every child has a color, they say.

and it isn’t so much what they look good in. it’s the color of them. the first color that comes to mind when you think of all that embodies your complex little little. (oh wait…it’s colour. yes, brit girl. it’s colour).

and i knew from day one that lainey was a yellow. strange really because, after ten days of hospitalized jaundice, yellow was the last color i wanted to see, and i forever joked that i’d never let her wear it because i would have done anything to see anything but yellow on her precious little skin.

but, as fate would have it, lainey is a yellow. it’s the color of her soul. it’s her personality. her name means sunshine, and every blessed drop of her essence is just so…yellow.

and being that sometimes when i’m bored, i design little kids’ rooms in my head…i have it all planned that when she gets an i’m-so-big bed (and actually sleeps in it), her big(ger) girl room will someday soon be yellow.

a buttery vintage shade of happiness like benjamin moore’s creme brulee or ralph lauren’s evocative sunlight

and a lovely coverlet like this one…

or this one…

and i will make little fabric bees that will happily dangle from the ceiling.

and i will frame pages from her beatrix potter books…

pages like this one…

(oh, jemima…she is a beaut)

or this one…

and we will hunt the thrift shops for old suitcases like this one to prop against the end of her bed holding treasures like baby dolls and dress up clothes.

and perhaps there will be a little pillow like this here ladybug one happily sitting on her bed…

and there will be pictures. lots of pictures. and crayon drawings. and watercolor kid paintings clothespinned to a gigham ribbon hanging from the wall. my grandma’s framed spoon and some battenburg lace somewhere. yes, battenburg lace. and books…lots of books. perhaps my russian nesting dolls will sit on her dresser along with the little madeline doll with marker on her face. and the old nubby teddy bear that used to be mine will welcome her from its perch on the bed.

i have it all planned out…it will be a happy place. …and it will be yellow.

oh, dreaming is so much fun.

~k

p.s. i think i’m a “red.”

check out this super cool site.
all free.
100 fun photo options.

like these:

only takes seconds.

check it out:

photofunia.com

the minute her wispy blondes were pulled taut into two fine little sprouts, it happened. i turned her tiny frame around to take it all in, and there standing before me was…a girl. and i’m not sure what the hype is about pigtails being all little girlish because they very much are not. they are indeed very big girlish. in fact, i don’t see pippy or punky. no, i see gilligan’s maryanne, except blonde and trapped in an almost-two-year old’s very small body.

which may be why brett gasped when he saw the cover of her two year book.

and then it went something like this:

brett: no.
me: what, you don’t like it?
brett: i don’t want that on her book.
me: you don’t like the picture?
brett: i want a baby on the cover. that’s not a baby.
me: but she’s two. and that’s a two-year-old, babe.
brett: she doesn’t even know how to ride a tricycle, kelle.

which, might i add is true…however, i love, love, love these pictures we took to finalize her book and somehow, we convinced him that the book stands as finished.

…and then, as i followed her around the lawn last night as the sun began to set and the bottoms of her bare feet blackened, i caught this little moment where the sun danced through all golden on the loose strings that escaped from her pigtails as she found these flowerish things, picked them…and tried to blow the imaginary seeds off. and i don’t even know where she learned that because, sadly, we don’t have dandelions here. and i kicked myself after the whole thing because my camera was on the wrong settings, but…nevertheless. it works.

shall i mention that looking at these pictures accompanied by eva cassidy’s kathy’s song (which, might i add, just might be my favorite song of all time)…evokes stomach lurching. and wellings of puddles of the salty sort in the eyes.

moving on… this ain’t the big fat post for nothing.
being that this last little photo shoot for her book cover has been checked off…
…we are finished.
yes, the book is done.
all one hundred pages of it.
all i-really-don’t-want-to-know-how-many-hours-i-spent of it.
but it was all a divine pleasure. from the night of her first birthday party when i dragged, cut, pasted and saved the very first page in her second year book. and since then, dropping page after page with each blessed month to create a memoir near and dear to our hearts. and, while i’d much rather take the title of album designer over scrapbooker, i can’t deny the fact that…well, yup. i’m a scrapbooker. i scrapbook. there, i said it. and, when i do it, brett calls me scrappy. …and that makes me laugh.

and i won’t let him look at any of the book until it lands in our sweet hands in a couple weeks, but if you’d like to flip through this little work of art, click on twelve months of hard work here.

as for my new favorite additions (here’s where the big fat post part comes in)….

the delicious back cover…

the homage-paid-to-the-bruh-bruhs 2-pg. spread…

the newest easter lovins’…

a shout-out to her homies… (nici, spot a familiar face?)

my favorit-est page in the whole book…the title page…

and the answer to all my stress over leaving out so many photo gems… one year of favorites crammed into 4 small pages…

oh, laud have mercay! the big fat post is gunna burst!

i shan’t tell about the amazing, fabulous woman i met today who inspired me in so many ways…she’s so gettin’ a chapter in my book someday, but no, i’ll leave that for another post.

for now, that should be it.
yes, that’s it.

…enjoying the big & fat things. ~k

will draw for giveaway later this week, so there’s still time.
P.S. Super great Mother’s Day photo/gift special to come! And a refer-a-friend bonus. Details to come!