Making a custom board book was super easy. You literally pick a plain and simple layout and upload the pictures that you want for each left and right page spread, and add text if you want. Our board book was composed of 16 pictures; 2 of those included the front and back cover image, so there were 14 interior pictures. I used a picture of Liam for the front cover, and a cute photo of him over Lucas’ shoulder for “The end.” The pages include mama and daddy, all of his grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and a few (but not all!) of our closest friends that we consider family and refer to as “aunt” or “uncle” with Liam… like the best man and maid of honor at our wedding. I like that he will be able to learn all of the faces of the people he sees the most and who love him in a special book made just for him. Right now he is completely enamored with books and obsessed with faces. What a perfect gift for him, right?

When I placed the order I honestly expected it to take at least three weeks for the custom printing and shipment. To my happy and unexpected surprise, I ordered the book on January 28 and received it on February 3. No kidding. The pages are thick with a coating that makes them very durable against baby drool; the printed images don’t flake off at the corners when they get wet from constant chewing, unlike several board books that Liam has. I think some of the pictures printed a little darker than I thought they would, but they’re clear and decent quality. I admit that only about half of the photos I used were at their full, original resolution; some I was unable to find originals of so they were uploaded at 800 x 600 pixels, but they looked just as good when printed as the pages that were uploaded at their original resolution. Overall I was really pleased with the quality of our book. Liam LOVES it.

I also have to point out that Pint Size Productions sells a lot of exclusive Sandra Boynton stuff. We have quite a few of her books, and they’re a lot of fun to read aloud because they’re full of silliness, something we’re never short of in the Karpiuk household.

Seriously, a truly personalized board book is a fabulous gift idea. I’m thinking of doing something similar to the pictures-of-family-members idea for my nephew’s next birthday, and I’ve already got ideas for other books I could make for Liam. I’m in love! Here are all of the pages of Liam’s Family. And if you’re not in the book, don’t worry, we already have a part 2 planned. It was hard getting everyone in just 14 pages!

2012 is here, and we’re wasting no time jumping right in and embracing change and new events in the household.

This week we’re all adjusting to a new daily routine now that Liam has started daycare. It was hard letting go and having him stay with people we didn’t know for the first time, but we got through it somehow. His teachers are all very kind and caring, so that helped. They also seem pretty tolerant of all of my questions, which I appreciate. I think they must be used to dealing with new parents leaving their kids for the first time, eh?

Before the week started, I was thinking that Liam switching to daycare wouldn’t be any different from my perspective than when he was at home with Lucas; I wouldn’t see him any less, right? But so much time is spent in the car or getting ready to go, and by the time I get over to pick him up and get him all ready to go and we drive home, it’s at least an hour before I really get a chance to sit down and interact with him when we’re not trying to go somewhere. And by the time we get home some nights and get through dinner, Liam is ready for bed already and I feel like I’ve barely seen him all day. It’s been hard on me. This week he’s been ready for bed so much earlier since he’s getting up earlier, not to mention that daycare wipes him out. I hope this is just a brief adjustment period and that once we all get into the groove, it’ll be better. We’re just not quite there yet, so it’s been a bit of an emotional week.

However, getting home and the three of us spending time together, even for a short amount of time before Liam goes to bed, is the best part of my day. I’m finding ways to make the most of every second I have with my boys.

Speaking of, we’ve spent this first weekend of 2012 doing all kinds of things together! The boys put the barbecue together yesterday, and we grilled steaks and asparagus for dinner last night, which was delicious. I finished a bunch of soap orders now that the store has re-opened, and I even found time to make homemade candles to give Liam’s daycare teachers as a thank you gift for helping us get through his first week successfully. We finally took the Christmas tree down, and I made homemade ice cream using our new Kitchen Aid ice cream maker attachment. Throughout the weekend we’ve enjoyed lots of snuggle time together and read books; I love how much interest Liam is showing towards books. Especially ones that squeak or that have different textures on the pages, like That’s Not My Dinosaur. (His current favorite.)

