Loving life at 24 months

My time away from my blog has been much longer than I intended... but when I look at all that this month has entailed, I can understand why that has been the case.  One of this month's events was my daughter's second birthday.  I wanted to capture this time in her life in a festive, colorful way-- and this sketch by Leeann Pearce posted on the BasicGrey blog seemed to be just right for that task:

My version stays pretty close to the sketch and includes photos of my daughter just a few days before her second birthday.

One of the things I loved about the sketch was the way that it had built-it allowance for some fun little details and embellishments:

I had a great time decorating with buttons, punches, brads, pearls, stickers, and gems-- all very fitting for a little girl who is definitely quite feminine in her style and preferences. :)

And, I also was glad to see that the sketch allowed some space for journaling, which I try to incorporate into my pages as often as I can so that I can record the memories through words as well as images:

Most of the supplies used in this sketch (papers, cardstock stickers, brads) are from Doodlebug, although the background pink paper is by Making Memories.  The layout also uses several Fiskars punches, acrylic stamps from Studio AE by Technique Tuesday ("celebrate") and October Afternoon ("2 cute"), as well as Lily Bee stickers and a few Silhouette cutouts ("2" and "loving life").   For a little girl who really loves life and who makes us love our lives even more, this festive layout seemed to capture the emotion of this season.