ADOPTION DAY IS COMING!

We heard from our attorney today.

Mid April we finalize!

You Were Born Trailing Clouds of Glory

I’ve LOVED unicorns since I was little. Not the cartoonish ones around today, but the regal, majestic ones.

So when I had the chance to do a shower gift bag for a precious baby girl, I thought unicorns and I’m so glad I did. I’m kind of excited with how things turned out.

Some of that excitement comes from trying new things and realizing those ideas worked 🙂 Like modifying bag designs, digitizing hand lettering, and playing with glitter HTV 😀

Also, babies. Those little bundles are pretty exciting. I love holding and snuggling them. There’s something miraculous about a new born. Something heavenly. So I also included some William Wordsworth words (the trails of glory).

This post is kind of picture intensive, but there were quite a few things.

Ready? Let’s go 🙂

I like giving mommy gifts. Those usually consist of thank you cards. But recently, I’ve been going nuts with vinyl, so I included that insanity in the gift as well. But I had to figure out how to package it all. So here’s what the gift looked like packed up.

I made the bag, using a design from SVG Cuts that I altered to fit my needs – that was the first thing that excited me. It worked 🙂 Obviously, the bag and mom’s card coordinated. But I wanted the unicorn on the bag to be a little more dramatic than the one on the card. To do this, I used my prisma color pencils to define and enhance some of the shading.

Here’s the next exciting thing. The words on the card front are from William Wordsworth, but the lettering is mine. See?

I scanned it into the computer and into my Silhouette Design software where I could clean it up. I’ve been practicing my hand lettering for 5-6 months now. I haven’t perfected it, but it’s fun to play with. After I cleaned the lettering up, I used it in my Craft Artist 2 software where I created the card above.

This is the inside of the card. I rarely decorate the inside, but this one just seemed so fitting. This was mom’s card. It was a 5 x 7.

I duplicated these cards and made a dozen 4.25 x 5.5 size cards for the new mom to use as thank you cards. I transferred the card design into my silhouette workspace and really made my print & cut feature work. But those cards needed a box…so I made one. Or two. Each box held 6 cards and their envelopes comfortably.

The saying is one I found in a book but had no author’s name attached to it.

So now, I have two sayings. I also happen to have two 0-3 month onsies just waiting to be vinyled. So, using the hand lettered saying, and the one I found for the front of the card box (I used vinyl on that, as well) I played with some red glitter heat transfer vinyl…it’s amazing. It looks like someone skinned Dorothy’s ruby red slippers and made HTV out of it it was so sparkly.

Here’s how the onsies turned out.

Now I had onsies just kind of floating around in the bag. It was not cute and this bag was all about cute. So, I found baby themed boxes in the design store that held the onsies perfectly.

Here’s what it looked like all laid out.

Thanks for stopping by!

xoxo

Links to the projects:

Carousel Horse Bag (mine looks like a unicorn bag), Card Box, Onsie Box

 

 

 

 

 

 

Valentine For the Hubby

I got his wrapped up about an hour before he got home. I wish I’d had time to make a box or bag for him, but I didn’t.

Here’s what you need to know about the love of my life.

He comes across as intimidating. I have NO idea why, but he does until you take the time to get to know my quiet wonderful man.

Something else you need to know. I think he likes it and kind of plays on it sometimes, especially as our kids have gotten old enough to date.

He also likes to laugh.

So the gifts were made with theses things in mind. And they were well received 🙂

thanks for stopping by!

xoxo

 

Links to files used in the projects

Corset, Pattern1, Pattern 2, I Don’t Like Morning People

Little Cousins’ Valentine Party

I’ve been sitting on this for a bit! Now that everyone has their things, I can share it 😀

The younger cousins got together and had their own Valentine’s Day party this weekend. They colored Valentines I cut out on my Cameo, did a craft, had a treat then played.

But I played well before they did when I put together matching shirts for the kids.

I like how they turned out and the kids were cute in them.

The white onsies are for the girls and the red shirts are for the boys.

Thanks for looking!

Signs That Adoption is Close

During the last 21 months or so, the baby has been visiting his bio mom twice a week.

In the beginning, there’s always a parent aid involved. When parents make enough progress toward reunification, the parent aid role diminishes until parents finally get unsupervised visits which lead to over nights and even whole weekends with their child.

Our parent aid was involved until the very last visit. This woman, who was a stranger in the beginning, now feels kind of like family. She’s a woman who has been part of my son’s life since the beginning. A woman who made a tough, scary situation for me so much easier. A woman who likes hummingbirds.

So when I decided I wanted to make her a thank you gift for our last visit, I knew I wanted it to have hummingbirds 🙂

Because I still want to vinyl all the things, I knew vinyl would be part of it.

Here’s what I came up with.

I liked the tile, but it’s big and bulky. Also, I wanted to color. So I took the image I put together for the tile and made it work for a card, too. My Silhouette cut out the vinyl for the tile then I tried really hard not to cuss (I was successful) while I tried to get the transfer tape to work for me. It finally did- mostly.

For the card, I printed the images and card design. I then had my Silhouette cut all the pieces out. I love dimension and knew I wanted it in this card. I used my markers and pencils to color bird and flowers then affixed the images on to the card.

Thanks for stopping by!

Xoxo

And She Loved A Little Boy Very, Very Much…

Tomorrow is our foster son’s last visit with his bio mom.

Last week we had court. A judge sat behind his bench waiting to decide the fate of three families, two sets of parents, and one little boy.

What had been anticipated to be a 1-2 day trial turned into a court session that ran over an hour behind then only lasted 30 minutes.

We lived miracles last week.

The day before court we had mediation with bio mom. She came into the meeting contesting the Termination of Parental Rights (TPR). But after speaking with us and I’m sure many sleepless nights considering her options, in the end, she decided to consent to the termination of her rights and agree to the adoption of her precious little boy.

I’m still unsure how to process that scene. We sat across the table and watched as the court document was signed. I still have trouble wrapping my head around the concept that a SIGNATURE is all it takes to sever those ties. It looks so simple, but was oh so amazingly swift and final.

I hugged her and thanked her. I acknowledged her sacrifice. I’ve learned that love comes in so many ways. She showed an act of love I’m not capable of.

We got word earlier that morning that bio dad’s attorney was asking for a continuance. Someone else hadn’t done their job correctly. So we expected the next morning to bring consent and TPR for bio mom and a continuance for bio dad.

While we waited. I sat with my son’s bio mom. She sat alone on one of the hardest days of her life and I couldn’t ignore that. Maybe I was the last person she wanted to see or talk to. I don’t know. But I asked questions about the children we share. How they got their names. Who they take after. What kinds of things she was going to do with the baby on his last few visits. Our parent aide has agreed to record her playing with the baby and sending me the videos so I can hold on to them for my children.

That hour they ran behind? Bio dad’s guardian ad litem and the court worked some things out and the GAL consented on bio dad’s behalf. I was surprised, too, when bio dad’s sister told me they were happy with how things were working out. She hugged me after court was done. I couldn’t believe we had the support from both sides of the family.

In the end, I couldn’t comprehend – I still can’t – the enormity of her loss. To gain my son, another mother LOST hers. But going through this journey with her for almost two years, the Lord has provided many opportunities for me to understand, to a small degree, the heart crushing cost to one mother so another could raise the child they both loved.

I wanted something special for this last visit. I used his footprints for this card and  included the actual footprints with it so she has those too.

It’s so incredibly inadequate, but it’s all I have.