Crop 'til You Drop

Don't pay the ransom, I've escaped!

(That's what my dad always used to say when he'd been gone for a long time and was calling to check in. :)

No, I didn't forget about the blog. I woke up Wednesday to a completely dead laptop even though it'd been plugged in to charge overnight. Thank goodness it was just the power cord, but no one within an hour radius of BFE our teeny tiny town carries any kind of Mac accessories. I decided to wait to go to a Mac store since my weekend plans put me near one.

The reason I was in the "big city" this weekend was for a scrapbooking retreat with my mom. My cousin came to watch Peanut while we worked on our albums. It was nice to have her right there, but still be able to focus on my pages.

I go to several retreats every year and it seems like I always lose my creative juice as soon as I walk in the door. Not this time! I was brainstorming layouts in the shower and in the car on the way there. It was so nice to sit down, pull out my pictures and immediately get to work instead of sitting there for the first 3 hours with a blank stare on my face.

I didn't get a ton accomplished because I still had to take time out to feed Peanut, feed myself and tend to her when she needed her mom. It was still more than I've accomplished in the last 10 months. It felt so good to get started on her album and fun/emotional/sad to look back at pictures of her when she was first born.

I wanted a girly album for Peanut's first year, but not light pink or anything with cheesy baby graphics on it. I fell in love with the color of this one and bought it. The picture doesn't really do it justice. It's somewhere between a bright pink and a coral.

I'm not going to post the title page because Peanut's full name is the majority of the layout and blurring it out would pretty much leave a blank page. :)

Here are some of the layouts I completed. Nothing too fancy or overly creative, but they're finished. I took a lot more time than usual figuring out what to say in the journaling boxes. I want Peanut to know not only what happened, but how we felt.

I think I'm headed out for a run to wake myself up. I'm going to fall asleep if I don't get up and moving. That's one thing about spending the whole weekend away from home. I'm always worthless the next day.

I'm also linking this post up to the following parties:

Hope you all had a great weekend!