the birthday girl and a new layout

I was hoping to get these up yesterday but life (preschool group, kids, all important things) got in the way as it sometimes does and last night I was just not feeling well. I went to my activity at the church and left about a half hour into it because my head was pounding and I had lots of sinus pressure and some dizziness. I can't wait until the day that I don't feel sick at all anymore. It's been more than a month and whatever the bug is has sure taken its own sweet time to go away.

So, here is a picture of Aimee from her birthday, getting ready to blow out her two little candles. Matt ended up having to help her because she was blowing so softly and the wax was quickly melting onto the pink cupcakes she wanted to have so badly. Cute girl. She positively glowed as we were singing "happy birthday" to her, even sang along to the Portugese added to our lovely rendition. (sidenote: Matt's dad went on a church mission to Brazil and their family used to always sing the English and Portugese and we've carried on the tradition, ha ha)

Anyway, the picture isn't that great but I am still working with AV mode in low light and don't quite have it mastered. I really don't like to have to use the flash because the pictures look so much better (well, maybe not in this case).

I've been working on this layout for a few days, finding a few minutes here and there to sit down and work on it and finally completed it yesterday. One of the things that I love most about scrapbooking is being able to combine different patterns by various manufacturers. There's been a bit of discussion about this at My Scrapbook Nook lately and for some it's an easy task and for others it's quite a challenge, a challenge that I happen to enjoy. Sure, it's nice to use one collection on a page, it makes things quick and easy and you know the colors will match but I also like to dig through my stash and mix and match things and end up loving the result. For this page I combined some Jenni Bowlin, Pink Paislee, October Afternoon- 2 different lines, and some American Crafts. I hand cut the butterflies and the flowers at the top from some AC paper and the pearls are by KaiserCraft and Queen and Co.

And here are a few detail shots just for fun.

I don't know if I'll get any scrappy time today, lots of clothes folding to catch up on, but hopefully I can sneak in a few minutes to make some cards or something.

Have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by to visit!