All About Ella

The countdown begins today.  We're one week out from Ella's birthday and her birthday party (since they're both conveniently falling on Labor Day this year).  We have a busy week of party-planning ahead of us, as well as the normal round of work, school, and gymnastics...plus a few other things.  A busy week indeed. 

Here are a few links to Ella's past birthday memories to get us in the party spirit.

• The Day I Went to the Hospital
• Ella's 4th Birthday
• Ella's 4th Birthday PARTY (There was a big difference to her that year between her birthday and her birthday party.)
• Ella's 5th Birthday
• Ella's 5th Birthday Video (I think party-attenders will be happy to know my videos are shorter than 10 minutes these days.)
• One Last 5th Birthday Celebration
• Ella's 6th Birthday Party, a Brave extravaganza

Last year our theme had KJ donning a kilt.  This year, it will be a tuxedo as he takes on the role of butler at our Samantha tea party.  I'm not sure how our party-planning spiraled into dressing up, but I'm afraid it's going to be a tradition from now on.  I like KJ in a tux so I won't be complaining.

My costume as cook won't be nearly as elegant, but next Monday is sure to be a lot of fun. It was also a lot of fun trying to recreate the old book cover emblem by taking a picture of Ella's silhouette.  Look like Samantha?

Happy Valentine's Week!

If I lived in England, you could all fly over and stay with me whilst you went to the Olympics.  Just a thought.

P.S.  I spent two hours of James' nap time making this out of some of my London pictures.

Book-Inspired

Projects

I thought I might share a couple of projects I worked on in the past couple of months. 

The first one was for my mom on Mother's Day.  She loves pictures of old doors, and I took several in England with her in mind.  She requested a print similar to prints like this.  Here's what I put together for her.  I'm happy to say she loved it.

I kind of love it, too.  I loved being at those places.  And I found Jane Austen's handwriting as a font online to use on the bottom.  Ta-da!

I also put together birthday invitations to my nephew's amazing Lord of the Rings birthday party.  I wish I could have been there.

His creative daddy came up with the tagline for the invite.

(Click to make larger.)
 

Let me know if you'd like a custom-designed birthday party invite!  They're pretty fun to put together.  :)

A Free Shutterfly Book!

It's hard for me to pass up something free.  How could I not create a photo-book valued at $29.99 and only pay for shipping costs?  It's been 7 months since I last used Shutterfly to create a book, and all the changes they've made that let you completely customize your book are really great.  My free-book coupon expired yesterday so I had to hurry and create it in one afternoon/night.  In other circumstances I would have spent more time, but...it was free!

Click here to view this photo book larger

You'll love Shutterfly's award-winning photo books. Try it today.

To counteract the sadness from my sickness I created something that made me happy.

The company that printed our Christmas cards is having a sale on their postcards, and since I just finished using my cards that said Lynn Murphy, I thought I'd make myself some more.  The above will be cropped to a 4x6 size, and I can't wait for them to arrive!