Birthday Tree

I subscribe to the Tip Junkie website, where today they discussed birthday traditions.  I loved this post because traditions give everyone in the family something to look forward to for any given holiday...including the parents!  Our daughter was born on January 2, 2009, so while this year she didn't really even know what was going on for her birthday, future years could bring some heartache due to how close to the holidays her birthday falls. 

To try to prevent this and make her day remain extra special, I started a tradition called her "Birthday Tree."  We kept our Christmas tree up through the Christmas and New Year's celebrations.  On the eve of her birthday, we took down all of the Christmas decorations and re-decorated it for her birthday, with pink crepe paper and pictures of her.  I printed out small pictures (about 2"x2"), punched a hole in the top, and tied a ribbon through in order to attach it to the tree.  I really wish I would have taken more and better pictures of her birthday tree, but there was so much going on and I was grossly under-prepared the morning of her shin dig.  Below is a sample of what we hung on the tree.  I dated the photos, as I plan to keep them each year and re-use them...could be really cool in 15 years, or maybe she'll be over it by then.  My hope is that each year she will look forward to waking up on her birthday to see what her "Birthday Tree" looks like (which means I will have to come up with something new and creative each year).   

 
Everyone who attended her party enjoyed looking at the Birthday Tree, as it was something they could do at their leisure (as opposed to having to watch a timed slide show on TV with everyone huddled around). 

Baby Girl II is due around July 4th this year...another holiday baby...I will have to come up with something fun to incorporate the holiday into her birthday as well! 

FREEBIE: Simply Word Art

It's been a while since I've created any digital scrapbooking freebies to post.  Since I've got babies on the mind, here is one that might be useful for baby books!  Enjoy and feel free to post links to your layouts.  To download, click here or on the image below.   

Homemade Play Dough

It's been a long while since I've posted anything.  However, I've been keeping up with my obsession of browsing other crafting blogs and my list of crafts to try is getting forever long.  With a second baby on the way in five weeks, I better get my butt in gear because I don't foresee myself having a ton of time with two little munchkins just eighteen months apart! 

I subscribe to Skip To My Lou, as she always has a lot of great postings.  Today she posted a recipe from Homemade By Jill for homemade play dough.  I was so excited because over the weekend I brought out the play dough for my seventeen month old for the first time ever.  She seemed to like it, but it tends to crumble a bit.  My mother-in-law claims that homemade play dough has a much better consistency and does not crumble.  Not to mention...it's completely edible!  My daughter would probably love to help make the play dough and it could make a good little gift for the kids in her class at school!  Click on the image below to link to the homemade play dough tutorial!