Floral Number Monthly Baby Photos

 My little baby Ana turned 6 weeks this past Friday!  How is time going so fast!  Today I wanted to share with you a post on her monthly baby pictures.

For Lyla's monthly baby photos I found a vintage suitcase, some pretty fabric, a blanket (which now hangs out on the futon in our family room), and made a bunting with her name on it.  You can read more about her monthly baby photos here and here.  You can read about how I made the bunting here.

Above is a composite of all of her monthly photos from her baby book. The setup went with her vintage travel nursery theme.

Oh my goodness, she looks so different now!

She is definitely a little girl instead of a baby now.  It is so crazy!

I wanted Ana's monthly photos to also go with her nursery theme so I decided to make the number of each month out of flowers.  This was such a simple project that there isn't really that much to explain.

I waited for fake floral to be on sale at Hobby Lobby.  I gathered up quite a few stems with shades of pink and white flowers.  I made sure to select some that had some nice leaves as well.  Then I trimmed all of the floral heads and some of the leaves off of the stems.  I laid out an off white textured throw that I found at Target in front of the large window in her room.  It lets in a fantastic light that is perfect for pictures.  Then I arranged the flowers into a number 1.  That was all I had to do folks!  It was so simple and they turned out beautifully.  It will be see fun to see her grow next to these lovely floral numbers!

Seriously the light in her room is so gorgeous!  I also had an adorable model as well.  She isn't always a cooperative model though.  I added bandana bibs to my Etsy shop, The Petite Seam and she was  not amused when I tried to have her model one of the bibs.

Thankfully she fell asleep shortly after this and I got some sweet photos.

Seriously that light!

I am so excited for the next post on this blog.  I have been working on a big fireplace makeover in our living room over the past couple of weeks and it should finally be done by the end of this week or the beginning of next week.  Here is a little sneak peak:

Keep checking back so you don't miss the post on this stunning makeover!

Bokeh Christmas Light Photos

I love this time of year so much.  I love the music, the lights, advent church services, all of the fun traditions, and fluffy white snow.   I do not like the very frigid weather that we had for about a week last year.  The one advantage to that was that we didn't have to wait in line at Santa's Village like we did last year because most people decided to stay home because the high was -8.  Don't worry we bundled her up well and Santa's house was well heated.

Today I am finally posting about some lovely photos I took with my Nikon DSLR around Thanksgiving.  I recently purchased a 50 mm f/1.8 lens which had been on my wish list for awhile. This lens is great for portrait photography and it has the ability to create some nice bokeh effects. Bokeh is that wonderful background blur that you often see in professional photographs.  Another definition of bokeh that I love is "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light."  I like that definition especially for this post on bokeh Christmas lights.

I moved some furniture around in our bonus room to get some blank wall space.  I found some 5' light strings at the Dollar Tree and hung them up on the wall with clear push pins.  I chose to get colored lights but you could also use plain white ones too.  We have laminate flooring in our bonus room that looks like a dark wood and I loved the way the colored lights reflected off of the floor.

I used Lyla's Simba stuffed animal to take some test shots while she was napping.  The key to these photos is to shoot in either manual mode or aperture priority mode so that you can adjust the aperture on your lens.  Aperture is the opening in your lens.  As the aperture widens, the amount of light that gets in increases.  Aperture is measured in f-stops.  Smaller f-stops=wider aperture and more light, bigger f-stop=smaller aperture and less light.  My standard kit lens that came with my camera had 3.2 as the smallest f-stop that it could achieve.  This new lens can go down to 1.8 which is a significant difference.  I toyed with the idea of spending twice as much to get a fixed focal lens that could go down to 1.4 but I have been satisfied with the results that I get with this lens.  I got to try it out for the first time with my sister's senior pictures and I loved the beautiful bokeh backgrounds that it produced.

The other key to these photos is the distance of your subject from the background that you want blurred.  In the first photo of Simba I have him placed only about a foot or 2 from the background and you can see that I get a some blur but the green wires are still visible.

I gradually moved Simba further from the background until I achieved the effect I wanted.

Unfortunately my subject was a toddler and didn't always stay where I wanted her to but I still love shots like the one above even if I can see the wires and the baseboard heater in the background.  This lens is also harder to get the subject in focus when your subject is constantly moving.  I definitely need more practice!

Bob the Sloth and a snack had to make an appearance in some of the photos to keep her in one place. One of my favorite shots is the one of her lying on the floor and holding the snowflake.  This definitely wasn't in the plan but I'm glad I kept snapping even when she decided to lie down!  Oh and if you want to learn about the Christmas pjs that she is wearing read this post.

I think I am going to try to get another session in with a milk and cookies for Santa set up.  Cookies will definitely keep her in one place!  Next on the blog: my take on a car seat poncho.

Digital Baby Book: Monthly Photo Pages + Custom Stickers

Wow it is almost November already!  I thought I would try to squeeze in a few more October posts in before the end of the month so here is the first of several.  I am back today to share another post on Lyla's baby book.  So far I have shared how to create a custom calendar page and the items that I scanned to files for preservation in the book.

Custom Calendar Page

Scanned Keepsakes

In today's post I am sharing the monthly photo pages from the book and how to create a custom sticker to use with the Mixbook software.  I have written several posts on Lyla's monthly photo sessions from her first year including this post on the burlap bunting I made for the set, this post on the monthly photos, and this update on how the photos were going at 4 months.  These photos were fun to share on FaceBook each month and also worked well as decor for her 1st birthday party.  But I knew that these photos would shine the most in her baby book.  