And speaking of dinosaurs, I’m finally getting around to putting art back up on our walls, including all of the dinosaur art in Liam’s room. Our original plan when we moved back in October was to get the walls painted right away, so I held off on hanging anything. Now that we’ve decided to wait until the spring to paint, I figured I could start putting things up. Not only am I tired of bare white walls that lack personality, I also realized that the holes I create when putting up art will still be visible after we paint anyway, so what was the point of waiting? I digress. With the Christmas tree gone and art on the walls, it’s beginning to feel even more like home.

What else this week? Liam is now up to three new foods – sweet potatoes, which he likes; bananas, which he loves (funny, right?); and green peas, which he doesn’t seem to really like. While he’ll gobble up two tablespoons (or more) of sweet potatoes and bananas easily, he makes faces the whole time we try to feed him peas. He’s barely eaten more than a teaspoon of peas on every occasion we’ve tried, and sometimes the icky face is accompanied by a whole body shudder, which is kind of (totally) hilarious. Next on our list will be either pears or apple.

Have I mentioned yet how much I absolutely love making our own baby food? (Sarcasm there for those that are tired of hearing me talk about it.) I think it has to do with the way that I associate cooking and baking for my family as being one way I show how much I love them. For example, this weekend I was craving more family time with my boys after a long and busy week. I was drawn to cooking up a big homemade breakfast, grilling steaks and asparagus for dinner, and making ice cream from scratch with them. FOR them. The idea of steaming fresh veggies and fruit and making baby food for Liam myself really makes me feel like I’m doing something good for him. I love it! (And I know the Baby Bullet is totally gimmicky, but seriously… I adore it so much, it has made making and storing all of Liam’s food fun and easy.)

Oh! And I almost forgot. We started a “Project 365″ photo project on January 1. The idea is that we take at least one photograph a day every day for a year. I’ve been posting the photos in our Project365 gallery every day so far, and over time these will create a visual timeline of our life in 2012. I really like the idea of journaling everyday life through photos to see how we all grow over the course of year. I’ve decided that keeping up with our Project365 is my 2012 New Year’s resolution, because it takes some work to post each day, not to mention remembering to photograph something each day. And some days it feels like there’s nothing exciting worth photographing, but I’m trying to use this project as an opportunity to try new things with our fancy DSLR camera, too.

With so much jam-packed excitement in only the first week of 2012, just imagine how much more we have in store to look forward to! Wishing you and your family all the best in 2012.

We’ve been living in our new home for a few weeks now; I’ve been back to work for a few weeks now. Things have settled down and we feel comfortable in our new surroundings and routine. We’re getting the hang of it. This morning Liam woke early, and Lucas brought him to bed with us to eat and enjoy some snuggle time. We all watched a replay of last night’s Flames game and played (Liam loves to “stand” and “fly” in the air these days, so he mostly played) all cozy under the blankets together. Lucas fell asleep, and Liam went down for a nap. I got up and decided I was in the mood for some homemade chicken soup, it being a lazy “sick” lay-around-the-house day, so I threw together something for the slow cooker that would simmer all day and make us feel good at dinnertime. I even put together some homemade bread to bake. The boys woke up as I was finishing in the kitchen, and we lounged around the living room together and played on the floor some more. As we were all giggling at each other on the floor for no reason at all, it hit me.

This is perfection. This is happiness. And this is my life.

I am incredibly lucky to have such a wonderful husband and our beautiful son. Snuggling together, smiling and laughing and eating something that’s cooked all day from scratch together (Well, Liam didn’t have soup and bread, but… you know) in our new home, without anything else to do but enjoy each other’s company all day… well, if that’s not perfection than I don’t know what else it could possibly be. Even with my cold still lingering, and even dealing with the heartbreak of seeing my four month old with his first runny nose… today was great. And I look forward to many more days like it.

So now as I reflect over the whirlwind of the past few months – having a baby, moving into our first home, going back to work, the wonderful visit with my in-laws from Canada, celebrating my nephew’s birthday with family and friends last week – I realize that this is just where I was meant to be. This is just how things were meant to be, and I truly am blessed to have such a great life and a great family. 2011 has been good to us, even with the setbacks (Lucas’ kidney issues in January, whew, glad that’s over!) and I am thankful for every minute of it.

