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.

I saw a picture of a hand print Santa floating around Pinterest recently but there was no how-to, so I decided to replicate the idea and turn it into a special gift to celebrate Liam’s first Christmas. We even made the clay together, too! The best part? This project was “free” for me to make since I already had all the materials at home, and I bet you do, too! Here’s how we did it:

First you’re going to need some clay. Teaching 4th grade and making salt dough maps of Indiana in the classroom paid off; here’s the recipe I used to make the perfect salt dough clay:

Perfect Salt Dough
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup lukewarm water

Mix the flour and salt thoroughly in a large mixing bowl, and add the water. Use your hands to combine it all really well and begin forming “dough.” Knead, knead, and knead some more until you get the right consistency. I found that if it was a tad too dry to form the perfect ball of dough that all I needed to do was wet my hands a little and get back to kneading.  You want a nice soft, smooth ball of dough to work with. Not too grainy or dry, and not too sticky.

Sprinkle flour on your work surface and grab a rolling pin. It’s kind of like making holiday sugar cookies now; roll your dough out to form an even, flat disc of dough. I didn’t grab a ruler or anything so I can’t tell you exactly how thick or thin we rolled our dough out to, but remember that you need it to be thick enough so that when the hand is pressed into the dough that the indention doesn’t make the ornament too thin in places, and thus super fragile.

Making the hand prints with a 5.5 month old took two sets of hands. (Not including Liam’s hands!) Lucas held Liam and I pressed his hand into the dough. With his hand down, I made sure to give a little extra (gentle) press of each finger and the heel of his hand to ensure a good impression. Then I just rotated the dough and we repeated the process until I had eight little hand prints. If the dough is a little sticky, rub some flour on your kiddo’s palm before pressing. It helps!

When the hard part was done, I used a sharp knife and cut out around the edge of each hand print, leaving a thin edge around the whole hand. Don’t forget to punch a small hole near the heel of each dough hand print so that you can add a ribbon for hanging later! Remember that the hand is going to hang on the tree with its fingers down, since the fingers form Santa’s beard.

Now let the hand prints dry for about 4 days. Just like cut-out sugar cookies, we used a spatula to transfer the little hand print cut-outs onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Don’t bake them, though! Just set the cookie sheet in a safe place and let the hand prints dry out. In 2 days, turn each hand over so that the back side can also be exposed to the air and the ornaments can dry out all the way through. The waiting is actually the hardest part!

Now that you have perfectly hardened little hand prints, it’s time to paint! I like to spray each with clear acrylic spray sealer first, just to give me a good, smooth base for painting. For painting, I didn’t use anything fancy, just acrylic craft paints in red, white, black, and flesh tone.

I painted our Santas in layers, that is, that I went through and painted the swipe of skin tone on all of the ornaments first, then went back and painted the white pom pom in the thumb and made the white fur trim of the Santa hat next, and then did the red hat. By the time I had finished painting the same layer on all eight ornaments, the first one was dry enough to continue to the next paint layer. Then I went back with white and painted the length of each finger and had them meet up with the face to form the beard; I also did a quick set of “bumps” in white that overlapped the face a bit to create a mustache at the top of the beard. Then I gave all of my Santas a red dot nose. Once noses were done, I went back with a little pink that I made from mixing my leftover red and white on the palette to add dots for blushing cheeks, and a dot for the mouth just below the nose. I let everything dry for about 10 more minutes, and then I used black and a super fine paintbrush to add in details like outlining the mustache area, adding eyes, and outlining a bit on each finger of the beard and the pom pom to make those parts of Santa really stand out.

Let the paint dry thoroughly and then get out your Mod Podge. I gave the fronts two coats of Mod Podge each, allowing for ample time to dry between coats. (Until the white of the Mod Podge had gone completely clear.) Then I flipped the Santas over and got out my black paint and super fine paintbrush so that I could put Liam’s name and the year on the back. Once the black paint dried, I then gave the backs two coats of Mod Podge, too.

I gave both the front and back of each ornament a final quick spray with clear acrylic sealer just to add a finish to the entire project. This gave each ornament a little extra protection and a slightly glossy sheen. I also feel like it helps keep the ornaments from having a bit of a tacky, sticky feel from the Mod Podge.

For the finishing touch, I strung up each ornament with festive red and green ribbon so that they could be hung on the Christmas tree. If the holes you made in the dough initially for this purpose are a bit clogged from all of the Mod Podge and spray sealer layers, grab something like the tip of a pen to punch through and clean out the opening so you can get your ribbon through.

