What A Wonderful World

Ever since I can remember, my mom's favorite song was "What A Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong.  She danced with my brother to it at his wedding, and it has always had a special meaning for her and our family.  When Dan and I found out we were pregnant, it was bittersweet because I wasn't able to share it with Mom like I wanted to.  It would be something that would follow me throughout my entire pregnancy and something that I would just have to learn to deal with.  

One day after we first found out, though, we were at Barnes and Noble just puttering around.  We passed by a table of random kid's books where I saw this one:

I knew right away we were going to buy it and display it somewhere in the nursery.  To me, it was a sign that Mom was still part of this pregnancy.  

Over the summer, I ransacked my parent's house looking for things to add to the nursery and found a big tub of Clifford the Big Red Dog books.  As a nursery school teacher, my mom treasured these books.  I knew I wanted to pass them along to our daughter, so I took them home and stored them in the nursery for the time being.  

One day, when it was finally time to put everything in its place, I started to go through the Clifford books.  As I was going through them, a single piece of paper fell out of one of them.

In purple (the signature color for Alzheimer's disease), it said "What A Wonderful World".  It was my mom's handwriting.  Also on the paper were the names of two men.  I looked at the book we bought earlier, and it was the men who wrote the song.  Things had come full circle 

I eventually found a small frame for her note and placed it alongside the book on her shelf.  Now Baby Girl Cohen will know that even though her Grandma can't talk to her or hold her, she will always be watching out for her.  It really is a wonderful world.

Be well,

Baby Shower Mini Scrapbook

I'm back with another mini scrapbook, this time from my baby shower we had a few weeks ago. While it's really sad that my mom can't enjoy this pregnancy with me, I am so lucky to have the greatest friends and family who stepped in to plan a great afternoon.  My bestest since 6th grade and my two sister-in-laws really took the lead, and I could not be more grateful.  

I had no information about the shower other than the date.  I didn't know where it was, the theme, etc., but I knew my girls would take care of everything.  And of course, they didn't disappoint.  It was great to see so many people come out to support Baby Girl Cohen and Dan and I enjoyed a perfect afternoon.

After the shower, once we lugged everything home and I started to organize (nesting is a real thing folks!), I knew the next natural step was to make a mini scrapbook to corral all the cards and special mementos from the day.  The nursery is pink and gray, so that was the theme of my shower.  For the cover, I started with a copy of the invite, added some pink and gray paper as well as a flower and brad from the favors.

I kept a bunch of stuff from the day and had some of my favorite pics printed from Snapfish.  Some of the things I like to save from things like this are gift tags, favors (to take apart and use different pieces), and ribbons. 

The hardest part was just deciding where everything was going and how many pages I was going to do.  To add some accents, I pulled out my sticker binder and took out some baby/girly stickers I already had.  It all came together pretty easily.

 

 

 

To finish off, I just hole-punched all of the pages and the cards and strung them all together with ribbons from some of the gifts.  All in all, this book took me a couple of hours and most was just trimming everything and figuring out what to put where.  

Be well,