You may have noticed that the “Dear Liam” posts have “disappeared” from the front page of our blog here, but they’re not gone – we’ve actually put together a whole Dear Liam section of our website where we are going to continue to compile letters to our son (Can you believe he’s four months old this week?! He’s getting so big!) as well as links to video clips and photos, and other snippets of memories all into one place for easy access, sorting and archiving as we build a digital memory book for him. We welcome letters from family and friends, too, so if you ever feel like writing Liam a letter to include in his book, send it to him in an email and we’ll post it to our archive over in the Dear Liam section. If you want to be a regular contributor to the Dear Liam posts, we can even set you up with an account on the blog so you can just login and post directly – just let us know if you’re interested. I know one day Liam is going to appreciate reading about these early memories and how his family and friends felt about all of his milestones and our everyday happenings that are a part of his life.

Oh, and Liam took time out of his busy schedule to show off his Halloween costume; for baby’s first Halloween he dressed as Yoda from Star Wars. As if you didn’t see that coming. Our little geekling… we’re so proud! Happy Halloween!

We got home from the hospital last night, and as you can imagine, we’re exhausted and trying to get settled in. Thank you for all of the emails, well wishes, calls, texts, tweets, Facebook messages, and voicemails! Though we have not had time to reply to everyone individually, (we were overwhelmed with your love and support!) do know that we have seen and read every single sentiment and appreciate all of them dearly. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. I know you’ll understand if it takes awhile for us to get back to you, get organized, and get photos and proper blog posts up. I plan to do a new blog category here on our family site called “Dear Liam” where I write letters to our son as we go through this experience; I have a post for the first 24 hours all planned in my head but no time or energy to get to it. Eventually! Just know all of your support has meant a lot to us.

We began a quick “Arrival!” Flickr gallery and hope to add more photos soon.

Thanks again! Welcome, Liam!

Excited because of course, we cannot wait to meet our Liam. I have been dreaming of a little boy that looks like his daddy ever since we found out the gender, and I simply cannot wait to hold our mini-Lucas and become a mama. We’re just so happy! This little person that has been growing (and growing) all these months will finally be here and our little family will grow with him, too.

The word terrified also comes to mind because of the unknown, though. We’re first time parents and suddenly the realization that this tiny little life will be 100% dependent on us and that we will be responsible for shaping him from day one is a little overwhelming, to say the least. Of course we want to do all the right things, be perfect parents, and give our son the very best to grow up healthy and happy, but we know we’re going to make mistakes, too; it’s a part of the learning process. We’ll learn and grow with Liam as he learns and grows. And hopefully we won’t mess up too much along the way.

I am confident that Lucas and I are going to be good parents. We’ve always had this amazing balance about us that I think will be the perfect combination to raise a well rounded, happy child. And while I know deep down that all Liam really needs is our love and support, (and for his parents to have basic common sense) it also feels like there’s a daunting list of little things we have to remember that will be all new to us. How to keep all of that important stuff straight mixed with the advice that everyone wants to share on how to raise our boy seems like a lot right now, though I’m sure in reality once Liam is here we’ll just go with the flow and cross those bridges when we come to them. Thankfully I couldn’t ask for a better husband and partner in this exhilirating endeavor. We can do it!

We’re just over FOUR WEEKS AWAY. Can you believe it? I’m grateful to have a nice long holiday weekend in front of me to get the nursery organized and prepare all of the baby goodies for use that we’ve received at baby showers. (Speaking of baby showers, I made dinosaur soap favors for my shower, and by request they’re available to the masses on GEEKSOAP now!) The school year is officially over as of today, but my teacher contract has an additional twenty days alotted in the summer for me to conduct professional development technology training for my district. If Liam can stay put, I’ll be on summer vacation and ready for his arrival as early as June 23… that’s a little less than a week before his due date. I hope I can make it until then! (Hear that, little one? No debut until *at least* the 23rd, ok?) No matter what happens, though, I feel like we’re ready.

