Letters to John Paul

One of the things that I never really finished for Thomas was his monthly letters.  As the 8th rolled around each month, I remembered to shoot him, but would procrastinate on the journaling + letter to him.  As time moved on, memories from that exact month faded.  He has an awesome first month book which is finished and in our living room.  And ironically, his last "monthly letter" spread that I have uploaded is from July 2009 -- his six month letter.  Maybe I should just rename it the Monthly Letters for the First Half of Your First Year?

One of the big challenges was that I had originally used one template and wanted to continue using it, but I never customized the changes, so each month I was rebuilding it from scratch.  (Talk about a de-motivator in wanting to continue something!)

So this round, I want to keep things simple (in keeping in line with my one little word for the year: simplify). 

And though I never blogged it, I did John Paul's first monthly spread just after he turned one month old.  And I just finished the two month old spread.

For this round?  I'm just continuing his 'baby book', though I won't use the same template (as I did in Thomas's monthly letters) nor the same kit as earlier in John Paul's baby book.  Each month will look different from the previous month, so that it won't ever feel like it's something I 'have' to do. It won't all match (which would normally bug me to no end), but in the big picture?  IT WILL GET FINISHED.  :)

So far, I'm keeping it simple by using templates and sampling the colors from the images themselves.

Here's the first two spreads.  Specs for the scrapping are beneath.  And as always, you can click on the pages themselves for a larger version to read the journaling. 

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The specs:

• TEMPLATES  |  Adapted from Cathy Zielske's templates.  From "One Month Old" comes the Layered Template No. 83 (adapted to an 8x8 spread) and from "Two Months Old" is Layered Template No. 86 (also adapted to an 8x8 spread) and Story Guide No. 05B (questions adapted to this spread for a two-month-old).  I'm pretty sure his entire book will be filled with Cathy Z's templates BECAUSE I LOVE THEM THAT MUCH.  They can be used in so many different ways. Swoon.
• FONTS  |  Avenir, using different weights. 
• WORD ART  |  "first memories" from Ali Edwards Simple Celebrations Baby Elements.