21 weeks: fun ramblings from Ashley

With feeling quite a bit better than I have in recent months - I have started taking more random pictures & getting caught up on that to-do list that was growing by the day! Just wanted to share what's been going on with the McFarland's lately...

 I FINALLY got caught up on Project Life - it's one of those things that's easy to let slip away from you because I don't print my pictures at home - I print them when I feel like it / when I have enough to get a walgreens or snapfish or shutterfly deal - so it's pretty random in my brain! Here are a couple of layouts from the past few months that I did - it felt great to be caught up and spend some time getting creative with all my different page layout designs. One of the most time-consuming parts of the project is that I want to round all the corners of the pictures - it makes it look a lot nicer and then they match the journaling cards but I hand do it - so it takes a bit of time!

 Here is a layout from our Florida trip - using the Design A pages as well as the 12x6 which I absolutely love - it allows me to scrapbook just half a page but keep a lot of those "little things" I collect along the way (post cards, match books etc.) - I'm not taking a picture a day this year and I am SO glad I made that decision - some days I take 5 pictures, some days I take 0 - I like that - I don't need to be so crazy about getting a picture a day - the funny thing is, I LOVE looking back on both of my 365 projects but actually getting to the end results wears on me after awhile...so I enjoy just being able to scrapbook and tell my story along the way - I'm sure when the baby gets here I'll have hundreds of pictures on some days - and that's ok, I just don't want to feel like I missed out if I missed a day!

I print a lot of pictures but sometimes I don't want to use them all for something and I'd just like a nice place to store them and keep them neat/organized - I went to Hobby Lobby on my way home last week and found a white box for $2.99 on 40% off...then I realized, I couldn't see what the pictures were on the inside and I really didn't have a good way of organizing them...THEN I came across this awesome box that is plastic and has plastic boxes on the inside (I think it holds 6 boxes that hold 100 pictures each) - and I can see through them! Granted, it was a bit more - $16.99 I believe but now I can organize the baby pictures and know where they all are!) - you can just get the boxes on the inside for $2.49 I think or something like that...but I liked that I had TONS of space to store pictures as we do showers/the baby makes his appearance!

This week I finally got to meet Lynn for dinner on Monday evening after work - and she gave us the cutest little newborn set of clothes - I think we will take these to the hospital because they're so cute! I couldn't believe how small the clothes were - it makes me even more excited to meet baby McFarland and dress him up in cute clothes! It was great to catch up with Lynn and she was so sweet to think of the baby before he's even here!

Here are the 2 dressers that we want to do for the room - one is a 5 drawer dresser that's a bit taller -and the other is a 6 drawer dresser that we'll put his changing pad on. I love the little feet at the bottom of this set and we both love the color.

Here is the bedding we registered for - "Jungle Tales" it's called from buy buy Baby - it is ADORABLE - and it's very cute for the room. We're going to leave the room the green that it is and maybe put a few extra things on the wall to spice it up!

Here's the bed we agreed on (but it will match the color of the dressers in the pictures above) - Nancy, my mother-in-law and Junior, my father-in-law wanted to buy the crib for the baby so they are taking care of that...so nice of them!

When we went to buy buy Baby again on Wednesday (my normal day off) - we stopped by my friend Courtney's house and she gave us so much stuff too that we took to mom & dad's - she was so generous with it - and mom & dad were thrilled to have some stuff to keep at their place! On the way home Richard asked what I wanted for lunch and for some reason - I wanted a Richard's steak sandwich - it was more delicious than I even remember and it was just what I needed! My stomach felt ok, so the baby must've been ok with it too! HA!

And they always say when you have a baby it's going to take over your house - WELL...I think it already is - everyone has been so generous with gifts/stuff to give the baby...it's unreal - this is our "baby stash" that we have so far that's just sitting in the basement waiting for his room to be cleaned out so we can move some stuff in! The Gap outlet has really cute hangers (wooden for 10 cents) - that Richard really wants to get to hang the clothes in the closet - so we might have to go back and get a few of those! All in all, we're just preparing for the best day of our lives when he decides to make an appearance.

So that's just a bit of what's been going on around our place / what we've been up to - I am loving my new job, it makes me so happy that they are so flexible, that I only work 30 hours per week and I can focus on relaxing/feeling ok during this pregnancy. 31 is going well too - I haven't had as many parties as normal just because I wasn't feeling well but hopefully things will pick back up now that I'm feeling better!

Hope everyone is having a great week!