And speaking of organizing the nursery this weekend, Operation Geekling Dinosaur Project has been a HUGE success. We are so overwhelmed with all of the generosity we’ve enountered over the past month as dinosaur art submissions have poured in from all over the world. We’ve enjoyed the accompanying letters (to us and to Liam) and the way our nursery has been transformed by this generosity. It’s all exactly as I pictured it in my dreams, but I never imagined we’d have such a great turnout to make this dream a true reality. Thank you so much to Katie the inspiration, all of our contributors, and Think Geek for promoting our geeky nursery project. You can see how it’s going over in the official Operation Geekling Dinosaur Project gallery; we have a handful of new pieces to add sometime this weekend, too, so stay tuned. (We’ve been clearing out the frames department of our local store, so we have to give them time to re-stock, lol.)

I want to give a quick shout out to the Center Grove class of 2011, who are graduating this evening. 30 members of this graduating class had me as their 4th grade teacher back in 2002-2003, which was my first year of teaching. It’s hard to believe those kiddos are all grown up and headed out in to the world now. (Not to mention it makes me feel old!) I’ll try to keep from getting too sappy, but as a teacher, the first year class holds a pretty special place in your heart. While *every* class I’ve ever taught is special, there’s something emotional about thinking of these kids in particular “leaving the nest.” I am really proud of them! That first year I had the class fill out time capsule worksheets that listed things like their favorite color, best friend, what they wanted to be when they grew up, etc. Sort of like a snapshot of all the things that were important to describing who they were right then and there in their lives. I saved those sheets all these years, (and they even moved with me to Canada and back!) and last week I mailed them back to their original authors along with a letter. I have received in return several emails, cards, and letters from the graduating class catching me up on how things have changed in their lives since 4th grade. It has been an overwhelmingly emotional, happy experience. I am so excited to hear how they’re doing and so proud to see where they’re going. I am not ashamed to admit there were a few tears when I read these return letters! Good luck and best wishes, class of 2011; “Miss Means” is proud of each and every one of you!

The next four weeks will hopefully be a blur as I tie up loose ends at work and we put some elbow grease into getting the house ready for baby. Who knows, maybe by the next post we’ll be a family of three instead of a family of two! Take care.

Last weekend we went out and bought the first round of frames for the artwork we’d received so far and began hanging it on the wall. Call me crazy, but we have around 8 weeks left and suddenly it seems SO CLOSE, and somehow, hanging dinosaur art on the nursery walls helped me to feel like we were being productive towards getting “ready” for baby.

I posted the updated photos online to a special Flickr gallery we’ve created for the project when I finished, and shared the project’s progress on Twitter. @ThinkGeek, who gave us a shout out on Twitter the first time the call for submissions went out, posted about our project for us again on Twitter this past week AND promoted the project on their Facebook page to encourage submissions, (thank you!) and suddenly a whole slew of new submissions came rolling in fast. So fast, we had to run out to get more frames just to keep up! Here is a quick look at the gallery; the photos go in order from the first inspirational piece by Katie Doyle that gave us the idea in the first place, to where we are today. The order tells a story of the things we’ve been sent and the stages of hanging to show the wall’s growth over time so you can see the project’s progress. As of today, we’re currently on “Stage 2″ of hanging art.

Are you feeling the warm and fuzzies like we are? I am so in love with the way the dino wall is turning out it gets me all teary-eyed. I can’t help but gaze at it when I’m in the room and reflect on just how many different people are involved and the level of kindness involved to make the wall a success.  It’s somewhat of a “mural”, but every piece is by a different person and no two pieces are the same, so the wall seems to have this personality all its own. It’s exactly what I pictured in my head when the idea came to me, which gets me all sappy; even more so as your stereotypical emotional pregnant woman. Truly, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We now have not a single piece of art by one person, but a large collection created by many that comes together as one cohesive and stunning piece of artwork that means so much to us. THANK YOU! Whether you mailed us something or emailed us a digital piece to print, every single submission has filled us with joy. Every piece has added its own personality to the wall, and we can’t wait to explain the making of the dino wall to our geekling as he grows up surrounded by its awesome.