And voila! Your child’s hand print is forever preserved as an ornament for the tree, and these ornaments make great gifts for grandparents and other family members. Don’t want to do Santa? No problem – just follow the steps to create the ornaments and when it comes time for painting, paint the whole thing a single color or decorate them another way. No matter how you paint, you’ve got the memory of your child’s hand print to keep.

I’m thinking of making these Santa hand print ornaments every year so that we can compare how Liam’s hand grows as he gets older, what do you think?

Happy holiday crafting with your kids!

I was looking at my work calendar today and suddenly realized that next week is the last full week of school before winter break. Not that I’m complaining about an impending vacation or anything, but WOW. Suddenly Christmas is here. Thankfully my shopping is done and we even managed to get the Christmas tree up this weekend, something I’m proud of considering how busy we’ve been.

This will be the 6th Christmas that Lucas and I have spent together. In the past we’d always had a pretty standard 5′ Christmas tree. This year, though, we inherited my grandparents’ 12′ Christmas tree with plenty of ornaments and decor to accompany it, which is perfect to go in our brand new house. But let’s be honest: while the ceilings in our house are higher than standard ceilings, even they can’t quite accommodate 12′ of tree plus an angel on top. Thankfully the trunk is made up of several pieces that fit together, so we were able to leave out a single 2′ section to make the tree fit in our living room with the crown on the angel’s head just shy of the ceiling. Success! It was an all day affair fluffing and decorating, but totally worth it; not only is it nice to have grandpa’s old Christmas tree stay in the family and begin getting used again, it’s totally gorgeous and HUGE. It’s neat to remember all of the memories of it down at the lake house each year and think about how it’s got a new life being a part of the memories we’re creating for Liam in our house now. Sounds sappy, right? Newsflash: I’m a mom now; EVERYTHING and every moment is sentimental!

“OHMYGOD THE BOY JUST FARTED, QUICK HONEY GRAB THE CAMERA!” Yup, pretty much.

So then of course, what’s an all day event like putting up the Christmas tree without photos? Not an event in the Karpiuk household, that’s for sure! We obviously took a ton of photos, because putting up such a huge tree for our first Christmas in the new house and Liam’s first Christmas was a momentous occasion.

Here are just a few pictures from yesterday; the rest are all up on our Flickr account in the Christmas Tree 2011 set, which will eventually be part of a larger Christmas 2011 collection since you know there’ll be a heck of a lot more photos to come.

Oh, and that photo of Liam looking like he’s about to eat your face off? That’s his new thing: the snort laugh. He wants to join in on our laughter, so he’s developed this hilariously hideous snorting laugh where he crinkles up his face and does a lot of repetitive, quick snorts in a row with his mouth WIDE OPEN. It’s hysterical. I need to get that on video, seriously.

Anyway, I guess all that’s left to do now is to wrap gifts and pick a picture or two for our Christmas cards this year so that they can get mailed. Considering how ambushed I feel by December, at least I’m mostly on top of things, right? Good luck with all of your holiday preparations!

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!

Sunday’s opening Bears home game was Liam’s first, and we sure enjoyed dressing him in his little Bears jersey for the first time and watching the game together as a family. Liam is a pretty adorable little Bears fan, if I do say so myself.

To celebrate the return of football I decided to try my hand at making cheddar beer soup and homemade soda bread to eat for lunch during the game. I got the recipes from watching Claire Robinson’s Food Network show, 5 Ingredient Fix, the other day. Everything turned out really great; I followed the recipe for the soda bread exactly and formed two small rounded loaves from the dough instead of one larger loaf so that Lucas and I could make bread bowls for our soup. (This turned out to be a great idea, by the way.) The bread was the perfect density for a bread bowl and sopped up the flavor of the soup well.

For the cheddar beer soup we used Newcastle brown ale, whose nutty flavor blended nicely with the extra sharp cheddar cheese. I used whole grain flour instead of the all purpose white flour that the recipe called for in the thickening process, and I liked the whole grain texture that this produced. And speaking of the flour, we made sure our tablespoons were heaping, based on the recipe reviews that I read ahead of time. It seemed a lot of people took issue with the soup being too thin when made as written; heaping tablespoons gave us the perfect consistency, though.

