Easy Canvas Prints Review and GIVEAWAY!!

(disclosure: I received this product in exchange for highlighting this business. all opinions are my own)

I'm so excited to have a new sponsor to the blog and to be reviewing an awesome photo canvas for you all today. I'm also excited to be giving one away here!

Easy Canvas Prints was such a great company to work with. It was quick and EASY to upload my photo and design my canvas the way I wanted it. (The hardest part was picking the picture I wanted to use, Ha!) You are able to see exactly how it will look on your canvas before you place your order.

I got my canvas in the mail about a week earlier than they originally said I would, which is always a nice surprise! Another pleasant surprise was the quality and sturdiness of the canvas. They offer sizes 8x8 all the way up to 30x40, with many sizes in between.

  This was my very first canvas and I have to say, I will definitely be making more with Easy Canvas Prints!

Easy Canvas Prints has offered to let me give away a free 8x10 canvas here on my blog. You can enter the giveaway below using the Rafflecopter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Running From the Law: July Photo Challenge

One of my favorite bloggers and fellow St. Louisan, Sara, has a photo contest going on this week with the theme: Water. She shared a great post a couple weeks ago about getting your camera off of auto and shooting in manual mode. I've been playing around with manual this summer and have loved the results! You should definitely check out her post here.

I haven't had a chance the last couple of days to take a "contest worthy" photo of Jackson in the water, so I thought I'd use one of my favorites from earlier in the month.

You may remember this photo from an earlier post. We were at our church picnic and he absolutely loved going down the giant slip n slide!

(f/4, 50mm, 1/800, ISO 200) (Edited using PicMonkey and PSE Free Action "Sunny Days" by Paint the Moon)

Project Life 2013: Week 29

My page for week 29.

For this page I used the As Big As The Sky Mini Kit Freebie from Meghan Mullens.

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***I also want to let you all know I will have a very cool review and giveaway on the blog tomorrow! You won't want to miss it!!!

A Back to School Photo Session

Yesterday, my sister and I put together a fun little photo session with her oldest son Landon. I got the idea last week that a "back to school" session would be so much fun. My sister called around to different thrift stores to try and find an old, vintage desk and she ended up finding one for only $14.99 with an additional 30% off. Score!

She brought along some of his school books and his back pack and we used a chalkboard to write his name and the grade he's going into. (Gosh, I can't believe he's going into 1st grade already.) I think the photos turned out so cute!!

This was my favorite of the session. I just love it. He looks so grown up though. :-( 

Linking up here:

here:

Hosted by Cecily and Lolli   and here:

 

Five of Friday

Happy Friday!!

1.) This past Monday morning, I took Jackson to our local pool and we had so much fun together! How cute is he in that hat? I can't believe he left it on the whole time we were there!

2.) I'm loving some of the free photoshop elements actions I downloaded yesterday! You can check them out here, here, here and here. And some of my favorites that I've been using for a while are here and here.

3.) I'm super excited that I get to go to the Muny this weekend and see Mary Poppins! I just love Mary Poppins!

4.) I'm thinking that when it comes time for Jackson to move into a big boy bed and we update his room, I may do something like this for his bed and have a vintage truck theme. I'm really loving almost anything vintage right now and since he's so into trucks, its a win for both of us. :)

Bedding found here.


5.) This is such a cute idea for a beach vacation keepsake. I'm thinking I'll have to try and make one of these from our Gulf Shores trip next month. :-)

 found here.


Happy Friday Everyone!!!

Throw-back Thursday - Beautiful Bonnets

Welcome back to another week of Throw-back Thursday! 

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 I shared this story on my blog several years ago when it was primarily a scrapbooking blog. You can check it out here, but I thought I'd share it again for new readers and because I love it so much.

A few years back, as my sister and I were making a scrapbook for my Mom's 50th birthday, I ran across a picture of her from her first Easter. When I saw it, I thought how much it looked like a picture of me from my first Easter. So I pulled them both out and did a side by side comparison and couldn't believe how cool it was that we were dressed so similar. 

Our outfits are not the same, but oh so similar. It wasn't on purpose either that we were dressed so similarly. Just a coincidence. I love that I have these pictures!