I’ve been asked a few times about a “deadline” on this project. Baby Liam is due June 29, but truthfully there’s no real deadline; we’re always up for adding more to the nursery’s dino wall. (Find out how you can contribute, here!) As I mentioned in the original call for submissions post, I even picture myself one day sitting on the floor with Liam and a box of crayons or finger paints making dinosaurs to add to the wall ourselves. The best part is that the core of the project started with all of you, and will continue to build out from there over the years. We are so appreciative of everyone’s generosity; thank you for taking the time to add to our project! We’ll continue to update the official gallery as new rounds of artwork are submitted and added. Credit to the appropriate people, whether by name, Twitter handle, or link to their websites or Deviant Art sites will be in the description for each photo in the gallery, so please be sure to go and check them out! Digital art posted to our gallery with credited link to the artist’s site were posted there with permission. Those of you that submitted something to us via snail mail should have received (or will be soon receiving) a thank you card that I made, and a little sketch in thanks to reciprocate the love. If you’ve sent us something digitally, I will be emailing you back a digital version with a note in thanks as well. I really can’t thank you all enough, though!

Want to contribute? Check out the details here!

The Official Operation Geekling Dinosaur Project Gallery

In other somewhat-related news, Lucas and I are doing the March for Babies next weekend with my 8 month baby belly on May 7, 2011. It seems fitting that we’re doing a walk to raise money for babies with my baby belly on Mother’s Day weekend, no? It’s a 2 mile walk and I’m really looking forward to it; helping to raise healthy babies and support premature babies who need the right start hits close to home, and is such an important cause. Read all about our progress here! (And hey, if you’re in the area and want to join Team Karpiuk on May 7, please let us know!) Thanks for your support :)

Lots of love,
Lucas, Lesley, and Liam (the geekling) – aka @thekarpiuks on Twitter

Why Savannah? Well, in addition to it being a beautiful place that neither one of us had ever been to, and the ability to be on the coast, (more on that in a bit) Savannah is home to Lucas’ boss and the company that he works for. Going to Savannah meant that we got to spend some fun time with Brad and his wife Marie, who are a few weeks ahead of us on the pregnancy scene, AND take in the beautiful scenery. Traditionally we take a trip that involves staying in a bed and breakfast on the ocean for our wedding anniversary, but with baby Liam due just 9 days after our anniversary this year, we realized that spring break would be our last chance to take a little vacation alone so we decided to roll the oceanside bed and breakfast into the trip, too.

Savannah was beautiful. Breathtaking, even. We left after work on Thursday evening to start the approximately 12 hour drive and finished on Friday, getting into town on Friday evening. We took our time, and that became the theme of our week; taking our time. We relaxed, went at our own pace, and took the time to stop and take it all in. That’s HUGE for us.

One of the smartest things we did was go on a trolley tour of the city on our first day of exploration. This meant we got to see all of the important landmarks of Savannah’s historical district without having to navigate a map or do the driving ourselves. We went with the original Savannah trolley tour company, Old Town Trolley Tours. The neat thing about the tour was that our passes gave us all day on and off privileges between all of the 15 stops. So to start, we hopped on a trolley that took us to stop 1, and we had a graphical map that showed and listed what was at the stop. If you wanted to get off the trolley for awhile you could, and then when you were ready to pick back up with the tour you’d just hang out at the stop and another trolley would come along and pick you up in 5-10 minutes to go on to the next stop. So while you could stay on the trolley for all 15 stops start to finish and complete the tour in 90 minutes, the on and off privileges meant we got to spend more time at various places of interest that WE really wanted to check out further. The trolley drivers were incredibly nice and they did their own live narration as we drove, pointing things out or explaining the history behind a building we passed. Some were excellent storytellers and threw in humor, too. We picked up so many little tidbits about Savannah on the tour, and appreciated that each driver had their own style and truly seemed to be having fun, as opposed to tours with pre-recorded narrations. (I’m looking at you with the pre-recorded driving tour of Civil War battlefields on cassette from that road trip we took when I was in 6th grade, dad.)