Each month I recorded all of the little things that Lyla did and all of the activities she participated in. Some of these things are recorded in the calendar pages but others were used to help me write a letter each month to Lyla.  I loved doing this and I recommend that every expecting mother plan to do something like this for their child.  It is really touching for me to go back and read each letter and I hope that someday it will be meaningful to Lyla as well once she gets to read them herself.  I plan to continue to write one every 3 months up until she turns 2 and and then yearly after that.  It would be fun to include all of the letters in a book that I could give to her at her high school graduation.  

As you can see I made each monthly page have the same format.  I chose to keep these pages clean and simple because I wanted the photos and the letter to be the focus of each monthly page.  I wanted to add a little "handwritten" element to the letters so that is where the creation of the custom stickers comes in.  Here is how I created them:

I opened up my Pixelmator software (you can do this in photoshop or any other photo editing software and I am sure the steps are similar) and selected a blank canvas size.  I just used standard letter size in this example.  I then selected a font and typed my message.  Next I clicked on the background layer in the layers window and hit delete.

Once the background layer is deleted then you will see a checkerboard pattern behind the text.

Now you need to save the document.  When the save menu appears click in the box next to "save a copy as" and then select PNG from the drop down menu.  PNG stands for portable network graphic.

Now open up your project in Mixbook and click on the stickers tab on the left side of the screen and then click on the browse stickers button.

Select the upload stickers tab in the menu that pops up and then click on the orange upload stickers button.  Find your file and select it.

Once the sticker has uploaded you can close the window and your sticker can be found in the project stickers section of the stickers tab.  If you hover your cursor over the sticker then it will magnify it.  

To add the sticker to a page simply click on it and drag it to the page you want it on.  When you have the sticker selected on the page you can change the size of it and also manipulate it in other ways using the gray tool bar that pops up below the sticker.  

I used custom stickers in other places in the book as well.  The hot air balloons on each calendar page were vector files that I purchased on Etsy.  The little bison that you see on this page was just an image that I found by doing a google search.  I saved the image to my computer and opened it in Pixelmator. I used the magic wand tool or paint selection tool and clicked on the background surrounding the image and deleted it.  Then I saved the image as a PNG.  The only problem with this is that the images are often poor quality which limits how much you can enlarge them with out them becoming blurry or pixelated.  This wasn't a problem for me, however, since I was using them on the calendar pages and needed them to be small.  You could also type png after the image you are searching.  You will know it is a PNG if the background comes up with a checkerboard pattern when you click on the thumbnail in google images.  Then you can eliminate the step of removing the background in photo editing software.

I also scanned the footprints from the hospital into my computer and made them into PNG files.  I had to adjust the darkness of the footprints to make it work properly but you just have to play around with it little bit.

One of my favorite pages in the book is this page with all of her monthly photos and her 1st birthday invitation in the middle.

It is so fun to see how much she has grown.  And now she is 15 months!  Time flies!

Here is my little cutie playing in the leaves.  I love her so much!  Up next: a simple diy Kitty costume.

Digital Baby Book: Using the Scanner to Preserve Keepsake Items

Today I am sharing the next post on Lyla's digital baby book that is now finished.  I can't wait to order a copy so I can see it in print!  So once upon a time I attempted to be a scrapbooker.  I was in my first couple of years of college and I wanted to catalogue all the photos and items from my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college.  I went to a craft store and bought a bunch of scrapbooking items.  I completed several pages that didn't look super great and then I lost my momentum.  It turns out that I don't actually have the patience for scrapbooking in the traditional way.  

After our honeymoon I decided that I didn't want all of those photos to just sit on my computer so I decided to create a photo book of the trip.  Each year since then I have also made a yearly photo book to highlight all of my favorite photos from our year.  I love putting it together every year.  That is why it was a no-brainer for me to do a digital book in place of the traditional baby book for Lyla. 

I did, however, want to preserve some of those items that you would find in a traditional baby book like Lyla's hospital bracelet and all of the cards we received.  I plan to put some of the items (like the hospital bracelet) in a shadow box with one of her first outfits but I turned to the scanner on our printer to help me digitally preserve some of those items.  Here are some of the items that I chose to scan into the baby book.

I scanned in the birth announcement from the paper and her hospital bracelet.  Her birth announcement at the top was actually a screen shot of the digital preview on Shutterfly where I purchased the announcements from.  

In the section of the book on the baby shower I included a scan of the adorable baby shower invite which was made by one of my shower hostesses and her cousin.  

I scanned in all the cards we received from the shower and the ones we received after Lyla was born. I made sure to scan the front and the inside with the message from the card giver.  It was a lot of scanning but totally worth it.  When I arranged the cards on the page I made sure to put the message from the inside on or near the front of the card it came from.  I love how the card collages turned out in the book.

I also scanned in the cards that she received at her baptism and the church bulletin from her baptism.

At the end of her baby book I included the little sheets with her stats from each doctor appointment during the year.

Finally I scanned in some of the little "art" projects that Lyla made at daycare throughout the year.  I wonder if the daycare teachers ever get tired of making art projects with baby feet and hands.  It always makes me chuckle when Lyla comes home with a pink foot from doing an art project.  I really like that multicolored blob towards the top left of the page because I believe that is Lyla's first finger painting.  Also the poor bee and turkey lost an eye somewhere between daycare and home.

Well that is it for today.  Next up on the blog-an update on the pretty much finished bonus room/playroom.