The Claire Project

If we are friends on Facebook, if you follow me on flickr, or you ever click on the top bar of my blog, you might be familiar with our weekly photos of Claire.

Now, I can't take credit for this fabulous fabric idea, which I borrowed from Young House Love's Clara Project (right down to a similar name for our baby girl!), but I will take the credit for wrangling our wiggly baby weekly and getting some ok shots along the way.

Each week (Thursday mornings for the first 14 weeks and now Saturday mornings since I have been back to work), I dress Claire in a short-sleeve white onesie, lay some fabric out and get to work. I try to do this in the morning so that the sun is coming through our windows just right. For a while, I laid the fabric on the couch cushion, but now that she is bigger I lay it on the floor over our area rug. Also, I highly recommend doing this after a feeding. In my experience, full belly = happy baby.

Most weeks I use one yard of fabric, usually bought on-sale from JoAnn, but sometimes I throw in a pretty printed sheet, baby blanket or other type of fabric object I find around the house. Basically, if you are handy with a camera and with Photoshop, you can achieve the same thing by following this handy YHL tutorial.

So here are the results this far:

And here are close-ups of a few milestone weeks along the way...

Week One:


Week Six:


Week Twelve:


And today, Week Seventeen:

It's really fun to click back and forth through the photos so far to see how much Claire has changed, especially from the first to the last.

At the year's end, I plan to do a few things.

1. Make a blurb book documenting Claire's first year.

2. Print all 52 images and display them at her 1st birthday party. Maybe like this:

3. Also, I plan to either learn to sew, or commission my sewing sisters, to create a few things out of the fabric, such as this pillow I found on pinterest:

Or maybe even a quilt, like Sherry made from YHL:

35 weeks to go! Only time will tell how our Claire Project project ends up for us.

I blame this dress...

...for inspiring a crazy woman to start cataloging ideas for Claire's 1st Birthday already.

And yes, if you are keeping track, she turns just 3 months old this week :-)

And yes, the crazy woman is me.

Isn't it adorable though? It was a great deal today on zulily.

For the record, I do not want this year to rush by whatsoever. In fact, I wish I could press pause and freeze time with her with each passing day, but you never know when & where inspiration will strike and today there was no denying it. The colors, patterns and textures from the dress are perfect for a future Claire Celebration.

So if you are interested in my proactive party-planning ideas, check them out on this pinterest board. And if you have any ideas that fit the vibe, please share! I have nothing but 9 more months of time.

On the Pinterest Bandwagon

As if I needed another way to waste precious time online, in walks Pinterest. With its appealing social sharing ways, its design-centric slant and overall ability to organize every random thing I ever find online... how could I not give it a chance.

One night and I'm hooked. I literally pulled an all-nighter "pinning" once I figured it out.

If you are into online browsing, cataloging, mood boarding, or just looking at pretty, shiny things, you must check out Pinterest.

If you are already a member follow me as a newbie getting the hang of things :-)

If not, leave me your email address and I can send you an invite! Once you're "in", you can link it to facebook, twitter or even your gmail or yahoo account to find other friends who "pin" and your network just grows from there.

Happy Pinning!