One of our favorite things to do while in Savannah was hanging out in Forsyth Park. The weather was perfect, and Forsyth Park was a beautiful place to spread out on the grass in the shade of the trees and people watch or just relax. Lucas loved the 2 hours of free wi-fi available while in the park each day, and I took my Kindle and my knitting and worked on Liam’s baby blanket. We spent a lot of time lounging in the grass talking about the future or planning where we wanted to go for lunch or dinner. Lucas installed the Urban Spoon app on his phone and we created a joint urbanspoon.com account together, so he spent a fair amount of time finding us great places to eat. Check out our reviews to see where we ate and which places we enjoyed the most; the most memorable food for me was dinner at the 17 Hundred 90, Papillote, and beignets at Huey’s. (Though the rest of the food at Huey’s was average at best.)

After 4-5 days in Savannah, we spent the last couple days of our trip at Tybee Island at the oceanside DeSoto Bed & Breakfast. It was a refreshing way to sum up the trip with more relaxing and some sun soaking. Speaking of sun soaking, I soaked up a bit too much sun on my shins, which I apparently forgot to slather in SPF like the rest of my body. The burn made walking and getting comfortable to sleep at night unbearable and tear-inducing, and I’m STILL in pain as I write this post a day shy of a full week later. The good news is that I have begun to notice a little improvement today finally, and while Lucas got a little pinker than planned on our beach day, too, he thankfully didn’t suffer as badly. But you better believe we won’t forget SPF (especially our shins) next time.

We really loved Savannah and definitely want to make it a regular vacation spot, as long as we plan to visit in early spring or late fall so as to avoid the heat of the summer. End of March/first of April was a perfect, breezy 70-75 degrees and sunny for us just about every single day. The city is heavily influenced by its Savannah College of Art & Design population, and we appreciated being surrounded by the artsy inspiration everywhere we went. It was almost magical. But the best part? It was one more place to add to our list of new experiences together and we took the time to really relax.

It was also great that our drive had Knoxville, TN as the halfway point, which meant we got to stop and spend some time with our friends Kara and Jake (@teacher_geek and @JayneHatJake) which was an excellent way to finish the trip, even though I was feeling a bit burnt and miserable at the time! We enjoyed some delicious food and amazing company. Thanks for letting us crash on your couch, guys! <3

So now that you’ve read all about it (and trust me, there’s so much more I could talk about! Like the Old School Diner… wow.) I know why you’re really here… photos! Amirite? Thumbs from the gallery are below, or go check them all out on our Flickr!

(Update! Read the follow up blog post: Update on Geekling Dinosaur Project)

So I had this crazy idea.

It may have a huge turnout, it may flop. But no matter what happens, I think it would be a really cool way to decorate a room.

In this case, I was thinking about the geekling’s room and how to decorate it. Our “theme” is dinosaurs, but we are renting right now so painting is out of the question. That means the décor is dependent on the wall hangings. Last week our friend @katiedoyle mailed us a painting she did of a dinosaur for us to hang in the geekling’s room. (That’s her artwork pictured!) Inspired by this fantastic piece of original artwork made with love, I started to think… wouldn’t it be cool if ALL of our friends and family each made us some kind of dinosaur art for the wall?

I then had this amazing vision of one entire wall of the room covered in dinosaur artwork, all by different people in our lives. And not just one kind of artwork, but dinosaurs made from all different kinds of mediums, too. Some dinosaurs were painted, some were sketches, some were prints, some were done in colored pencils or crayons, and some were dinosaurs composed of fabric shapes.

The wall was covered in this variety of dinosaur artwork, but the pieces weren’t all the same size or orientation, either. Some of the pieces were landscape, some were portrait, some were large and some were small. They were arranged in a fun way like puzzle pieces on the wall, not in straight and perfect rows. Each piece was in the same simple black frame to tie everything together.

It was beautiful, and that’s when Operation Geekling Dinosaur Project was born. And for it to be successful, I need YOUR help.

How can you get involved and help? Make us a dinosaur for the wall! You don’t have to be an “artist” or even feel like you know how to draw to get involved. All forms of art are appreciated and  beautiful! You can use any medium or style you like and feel most comfortable working with, even if it means you print out a dinosaur and color it with your Crayolas. Pick your favorite dinosaur or do a scene of several dinosaurs; it’s all up to you. The only stipulation is that you work in a size that can easily be framed, since I’ll be tasked with trying to get the same style of frame for all of the artwork. The collection together would form a mural of sorts, except this mural would be made up of individual pieces of awesome from awesome individuals.

