Caitlin's: Who needs toys?

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365 Week 8

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Caitin's: Lucky Baby

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Caitlin's: Cait's and Daddy

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Caitin's: Bear Essentials

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Caitin's: 1st Christmas

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Caitin's: Bath Time

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That's Good

Paper's are Kaisercraft.
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365 Week 7

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Fourteen-digi

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Caitlin's: No Beanbags

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Caitin's: Sleep Like a Baby

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Documenting Our Family: Memory Boxes

Both Les and I and the kids all have memory boxes (Will has some stuff waiting to go in a box when we find one). We got them at Ikea when we were in Australia. Memory boxes are for the big stuff, bulky stuff and things that don't belong on a scrapbook page. They contain stuff like;

• the silver cutlery sets the kids were given as babies
• the newspaper from their day of birth.
  
• art work
• special toys now moved on from
• ultrasound films
• Hospital tags.
• Merenia's ponytail from when we cut her hair short
  
• pregnancy diaries etc.
• Saskia's outfit that she wore after she was born
• Teeth (we participate in the 'Tooth Fairy-to-Parent buy back programme' aka T-F2PBBP)
  

Mine and Les' has

• special mementos
  
• cards from our wedding/valentines/aniversaries
• newspapers from significant days (9/11, Obama Election etc)
• The book we made when planning the wedding
• The flag that they took to F3J
• ornaments I was given as a kid and want to keep but not display
• material from my wedding dress and the veil.
  
• and so on.
  

I try and make careful choices about which art I add in to make sure I have a cross-section or media, age it was made at and actual subject. Over time I will cull some of it or the box will get too full. Most of the kids art especially the really good stuff that doesn't make the grade for the memory box is photographed before it is destroyed. Every so often I print out a variety in various sizes with digital frames already applied and make a 'art-gallery' LO.
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You Love Bubbles

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Happy Valentines Day!

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Girls Love to Twirl

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365 Week 6

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Documenting Our Family: Photo Albums

In the bad old days before Scrapbooking there was a thing called photo albums. Most of Kieran and Merenia's pictures are in photo albums. But I am working to get them into scrapbooks now. We hardly use photo albums at all now except as a place to put photos waiting to be scrapbooked. But when I did I recorded the approximate dates the photos were taken (this also being the time before digital photos told you everything you needed know, provided your cameras clock is set). I recorded the name of the negatives and any details I felt likely to forget or that were of interest.

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Winner

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Documenting Our Family: Special Albums

Each of the kids has what I call their 'special albums'. These albums include a collection of some favourite photos. The rationale behind them is that they will have a selection of really nice pics of themselves (and each other) that they can take with them when they leave home... but without the bulk of a scrapbook...

(Saskia's)

(Will's)

The big kids have both finished their first special albums and when Will came along I went looking on Trade Me for something to suit him and found cbdjoe who made me three custom albums in the colours I chose. (I added the letters on later.) I am really happy with the service and the quality of these albums.

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Documenting Our Family: 1st 5 years Books

Each of our children has a First Five Years Book as well to make things easy they all have an Ann Geddes one (this was a hell of a mission when Will was conceived to find one of the old Layout ones with a different cover than the other two!!-hooray for the internet!)

These started 'PS' (Pre-scrapbooking) so there's probably a lot of stuff in there that would now go on scrapbook pages which it will as well in Will's case and hopefully as I back track over the kids photos.

You'd think that that Mira's would have the pumpkin one... but who knew when Kieran was born that she would come along and be called Pumpkin! So it goes K, M and W from left to right...

The intention is that the kids will get these when they are old grown-ups with their own kids in the pipeline (so they'll appreciate them). I did my very best to make sure I kept up with them - it was a lot easier when we lived in Australia.

(Merenia's)

(Will's)

(Merenia's)

(Merenia's)

I also wrote the kids periodic letter's about what they were up to and funny things they did and said. Intially I put them in the spare pages at the back of the book but that soon filled up so I stapled the letters to the back page of the book. (Gotta love that 'Ocker' Stationery!)

(Kieran's)

It's also a good place to store little anecdotes from the day... (although I suspect these would go in a scrapbook page now days). You gotta read these... (from Kieran's book)

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Year in Review: Digi

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365 Week 5

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Documenting Our Family: Plunket Books and First days Diaries.

All children in New Zealand get Plunket Well Child books and we arranged for Merenia to have one too despite the fact she was a wee Aussie baby. I've recorded a bunch of developmental stuff in there and all the medical stuff from their early years- illnesses and medicines etc.

The other thing I did for the first few months or so (which I haven't photographed) is too keep a diary of what we got up to most days for the beginnings of their lives. It was a place to record milestones and sleep habits and the tricky stuff of parenting as well as the drop dead cute stuff. For Will in particular this has been written with scrapbooking in mind- as there hasn't been much time to scrap with a baby around. It includes a couple of days where I did a play-by-play of the day with accompanying photos so I can make some day-in-the life LO's when I have the time.

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Documenting Our Family: Pregnancy Scrapbooks

When I was pregnant with Will I made the kids all a pregnancy scrapbook- they are just little 6x6 mini albums with the following info...

1. Title Page
2. Conception
3. Traditions (this talks about the new things I brought on the day I found out I was pregnant- a diary, a toy and an item of clothing)
4. 1st Trimester
5. 1st Peek (this is the pics from the 8 week ultra-sound)

6. Side effects (pregnancy symptoms- like all day morning sickness!)
7. 2nd Trimester
8. Babes Anatomy (20 week scan pics)
9. "Sharon or Darren" (our short list of names).

10. Moving and Grooving- the time I first felt the baby move etc
11. Caring for you- the names and details of our health care team.

12. Dad's Thoughts
13. 3rd Trimester
14. A pregnant belly shot
15. Baby's Nickname


16. Cravings
17. Your Space (the place we brought the baby home to.

18. Your Birth
19. Reflecting Back
20. You.

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