Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Movie Poster Pregnancy Annoucment



The Idea
So my husband and I knew as some point we would have another child. He came into our marriage an automatic father as I had a 9 year old daughter and our youngest was literally baking in the oven as we said our vows lol. Around our 2 year anniversary we began to discuss when we would try for our next bundle of joy. I was very adamant about not having 2 children in daycare and he didn't want a huge age gap between the baby and our youngest. The spring of 2015 my husband was given orders to go to Korea for a year. As you can imagine that put a huge wrench in our plans. He was stationed in South Korea from August 2015 until August 2016. When he returned this past August Baby #3 became a reality. This pregnancy has been very special as it was the first one of my pregnancies that was planned. Although I love my 3 year old and soon to be 13 year old they were surprise blessings. Anyway, this summer before my husband returned to the states I began to search Pinterest to get ideas on how I would announce when we finally got pregnant. I immediately ran across these movie posters and fell in LOVE (links embedded in the images)! They were creative and hilarious....... and I knew I had to do one!

Our Facebook Pregnancy Announcement for Baby #4! Movie Poster Pregnancy Announcement, 4th Baby, Funny Pregnancy Announcement | Printable Announcement | Contact me on my website and I can design a similar movie announcement for you! www.dazzleexpressions.com | Photo Credit and Design Collaboration to http://www.denniswebberphotography.com/ (An amazing photographer located in Montana!):        Pregnancy announcement with a movie poster:

The Process
After reading a few blog post I found out that the key to achieving this look was to have a good quality photo. I turned to Groupon to find a photographer that was reasonably priced and had good reviews. There I found Eddie and Patty Photography.  The morning before our appointment with the photographer I had my family practice our pose a few times using the self-timer feature on our Cannon DSL. I printed off a copy of our best pose along with the two pinterest examples above to show the photographers. Eddie and Patty came to our home and took several shots of us in our bedroom. They were super friendly and I knew right then that my vision would come to light. Once I received the digital images I worked with my husband to chose the "best" image. It was tough as the BEST one didn't capture my oldest daughter's face bc of how she angled her body. Anyway, we selected the second best and I move on to create the movie poster in Photoshop. I started off by blending the image with a white background. After that I created the text on the poster layer by layer. I am not very proficient in Photoshop so I had my husband by my side to help guide me and give me all the Photoshop short cuts.. I was very please with the finished product.

The Final Product

Those that know me and my family will instantly get the humor here. However, for those that don't really know our little family well......you may need a little explanation lol. As I mentioned earlier this will be my first planned child (fertile myrtle apparently). The last time this happened my husband and I went to Vegas to celebrate my 29th birthday and brought a little something back lol. Anyway, let's start with me in the movie poster! For starters, I am obsessed with cakes made by the wholesaler "Sam's Club", so yes that is a Sam's club cake I had made especially for our photo lol. Sour cream and cheddar Ruffles are by far my favorite chip and I also love dill pickles. Simply put....I love food and that has not changed with this pregnancy. I can't say that I've really gravitated to particular foods, but I do have weird and random cravings at times. Now on to Alasia, my soon to be teenage daughter. Alasia also loves food also (what can I say?....she got it honest from her mom). Alasia repeatedly gets caught sneaking food to her room or eating the last of my favorite snacks around the house. So that should explain her portion of the photo. Moving on to Khloe.....my beloved 3 1/2 year old preschooler. Khloe is a HANDFUL, period end of story! She is extremely smart and her language often compares to a child well beyond her age..........BUT she often works my last nerves. She is full of energy and I swear she never slows down. I can count on Khloe to get into some type of mischievous pretty much daily. This movie poster captures her personality perfectly!  Then there is my dear husband John. John is by far one of the sweetest, happiest, and laid back individuals I've ever met in my life. I'm still not certain how he puts up with me as a wife lol. The shirt he is wearing probably is exactly how he has felt since the day I told him I was pregnant. He also lets our children get away with high way robbery (-_-). Lastly, we started the process for building a house in May of 2016 and we are scheduled to move in early December which explains the boxes. Originally, we were going to have a guest room on both the second level of our home and in the basement. Now with the baby we will only have one guest room and turn the other extra room on the second level into the nursery. So there is our movie poster announcement in a nutshell :-)

Friday, June 24, 2016

Lot Sold Picture!


So the girls didn't know about until we got our official loan approval! My oldest probably thought I was having an affair after the countless "appointments" I had over the past 2 weeks where she has been left to babysit her sister lol. Anyway, I thought it would be cute to take them to the homesite and having them flip over these signs (that I made) would be a nice way to break the news to them. picture!

I created these posters using Word! I used a black chalkboard background and various fonts on Pinterest. I sent the images to Staples and ordered  16x20 colored engineering prints. Then I backed them onto black foam board. Lastly, I took regular white chalk and smudge it over the front to give it more of a chalkboard effect.



The memory of the picture will last a life time though. I just wish my husband was here to be in the

Monday, May 2, 2016

Simply Lemonade Teacher Appreciation Gift


As I mentioned in my previous 
post I am doing a little gift each day for my girls' teachers this year. Tuesday's gift is a little thank you that just may quench the thirst of any over worked and underpaid teacher. It's not much, but I thought the idea was super cute. I was able to get the lemonades for $1 at the commissary and I found the cute tags already made on Pinterest. I've seen others add a cute paper straw for a nice finishing touch!! 

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Extra Gum Teacher Appreciation Tag

This year I decided on doing small thoughtful gifts each day for Teacher Appreciation Week. I saw the extra gum idea on Pinterest. I decided to go with the fruity flavor instead which required me to make my own tags to keep the color scheme thing going. I made two different versions: one ideal for teachers of younger students and the other geared more for older students!!!