Now its your turn. I can't wait to read your Throw-back Thursday posts!

Honk Yelled the Dump Truck...

That line and page are Jackson's favorite from the book "Little Blue Truck". He smiles everytime I read that line to him. I always say it in a deep, big voice and he just loves it. :-)

I know I've mentioned this before, but Jackson is absolutely obsessed with trucks right now. He just loves seeing them as we drive around town, as they pass our house, he loves seeing them on t.v. and he loves playing with them.

 I've been building his collection of Hot Wheel cars/trucks lately and while I was in the toy section at Target, on my lunch hour Friday afternoon, I spotted this cute little dump truck that I knew Jackson would love. It was only $1.99, so I picked one up for him.

Jake mowed the grass Friday evening, so we went outside with him and Jackson brought the dump truck outside to play with. 

Later that evening, he brought it to the dinner table while he ate dinner and then he also played with it in the bathtub that night. :-) I'd say it was a hit! 

I'm linking up here:

here:

 

and here:

 

Project Life 2013: Week 28

My page for week 28.

For this layout, I used the Summertime Fun Mini Kit Freebie from LuvEwe Designs.

Bird Watching Fun!

My mom has several bird feeders in her back yard, all of which attract several different kinds of birds. We love sitting on my parents' deck and watching the birds come to the feeders to eat. This past Sunday, I happened to have my camera over at their house, so as the boys were playing in the back yard, I decided to try and get a few pictures of some birds at her feeders.

The boys enjoy watching the birds as well. ♥

We think this may be a woodpecker of some sort.

A cute little hummingbird.

A handsome male Cardinal, or as my nephew Landon calls them "Fred Bird".  (St. Louis Cardinals Fans!)

Anyone else love bird watching?

Five on Friday!

Yay for it being Friday and for another 5 on Friday Link-Up with the lovely ladies above!!

1.) I've been thinking about what theme to have for Jackson's 2nd birthday party in October. I had been thinking cars/trucks because he loves them so much these days and then yesterday I thought of the perfect party theme... a "Little Blue Truck" party! It's Jackson's favorite book and I thought it would make such a cute party theme. So I went to Pinterest (of course) to see what I could find and found a few super cute ideas.

Ideas found here, here, and here.


2.) Yesterday, my Mom and sister brought the three boys down to the City Garden (just a couple blocks over from the building that I work in downtown) to play in the sprinklers. The boys had a blast and I enjoyed seeing them in the middle of my work-day! :-)

3.) We're only 2 weeks away from our Gulf Shores Vacation and we're starting to really get excited! I can't wait to take our first family vacation with Jackson. Its going to be so much fun!

photo via


4.) How adorable is this cute little kitchen that I found on Pinterest?? I can't find a website for it, but I just love it and I know Jackson would too.

5.) I'm so happy its Friday and I'm also happy I have a 3 day weekend coming up... enough said. :-)

Enjoy your weekend!!

Throw-back Thursday: A Year in Review {2011}

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As I've said in previous posts, before I got pregnant with Jackson, I used to scrapbook all the time. This blog actually started out as a scrapbooking blog. Then once I got pregnant and then had Jackson, my time for scrapbooking diminished greatly. 

I've started Project Life for 2012 and 2013, but didn't scrapbook anything for 2011, other than the pregnancy album I made through shutterfly.com. So when I saw Rebecca's (Simple as That Blog) Monthly Memories pages, I really wanted to try making monthly pages to have something to look back on for 2011. I thought this would be an easy and quick way to get my 2011 pictures organized and in an album of some sort.

So I spent some time this week going through my pictures for 2011 and making monthly pages using Rebecca's monthly pages as a guideline. I used picmonkey to make my pages using their collage templates. I tweaked a template to fit the amount of pictures I wanted on a page. I'm not sure if I'll print these out, (Rebecca uses Costco to print hers and then puts them into a 12x12 binder) or have them printed in a book using mixbook.com or shutterfly.com.

I would really recommend this method for anyone that wants a nice, easy and quick way to organize a years worth of pictures into an album you can look back on one day.

Here are all 12 of my pages for 2011. It was so fun making them and going through all my 2011 photos. :-)

Now it's your turn. Link up your Throw-back Thursday posts below.