just about anything work with YOUR style. So great.

By the way, I cover this theme a lot in our scrapbooks. Summing up an entire summer on one layout, that is. I have found that I’m doing it every year in our family albums, as well as the kids’ albums. It’s sooo manageable. I don’t feel the need to do a layout on every aspect of summer, so I get it all in on one layout … for the most part. Last year we had a big family reunion. That gets its own layout (a few layouts in the family album) because of all those great, rare cousin pictures. Know what I mean? But the rest of the summer can be summed up on one layout. And that’s what this layout is, for Claire’s album.

For the month of February if you shop in the CK online store you will be automatically entered to win 1 of 5 of my School Years kits. Find out more information here. Sounds good to me!

And speaking of winning something for free, I have an extra copy of Stacy Julian’s new book, Photo Freedom (see my 1.28.08 post). I would love to give it to someone. Leave a comment with your first name, and I’ll choose someone at random on Tuesday the 19th.

Oh! And if you’ve received the school kit, I’d LOVE to know what you think so far. Leave your comments here.

The tradition of exchanging Valentines at school is one of my favorite childhood memories. I loved distributing them in everyone’s brown paper sacks and couldn’t wait to see all of the ones I received.

I loved the idea of Porter making each individual Valentine (he doesn’t have that many classmates in his pre-school class) but I’ve been fighting a nasty cold for a while, and I’m all about simplifying right now.

So this is what we did. He colored a heart. I took a picture. (His rule was I was only allowed to take ONE picture, so lucky for me I got it in one shot! Sheesh!). Then I spent about two minutes with the image in Photoshop (a simple conversion to black & white and added a little text). And that’s it! Printed a bunch and they’re ready to go.

So if you need a last-minute Valentine idea, there you go. And Happy Valentines Day on Thursday, everyone!

Great news! For those of you who were able to order my school years kit, I just got word that they have begun shipping from our warehouse in Utah. So watch for the big brown truck to pull up to your house sometime very soon! And ENJOY that kit. I know you will.

For those of you who are wondering about ordering the kit (to receive at a later time), we are working on that. As promised, I will let you know any information that we have as soon as we iron out a few details. Thank you for your patience. We have a lot of wonderful, hard-working folks behind this program and we all want the best for our customers (you).

And speaking of wonderful, hard-working folks, it’s not very often that we think about those who work behind the scenes to ensure that we get what we order, right? I wanted to publicly say a big THANK YOU to our warehouse team, including those who pitched in who don’t even work in the warehouse. In just a few hours, they got most of the school kits out the door!

Impressive. And appreciated. Agree?

By Ali Edwards:

By Kade Bearnson:

By Natalie Graham:

By Kelmen Davenport:

By Sydney Grieser:

By Ali Edwards:

By Kade Bearnson:

By Natalie Graham:

By Kelmen Davenport:

By Sydney Grieser: