photo book dilemma

When I was 11-ish, I went to a creative memories get-together with my mom at her friend's house.
I had never really even heard of scrapbooking.
Wait a minute... I could cut up pictures with crazy zig zag scissors, glue them on the page and add stickers!?!
An 11 year old girl's dream activity.

Well, I went to town and made my own baby album, all the way up through 5th grade, and kept adding to it through middle school. If it wasn't packed away in a storage room (with all the rest of our earthly possessions... mad props to my in-laws for letting us store it ALL at their house, including a piano), I'd take pictures of it so you could see the pleathora of uneven oval shaped pictures cut with zig zag and wavy scissors.

Off I went to high school - the braces went on, the awkwardness increased, and it turns out one of my new BFFs loves scrapbooking too.  So my dad let us create a space in the basement for it with a huge old table and we scrapbooked our high school years away.  Pages and pages of showchoir competitions, sleepovers, and musicals.

College - yeah. These years are not really documented in photo albums. I don't know why. Never got around to it.

So, here we are. 3 years into marriage. 6 months into motherhood.
NONE of our married life is any kind of album, except a facebook album.  If we are facebook friends, you know I am not shy about my family pictures.
My mom threw a baby shower for me and people made scrapbook pages for a baby album, which I got to pick out.  I loved that this one wasn't a traditional 'baby girl' album.

Source

I've started working on this because I have approximately 2,368 pictures of sweet Adelyn Joy's first few months of life (that is no joke), and I think it'd be fun to give her a good ol' baby album some day.  Plus, it's fun to make.

But, this type of scrapbooking is no longer sustainable for me anymore.

Annnnnnnd it only took me 6 paragraphs to get to the dilemma. Here we are. I could use your input.

I do LOVE pictures. I love taking them and looking at them. Reminiscing through them.  And I love the opportunity to journal, record, remember.  So, what makes the most sense for this season of life?  (Stay-at-home-mom-possibly-moving-a-lot-young-baby(maybe more babies in the future)-trying-to-make-some-money-on-the-side-etc... season)

Project Life?
I bought a kit to do 'project life' by Becky Higgins.  You can check out the gist of it here.  Basically, it's a binder with page protectors that are slotted for pictures.  And you can additionally purchase precut cards to journal on and label.
Pros: I love the photo-journaling aspect of this.  It was reasonably cheap compared to making an entire scrapbook album and the stuff to complete it takes up very little space. I can leave it out and update it regularly pretty easily. Real printed photos. call me old fashioned, but i love them.
Cons: the name is cheesy; the binder is huge. So as I fill up binder after binder, I am left with a ton of 12 x 12 binders to store somewhere.

 sample project life page

Mix Book
Pros: Small; easy to store; I have made a couple digital photo albums for people and I really like this too. Very customizable.  Or you can click and drag into a decent template; you can print multiple - easy grandparent gifts.  or blog give-aways. [you can win a free photo album of my kid!! haha jk] Theoretically, you could work on a project over a period of time and update it regularly as you take the pictures. I've only ever done them in a short amount of time when I'm coming up on a gift deadline.  It'd be easy to add fun phone pictures, like from instagram.
 Cons: I've only used shutterfly and I haven't loved the quality. Real printed photos are way better. But, a friend of mine uses mixbook and those turn out great.  I haven't done the math. I wonder if it's quite a bit more expensive if you want to do a lot of pages and print good quality ones.

I'm loving THIS 'summer' theme from mixbook. (They won't let me copy a picture) :(

Nothing
I could blog instead.
Or record my kid(s)' memories "Dear Sophie" style...
Have you seen this?
(get out the kleenex box.)

So, what do you think?
Any other moms have something easy, efficient, fun and creative that I missed?
What's your preference and why?

Thanks for your input!!!

6 months

Our sweet Adelyn is 6 months now.

That means we've known her for half a year. It kinda feels like I've known her forever. And at the same time, like as was just born yesterday. I'm guessing I'll feel like that for the rest of my life. 

6 months means... 

Swimming with friends.

Loving the exersaucer

Having fun with the baby in the mirror.

Sitting like a big girl in the cart.

Playing with toys. And sitting. 

Wrestling dad

Drinking Starbucks. 

       Peaceful sleeping 

Finding toes

thumb sucking

trying fro-yo. 

swinging. (more fun than fro-yo apparently.)

and... 

she still will fall asleep in my arms if she's really desperate.

i'm cherishing all of it.

Mercy

I once heard mercy and grace distinguished from one another like this:
Mercy is not giving someone what they deserve.
Grace is giving someone something they don't deserve.

So often, when we're talking about God, they go hand in hand.  Because he is always giving us something wonderful we don't deserve INSTEAD of what we do deserve. Think Romans 6:23 "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of god is eternal life in Chris Jesus our Lord."

So i was going about my business doing a little morning bible study the other day when I came across what might be the first recorded act of grace in the bible.  I'm in Genesis 3, reading about the fall. And right after God gets through with the curse of their fall (the consequence of their sin, if you will) if says, "and the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them."
BAM! Grace. Geez Louise. They deserved anything but a gift. The had just crossed the ONE boundary. They had been dealt the consequence of their sin, and yet... "He clothed them."
Oh, but it gets better.
Next verse.
"Then, The Lord God said, "Behold the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever--" therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden..."
Mercy.

God had warned them not to eat of that trees (the one that gave the knowledge of good and evil); and once they disobeyed it, rather than say, well you get what you deserve. You'll probably eat of that other one and live forever. That'll be a miserable existence. No. God moved them.
Mercy.
And grace.

By chapter 3 of the Bible, we already see so much of who God is. He is just, and yet merciful and gracious.
Sometimes- those times when I let my mind clear and slow down and open up my heart- He reveals to me a bit of who He truly is. Sometimes it's something I knew, but revealed in a new way or with a new understanding. And sometimes, it's totally new. Something I never realized.
Because our God is huge.
His thoughts and ways are higher than my finite brain.
And yet, he reveals himself to me that I might grow in my relationship with him.
Grace.

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Please follow...

Someone recently asked me questions about "following" a blog, as opposed to just reading it. Also, I've had many friends and family tell me, "I just love reading your blog."  So, that has led me to believe, many people don't know how (or choose not to) "follow" the blog; instead, they just enter the address or click from Facebook or keep it bookmarked.  If that is you, and you read regularly, can I ask you to please consider "following?"

Here's why... 

1- I'd like to know who's reading. 

2- I'd like to "up" the readership so I can consider joining a blogging network.
3 - it's easier to comment on the blog if you 'follow'  & commenting creates dialogue & i'm an extrovert therefore i love dialogue :) 

Not sold? Email me or comment below and I can answer questions.  

Sold on "following?" Or at least willing to help a sista out? :) There are many types of blog readers for "following" blogs. The advantage for you (if you don't already use one) is that a 'reader' puts all the websites you like to read in one place and shows you the updates/ new posts so that you don't have to have a million sites bookmarked across the top of your browser.  Another advantage is you don't have to keep checking to see if people updated the sites you like to read. You can just open your reader, see what's new for the day, read, and close.  

UPDATE - I changed the directions. 
way easier now.
thank goodness.

you can either...
follow by email
         or
go to 'blogger' on google and join
         or
click FOLLOW ON BLOGLOVIN, which is a separate reader I just joined.

each one will walk you through the step-by-step; comment or email with questions.

thanks for 'following!'
:)

Grateful

I don't know about you but once in a while, it occurs to me that God is protecting me (and my family) from things I don't even know about- a car accident, a health tragedy, a bad boss, etc...  But then, every so often, I get a glimpse of what that thing really is in all it's danger.  Let's use the car accident example.  You're driving a long, going about your business as you approach a green light when suddenly you decide to look left, and as you do, you slam on the brakes because somebody else is running their red light, and had you not looked left, they would have slammed into your driver's side door.  Or, I'll use a personal example. When I was in high school, we were in a car accident.  The kid I was driving with was tired, and the garbage truck was going too fast.  We pulled out right in front of a garbage truck going over 40 mph, only to be spun several times, the car totaled. All the windows shattered. The driver's side of the tiny compact sedan practically crunched up to the passenger's side.  My friend, my brother, and I climbed out. Unharmed. Brian might have needed a bandaid, but I don't remember. If you had looked at the car, you would have thought every passenger was dead.  (In fact, there were some rumors going around at school that we were dead, but that's besides the point.)

It was a miracle.

My parents covered our lives in prayer. And God heard, and protected us, just as His Word promises. 

But, most days, we go through life unaware of what God is protecting us from. And that's a good thing.  However, once in a while, for whatever reason, you get to actually glimpse what He's protecting you from.  And, when you do glimpse it- that miraculous protection- as I did recently (in an event I'd rather not detail on the World Wide Web), it just leaves you, well... I can only speak for myself.

It left me grateful, humbled, and in prayer once again. 

On my knees before my Lord- thanking & praising Him for how he watches over my life and my family. 

It reminds me of that song... 

Hallelujah what a Savior, 

I owe everything to Him.

Hallelujah what a Savior, 

Hallelujah to my King.