Digital Scrapbooking Babies

AHA! I have a way to get around this no taking photos thing of my grandbaby. My daughter has requested Mom, please don't post any more baby photos publicly to the whole wide world, unless you make it REALLY generic. She is concerned for the baby's privacy. So, I am making Kerry a scrapbook of my four weeks here with her. It's a digital scrapbook, so if I post a couple of artistic pages, and don't give a lot of details about the baby, then I think I will still be in her good graces, and still respecting her and the baby's privacy....So here's my first digital layout with my new grandson, six days old.....

I took Katie Periet's "A Moment in Time" template which looks like this:

And started fooling around with it....I have trouble getting things to fit and move around digitally as I am just learning about how to digital scrap, but I think it turned out ok. I moved some elements and the photo. I used Photoshop Elements version 8 for my page and working with the photos...With many digital templates, you simply "drop" down an opened digital paper file onto the background layer, add your journaling and the rest of the elements are all there. I used Katie Pertiet's (my favorite digital designer!)  "My Baby Boy" paper for the background, and added a date. The graph paper had to come out when I couldn't get the elements to group together because I didn't know what I was doing! But it's on to the next digital page, I've got ten or twenty pages to do in just a couple of days before I leave depending on whether I want back to back layouts or not. Time is a factor here.


I think she's going to like it....It's fun when it comes together without too much hassle or having to start over. This one was relatively easy to do. Until next time.......

Getting the Shot Just Right

Wanted to experiment with photography this week....


Taking photos of my new grandson is of top priority! 
Unfortunately, my daughter wishes I wouldn't post photos of the baby in such a public manner, so Grandma Sparky has to cool it for awhile.....I understand her privacy concerns as a new mother in Kerry's hometown was murdered coming out of a pediatrician's office and the baby kidnapped, not far from where Kerry lives. The baby was recovered. My daughter is justifiably concerned, having been affected by weird things of a criminal nature happening in her young life, much more so than the average person her age. She is just more cautious about everything, with a new baby, and I guess society has really drummed it into our heads that it's a dangerous place out there, and you can't trust anybody. Our identities are in danger of being stolen, our accounts are getting hacked, people are stealing babies right and left, if you were to believe the media. 


So, I am saddened not to be able to post any more photos in the blog or any more personal details about the wonderful joy of being a new grandma, but I respect her wishes. She says if I can do it in a more generic way, that's ok. So I"m going to have to rethink how I post "Grandma" time...So for now,  I turned my attention to our travels this week, in particular, a tour of a craft brewery. I talked about it in my travel blog a bit (Where's Eldo? on Blogger) but I wanted to say more about it.


I liked this photo in particular. I think I got the shot just right for me..Not because it's about beer, which I don't even like, but because it makes me think of the happy time I spent today with Eldy, on a tour of the Saint Arnold Brewery in Houston. (The red chips are tokens you get to sample the craft beers after the tour.)

The tour was short but informative, and after the tour, we sat down at a table in the big tasting room and started talking to two young women who were from Singapore. It was really great to see Eldy, who seldom talks to strangers unless they approach him first, strike up a conversation with the two gals and then from there, it just blossomed into a nice long discussion about traveling. We compared notes about different parts of the U.S., and we talked about the culture in Singapore, and the American culture.  The girls, (they seemed so young to me!) asked lots of questions about our travels and we asked lots of questions about life in Singapore.


It was just really fun to learn about people who are from other places and to learn from them, and it felt so comfortable talking with them. They were fun and interesting, smart young women who were obviously doing well in their jobs. They had traveled all over the world and had lots to say about all kinds of things. We really enjoyed chatting with them today....That's part of the wonderful life of full time RVing, striking up conversations with strangers everywhere we go, and strangers become friends more easily than anywhere else in life.....It was a really great day today and one to remember......

Time to Knit Again!

It's been a really busy week or two...waiting on my new grandson to arrive. Then he came, and I fell in love with him in a heartbeat.  I've been helping my daughter by just hanging out with her and the baby's dad, helping them do laundry, reassuring them that they are doing great,  watching him--in awe of such perfection that God has blessed our family with....

He's healthy, he seems happy, and I swear he has smiled a time or two...But I guess his best times are for Grammy during the day, because at night, he's a lot more fussy when I'm not around....Or doing things like peeing on the wall and the dog at the same time during a diaper change! And Kerry even uses those Peepee Teepees, those tiny little cloth cones to cover the essentials during a diaper change!

I forgot how precious they are when they are so little...he's even precious when he cries...I love looking at him, holding him, talking to him and he's starting to open his eyes to just stare. He looks like he is thinking about his surroundings....Here he is six days old....So many memories are flooding back about taking care of my own daughters when they were babies, how exhausting and nerve wracking it is to be a new mom. I'm just so glad I can be here to help Kerry cope.....

He's so cute! I just love him to pieces! I get to be around him for about a month, and then we will be moving on in our RV heading back north...where it's cooler, MAYBE!

While staying with my daughter and her boyfriend, I've gotten back to knitting dishcloths...these are fast, easy, and not much to think about when there's a lot going on...This pattern is called "Grandma's Favorite" and it's all over the web as far as the pattern goes....I'm using a size 7 needle and Peaches and Creme 100% cotton yarn....I did another one in a peaches, rose and brown color ombre that I gave to my daughter. She said it looked like Neapolitan ice cream...which it did.....The pattern gets to about 44 stitches and then you start decreasing down. I like my dishcloths just a little bigger, so I'm going to go about another ten stitches, then decrease. Guess I'm on a roll with dishcloths now for a little while...Until next time....