One of my favorite parts of cooking together with Lucas is how we discuss the food we’ve made as we eat it, and talk about how the flavors turned out. For these recipes we talked about how different beers and/or cheeses in the soup would change the flavor and what combo we’d like to try next time. The recipe calls for 2 cups of cheese, and I think one thing we decided was that we’d want to add even more when we make it again. The soup was perfect in the bread bowls, and it’s definitely a fantastic football Sunday meal that we’ll make again and again, especially as we head into cooler weather.

Here we are, about mid September, and we haven’t begun packing yet. We close on the house on September 29, and we’re planning to make the move on October 5. This means we have just a few short weeks to get everything together! (Thankfully my mom is coming up to help watch Liam so I can get some packing done.) Then once we move, that gives us 5 days to get settled in the house before I return to work from maternity leave on October 10… nothing like cutting it close, huh? Speaking of returning to work, part of me is ready, but part of me is sad that these days cuddled with my tiny, precious little boy all day is coming to an end. He’s growing up so fast! I’ll also miss watching non-stop Food Network while nursing, too, but one perk to the move is that I’ll  be able to act on all of this foodie inspiration in my huge, brand new kitchen with my boys. The layout of the kitchen and living room is an open concept plan, which means we’ll be able to cook and interact with family and friends at the same time now; I’m so excited because this is without a doubt where we spend the most time. It won’t be long until Liam can help mama in the kitchen, too!

We’re going to be pretty busy the next few weeks but we’ll be sure to tell you all about it once we’re settled and back into the swing of things!

Get married? Check.
Buy a car? Check.
Have kid(s)? Check.
Buy a house? CHECK.

Yup, that last condition has been met; Lucas and I are now officially grown-ups! Oh, and we now own a house, too.

Yesterday, quite unexpectedly, we bought our first home.  We had been talking about it for years, really. It didn’t take long to realize in Calgary that it was going to be an unobtainable goal, (holy crazy housing market, Calgary!) but the market is much easier on the buyer here in Indy. To be fair the cost of living is different, but the price of homes, even as far south of the Calgary city centre as you can possibly be and still technically be in city limits, is three times the cost of the same size home here.

We’ve been throwing money away on rent for too long. When a flyer came in the mail the other day with some sample mortgage rates listed next to beautiful pictures of three bedroom homes, it seemed too good to be true. I had just been talking with my boss about interest rates two weeks ago, which fueled our desire to start seriously considering home ownership again with the market being so great for buyers. And we’d not be just any buyers… we’d be first time home buyers, and there’s a plethora of programs and benefits out there where people practically throw money at us for it. I checked out the flyer’s website and created an online portfolio where we chose some floorplans we liked and indicated what part of the city or surrounding areas we were interested in. We were contacted quickly by an agent and set up a time to chat and see if they had anything that fit our needs and budget.

Our needs were pretty simple. We wanted a single story home with three bedrooms and an office. An open concept kitchen to living room was a must, as was a yard and garage. When we left our apartment yesterday to meet with the agent, we figured we’d go over our budget and needs and then he’d show us some floorplans. We had no idea that he already had a few brand new homes ready for immediate move-in picked out according to our needs, and that he was ready to show them to us same day. We looked at one home, and moved on to the second, which we fell in love with. It was perfect, with everything that we wanted and more. The location was good for work, and the neighborhood was nice.  Sold.

Though it sounds crazy that we started looking, found, AND bought a home in one day, (in about four hours start to finish) and that it was only the second house we had seen, we’d like to think that it was instead just our good luck. All of the stars aligned just right and all of the pieces just happened to fall into place… it was meant to be. We couldn’t think of any reason to say no to the perfect house; why hold out when we had found exactly what we wanted at a great price and a good location?

So the summer of 2011 has been monumental. First our beautiful son is born, and 6 weeks later we stumble upon the ideal home buying scenario and purchase our first home in one day. Both huge life-changing events that came surprisingly easy to us. We are so thankful. And happy. Life is pretty darn perfect.

We move at the end of September, so we’ll need to start packing soon. In our own house we can finally paint, so that’s something else exciting to think about, too. As long as we close as planned, we’ll be in the new home before I go back to work from maternity leave, too. It’s going to be a busy next few weeks, but so worth it! Yay for being grown-ups!

PHOTOS! Almost forgot… I took a few photos of the house yesterday while we were there and they are in our New Home gallery on Flickr; we’ll be adding to that gallery as the adventure unfolds. And while you’re over there checking out those photos, you’ll definitely want to swing by the Liam gallery to see what’s new, too. I swear he is growing every day before our very eyes. Newest photos are always added at the end!

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