Scrapbooking: Baby's First Year

I was thrilled when my sister had her first baby.  I was already an Aunt from my husband's side of the family but somehow I knew this birth would be different.  I suppose that is to be expected when you consider the bond my sister and I have had since she was born.  When the woman I grew up with, laughed with, fought with, shared a room with, double dated with and shared Maid-of-Honor duties with... when my first friend had a little boy, I became an Auntie.


Considering how much I adore this little man and that I'm kinda crafty, it seemed appropriate for me to embark on a few little projects for him.  My first was a patchwork quilt inspired by the quilts my grandmother made for us when we were kids.  I use the quilt she made for me until this day.  You can see my finished quilt for Little A in this post, My First Quilt.  The second project I made for him was a scrapbook documenting some fun moments from his first year of life.  For the mothers out there... this could easily be adapted into a baby book with a few modifications.

One of the hardest parts of this project was determining how to structure it.  I had an endless supply of great pictures to chose from which made the selection process maddening at times.  After a lot of trial and error, I decided to start with a few pages of his birth and then organize the remaining photos by month to capture the full year leading up to his first birthday.  Limiting myself to a full spread (two scrapbook pages) per month forced me to narrow down the photos and still allow everything to fit in one book.  Believe me, I easily could have made several books!

Here is one of my favorite spreads from the yearbook... it's no coincidence that my sister's baby shower theme was "sweet little pumpkin".  He wasn't even born yet and I was already making big plans to take him to the pumpkin patch!  I finally got my wish.  :)

As the finale to the yearbook, the last page was from his 1st birthday.  It worked out well because his real birthday was a few days before his party.  It gave me a great opportunity to take photos from the day he turned one, crop them and give the completed yearbook to him in time for his first party.

I think he had a good time, don't you?  I hope this is something that he'll enjoy looking at for years to come.