Photo Books

I created some photo books, a personalized alphabet book for Ben and a book of Annmarie's arts and crafts. 

A popular Australian blogger was offering a free Instagram photo book with Blurb.  I've seen these personalized alphabet books and thought this was the perfect opportunity to create one for Ben. Almost all the pictures came from my Instagram feed and I had to come up with a couple of other pictures for some letters I was missing.  I was able to get this done during one of Ben's daytime sleeps, I worked fast. Also, the offer for the free book was only for 24 hours, so I needed to get it done. I never finish projects like this fast because I tend to over think how I want them. It's a small book and it will be a while before I let Ben handle it. It's not that expensive of a book, so I might just order another one to have and Ben can do what he wants with this one. Here are some of the pages.

I started Annmarie's arts and crafts book over a year ago. I took pictures of Annmarie's art and craft projects and compiled them into a book. Not every little thing made it into the book, but most things did. Then most of it got tossed into the bin; I kept the special stuff. I used My Publisher for this book. I'm really happy with how it turned out, here is a look.

 The back cover.

Last week

Pictures from my phone. A lot of them.

Mondays - it's our day to walk to the beach.  
Birds coming to say good morning.
Tacos from our date last Sunday.

Artichokes - yum. Even Ben liked them.

Every time I look at her she looks older.
I made play dough for Ben, he played with it for maybe  5 minutes.

Crazy huge surf last Sat.

We found a pinecone on our walk and made this cute little owl. Idea found on Pinterest.

Sunday morning breakfast at Dunes.

I've been making pizza for dinner once a week and then Annmarie takes it for lunch the next day. One less sando or wrap I have to make - yay! I've been making this pizza dough.
Banana muffins. I really like this recipe, it's for a banana bread, but opted to put them in the muffin tin. Also, I don't use all the cinnamon sugar swirl in mine.
Guinness cake for St. Patrick's Day. Recipe here.
Colorful curry.

That's it. ;)

The Weekend

I said I was going to take pictures this weekend and pictures I took.

Here we go, our weekend.

Saturday morning stretches or kids just being goofy.  

Then it was off to the rock pool.

There were some races going on so we sat back and watched for a bit

Annmarie went swimming.

And then it cleared out.

Ben took his nap and Annmarie colored.

Really.? How did she get so big?

Checking in for race results for Jamie.

Wake up.

Good night.

Sunday morning we headed to North Av for a swim with Annmarie's mate.

They had a crazy good time.

We have been having the best weather and the ocean water has warmed up, it's been perfect.

Jamie and Ben were there too. Jamie was barely standing or walking from his race and the ocean water wasn't cool enough for him so he came home and took a ice bath.  Like he bought three bags of ice and dumped them into a cold bath. How is this fun?

Jamie and I even went out Sunday for dinner. Woohoo!

It was a good one. I'm glad I brought my camera along.

Lately

I still haven't picked up my Big Camera. I'm going to try and take my camera with me everywhere this weekend, which is really know where. Jamie is running a big trail race on Saturday and we are staying home and then hopefully this wonderful weather we have been having stays and we'll go to the beach on Sunday.

Any who, here are some recent snaps from my phone.

1. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming. 2 & 3. At school and her first Gotcha! card.

1 & 2. Ben got his hairs cut and off went those sweet curls. His hair appears to have a wave to it, so I think we'll see those curls again. We all think he looks rather handsome.  3. Hi! 4. This. All.the.time.