Layout 3: The Owl and the Pussycat Tea Party

I first saw the Owl and the Pussycat cookies at a Starbucks during our visit to the US last summer.  My mom had her eye on them, so I bought a box and we had them at a special tea party

It was a great excuse to break out the special Wind in the Willows plates, too.  And, since I just got a new camera, it was fun to pull out all the Owl and the Pussycat things to take a picture (or two or ten):

The little Golden Book that is propped open is what started my love of the Owl and the Pussycat.  It was one of a few special books my mom gave me when I had the chicken pox back in 1984 and I remember looking through the book and falling in love with the illustrations. 

Anyway, it was a nice tea party we had together back in June.

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon the Owl and the Pussycat cookies in my neighborhood Waitrose!  And, for just £1.99, which seemed like such a bargain compared to the $5.00 price tag they had at Starbucks.  I promptly bought three boxes, sent one to my mom in a back-to-school box, and kept the other two in the back of my cupboard squirrelling them away so we could have a tea party when she came to visit at Christmas.  I was just sure that Waitrose was going to sell out of the special cookies (of course, they did not).

Then, one day while I was searching eBay for cute Owl and the Pussycat things (like onesies and pajamas, both of which I scored for Simon), I stumbled upon a set of Royal Daulton plates (just like the Wind in the Willows ones my mom has) and so, on a whim, I bid on them.  It was a ridiculously low bid for the set of four and I never thought I’d actually win.  I did.

The plates and the cookies sealed the deal: we were going to have an Owl and the Pussycat tea party when my mom visited at Christmas.  I was going to dress Simon in his Owl and the Pussycat pajamas, we’d eat the special cookies off the special plates, and I might even christen my cupcake maker and make owl cupcakes (that has yet to happen).

I had no idea that my mom was going to gift Simon with some wonderful Owl and the Pussycat things: a beautiful quilt, a double handled baby mug, a pea green boat, and two wonderful copies of the book.  Those gifts served as the decorations for our tea party and on December 29, 2010, we enjoyed those sweet cookies on the sweet plates…along with some other sweet treats. 

I chose to scrap the pictures from that tea party for this next challenge.  The mission was to create a layout with a border between two photos.  We could use as many photos and as many borders as we wanted, but the border had to go between the photos – not off to the side or above or below.  This time I just tried to come up with something on my own and not try to completely copy Shimelle’s example.  Here’s the end result:

I wanted to use all four photos, so I came up with this layout -a grid of sorts, with four pictures and four combinations of borders.  My favorite border, of course, is the sparkly, glittery TEA PARTY against the sparkly, glittery blue snowflake paper:

I used a stocking embellishment that says TREATS which I tied in with a glittery sticker on a plate full of treats:

Aren’t the pastel Owl and Pussycat plates the perfect dish for this tea party?  And those sweet little teapot lemon cookies added a nice touch, I think.  The border between the plate of goodies and the silver plate of the star of the party (macarons) was a simple pale blue ribbon and gingerbread house embellishment:

The final border on the page is the journaling space – a stamp from the 7 Gypsies set I just discovered I had:

I’m so happy to have these photos scrapped so I can look back and remember the great tea party I shared with my mom.

 

Numbered Days

Simon has never slept particularly great – not since he woke up from his post-birth-and-initial-nursing 14 hour coma at around 9 pm the day he was born.  CK and I think back to those first hours and chuckle to ourselves.  He remembers thinking on that most blissful of days how shockingly easy having a newborn was going to be!  We marveled at how sweet his little coo was while he slept, we took pictures, we took video, and then we sat on the edge of my hospital bed peering into his little cot just waiting for him to stir.  And he never did.  He just kept sleeping, and cooing.

But once he woke up from that 14 hour first nap of his, we’ve been absolutely amazed ever since by how little he’ll sleep or how long he can stay awake or how he just needs one of us to hold him, wear him, or lay down with and cuddle him in order for him to go to sleep.  I think we’ve stopped trying to figure out how to fix Simon’s sleeping and we’ve accepted that he’s a bit of a sparkler – that is, he’s a bit difficult when it comes to sleep (and a few other things, too). 

We had a few deceptively amazing moments back in February when we were sure he turned the corner and began “sleeping through the night.”  For a two week stretch, Simon was going 5-7 hours every night before waking.  I remember once waking CK up and saying, “Look, he went 7 hours!”  Maybe he was just sleeping through a growth spurt or something, because no corner was actually turned, it was just a fluke.

And so we press on with our little sparkling Simon and many of my mornings are spent under the weight of this growing boy

His deepest, soundest, longest sleep happens when he’s nestled in the Sleepy Wrap or lain across my chest.  Sometimes I think of all the scrapbook pages I could be making or things I could be doing and I just wish Simon was the baby who could be put down awake and moments later be soundly asleep for a nap or at the very least transfer easily from arms to bed (that practically never happens; once we attempt a move, game over!).  But then I hear his heavy breathing or I feel the wet puddle collecting on my bare skin from his sleepy drool and I realize that these days are so, so numbered.  I don’t care about good intentioned warnings that we’re creating bad habits (we don’t believe it’s possible to “spoil” a baby nor do we believe in letting Simon “cry it out”).  The scrapbook pages can wait and the laundry, dishes, and dinner certainly can wait while I help my boy sleep a bit more soundly.  We spent money on the cutest IKEA crib bedding that goes with the curtains and the bright walls of our bedroom and I wonder if we’ll ever use it because Simon is happy as a clam sleeping in bed with us.  Sometimes I wish he was the baby who’d go down for the night in his own bed and stay down for 12 hours, but it seems that as soon as CK and I tip-toe out of the bedroom and try to avoid the creaky floor boards just outside of the bedroom, I look over at CK and say, “I miss him already.”  I snuggle up next to Simon in bed each night and while I am tired a lot of the time, I’m grateful all of the time that I get to lay next to my baby because I know the days are numbered.

I’m going to try to remember in the middle of a bad night like we had yesterday.  I’m going to try to remember in the middle of a bad day when I look at the clock and find out it’s only 1:00 and CK won’t be home for hours still!  I probably won’t do a very good job of remembering in the midst of it, but it’s there.