I may only have 5 people take this on or we may have none, and that’s ok. I’m still going to try! I’d ideally love to have as many people involved as possible. You don’t have to use any fancy paper or canvas or anything like that; plain paper will do. I’ll be throwing it into a frame anyway! I just think it would be amazing to have a wall full of dinosaurs in all different styles to represent all of the different people in our lives. And if you sign your artwork somewhere we’d have a lasting memory of who made each piece to share with the geekling as he gets older.

As artwork comes in, I plan to photograph it individually and post it to a special Flickr gallery with credit to the artist so that their part of the project can be shared. Think of it as a photo journal throughout the project’s progress, including photos of the finished result, too. And going from start to finish, you can see the wall’s growth over time as pieces arrive and get hung.

And maybe over the years new pieces can be added; I imagine the geekling and I in a few years spending a rainy day with finger paints or crayons making new dinosaurs to add to the wall. But the core… the heart of the project begins with all of you and builds from there. How special and how meaningful would a wall full of dinosaurs made by so many different people be?! And your artwork would forever brighten the room of one special little boy, who will grow up surrounded by your original creations and learn from an early age to appreciate art and the value of handmade.

I’m starting to get sappy here, but if you’re interested in donating a piece of dinosaur artwork in any medium digital or physical, big or small, to our project, we’d love to have it and frame it and hang it and share it with our geekling and the world. Your contribution would be one piece in a unique collection to make the décor in the geekling’s room grand and special. I will personally draw a little something in return and mail it with a thank you note to every single person who contributes via snail mail, in addition to posting you and your piece in our Flickr gallery and sharing it on Twitter and my craft blog and this blog for all to see. If you send something digital I have a digital version of the thank you note just for you, too. :)

So the Call for Submissions is officially open; let me just say thank you in advance to anyone who participates in our project. I truly appreciate the time and effort put in to make something for someone else. Long live handmade and long live art! <3

love,
Lucas, Lesley, and the geekling (Liam)

• Want to Contribute?
• Email us if you need to snag a snail mail mailing address. YES, we accept digital art if you prefer! Just send it to us via our email address.

• Common sizes for framing:
• 24 x 36
• 20 x 30
• 18 x 24
• 11 x 17
• 8.5 x 11
• 8 x 10
• 5 x 7
• 4 x 6

Thank you! <3 (and thanks, @thinkgeek, for promoting our geeky nursery project on Twitter!)

Read the follow up post here: Update on Operation Geekling Dinosaur Project

Without a doubt, we’re having a little baby boy – a mini Lucas! We are tickled pi… blue? and so very excited!

The best news was hearing them tell us how perfect everything looked. We were AMAZED at the things they could see on the ultrasound today, and what things they could tell about the baby’s development from just a few measurements or a couple dots or blobs on the screen that were constantly moving. Apparently, baby enjoyed whatever I had for breakfast and was wide awake and constantly moving the whole time, which made us giggle as the ultrasound tech tried to snap a quick picture or freeze the screen to take a measurement. Our little boy is healthy and developing right on schedule. That was the happiest part, and we just could not have glowed more after finding out the sex AND knowing he’s healthy.

In addition to the typical ultrasound photos (the one above was my favorite of the bunch – a cute look down from above at his little face – and check out his brain!) we also got a 3D one, which was really cool. The rest we’ve put into a set on our Flickr page. Previews below!

As for naming our baby boy, we’ve had both boy and girl names picked out for a long time now. We’ll be naming the geekling Liam Richard – sticking with our favorite “L” name and the middle name after Lucas’ dad.

We’ve been keeping photos throughout the pregnancy in our Geekling Flickr photo gallery – previews below. We’ll keep adding bits and pieces to it as we prepare for Liam’s arrival this summer!

Amongst all of the other craziness around here, you (and I) may have forgotten that I also spend a fair amount of time digital scrapbooking, too! For each of the past 3 years I have created a big, single digital scrapbook that encompasses the entire year in its pages. I’m excited to have finished album #3 this weekend! Family Life 2010 is finally complete. Featured is an example page, check out the full album on Flickr.

