Let Love Groves: December 2017

It's been such a long time since I've posted. It's been one of those times when so much has been happening, I didn't even know where to begin. So I decided to start with a fun one!

Last Christmas, we asked our the members of our wedding parties to join us on our big day. We had asked everyone but our "Ring Bearer" and "Flower Girl" (our niece and nephew) because we were waiting until it got closer. They are young children, after all. So this Christmas, we decided it would be the perfect time to ask them and also give them a special something in order to do so. Naturally, this became way more of a project than I expected it to be.

I had this idea to give them personalized picture books. I always think the ones they make for babies (where they insert the name into a pre-written story) are such a cute sentiment. But, they're still a little too impersonal and are also expensive. We are operating on a TINY budget, so I decided to get creative; I decided to just make them myself.

I ordered blank books off of Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B1Z5508/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and downloaded a bunch of images to try and recreate. I also got a great deal on some fun water color colored pencils, which is a new medium for me that I am now in love with. I decided that Cooper's would be Star Wars themed and Stella's would be Moana themed (some of their favorite things). I also paired them each with a cuddle item so they could curl up and read. We found a great Star Wars blanket for Cooper that we put his name on, and Stella got a stuffed Pua.

Each book took me about 5 evenings to complete. The kids loved them, and I'm so glad I could give them something special that they can hang on to forever. Here are some photos of each book...sorry they're sideways. Enjoy!