Previous years: Family Life 2009 | Family Life 2008

The Family Life albums are each between 40 and 50 pages of digital scrapbooking goodness, showing off major milestones and events that took place throughout the year for our family. In addition to the Family Life albums, I have also created scrapbooks for other things; my nephew’s first year, my wedding, and other family albums for gifts and in memory sentiments. Not ALL of them are online, but you can find a few other completed albums over on my family Flickr account… such as our Wedding Album, the album I made as a wedding gift for Lucas, and our Christmas 2007 album; my first digital scrapbook ever.

So what on earth do I use to digital scrapbook? Ever since I purchased it over three years ago, I have been in love with My Memories Suite, the greatest digital scrapbooking software of all time. Literally. As a quick backstory, I learned of My Memories Suite back in 2007; I had moved to Canada and was waiting (patiently) on my immigration status and then finding a job. This meant I was home during the day a lot, and one day in October, I got sucked into an infomercial for this amazing new digital scrapbooking software. I’m normally pretty skeptical of infomercials, but My  Memories Suite looked like the real deal. It just so happened that I had been physically scrapbooking for years prior, and was currently in the middle of scrapbooking my Canadian adventures since moving to the great white north. The problem was that I’d run out of supplies or glue or cute embellishments or paper and just hadn’t gotten around to buying more. I had taken over an entire cabinet of drawers in our basement in Calgary with scraps of papers and various scrapbooking supplies and it was a mess. The idea of digital scrapbooking and using digital products that I could design myself or download from others was intriguing. By the end of the infomercial I had already ordered. The only problem then was that My Memories Suite was new and only available in the U.S. No worries; we were planning to visit my family in Indiana for Christmas. I had My Memories Suite shipped to my parents and patiently awaited for December so that I could get my hands on it.

The rest is history; I fell in love with My Memories Suite at Christmas of 2007 the minute I got my hands on it, and was able to quickly and elegantly scrap our Christmas trip home with family. When we got back to Canada, I got caught up and busy with a teaching job, so MMS took a backseat for a few months. But then I began working on a 2008 Family Life album with the software, determined to leave physical scrapbooking behind from that point forward. The only problem I had was that there wasn’t a lot of info out there on the software; even with the huge wealth of info on the Internet, My Memories Suite was so new of a product that there just wasn’t any good resources out there for it; no tutorials, no tips & tricks, and no additional info on usage. I decided in May of 2008 to write my personal review of the My Memories Suite software after using it for several months, and then I began creating my own My Memories Suite video tutorials on how to get the most out of the software. Over the years, I have made 5 video tutorials for My Memories Suite, which have been recognized by the company itself with great praise. (I even had the president and CEO email me over this past winter holiday as I was putting the finishing touches on a gift album I was making.)

Something interesting to note is how my albums have gotten better over the years. I’ve been using My Memories Suite since December 2007, and every year I use it to scrap my life I get better and better and there’s more and more awesome digital scrapbooking resources out there to use with the software. DigiFree, which I talked about in my review back in 2008, has since moved to Craft Crave, but they are still out there and full of awesome downloadable digital scrapping freebies every day that you can use with My Memories Suite. Not to mention, My Memories Suite itself has designers that create beautiful new kits and templates that you can purchase via the online store. I’ve got a few bookmarked in my wish list until next month when we find out whether we’re having a boy or girl so I can get started working on my baby book.

Speaking of expecting our first child, that’s what’s inspired me lately to get moving on finishing my Family Life 2010 album so that I could begin work on baby stuff. Call it nesting, call it me being organized and/or OCD, but I can’t wait to include the geekling in our Family Life 2011 album and create a separate brag book album for my family to celebrate the birth of our first child. I’ve fallen in love with dinosaurs as a “theme” (boy or girl!) and found some really fantastic scrap kits out there last night that I purchased to use with My Memories Suite. I can’t wait to start working on those layouts!

Interested in My Memories Suite? Read my review and then go and purchase it – due to my affiliation and recognition from the company for my tutorials (and I literally help a handful of people daily via email with MMS questions!), I’ve been given the ability to offer a discount if you are interested in purchasing the software! What are you waiting for? Time to get scrapping!