As a proud new parent we always have the camera on hand for those firsts. Ideally I would love to put all those photos into scrapbooks but it’s hard to find the time – and the space – to do it. By the time I get all my supplies laid out it’s time for a feeding, nap or my own bedtime.

Enter in Scrapblog.com – an online scrapbooking website. You do everything online and don’t have to worry about cleanup! It’s great to work on during naptime (when I’m not napping myself!) or when my little one is playing nearby.

There are dozens of themes to chose from or you can mix and match from various themes. With the abundance of backgrounds, stickers (elements you can put on the page) and frames the possibilities are endless.

My current favorite are the Baby Enstine themes. They feature the puppets and stickers for a lot of baby firsts and activities. The perfect thing for making a first year scrapblog.

Just recently Scrapblog added a printing service where you can order books and cards of your creations. While I haven’t ordered any myself I plan on it once I finish the first year album for my little one.

Since my daughter started sitting unassisted we setup a play area up against our bed for her and proped up a few pillows so that she doesn’t hit her head on the frame. The pillows were grabbed from the couch and looked to grown up for her space. I decided to give them some new covers to make them more kid friendly (ie. washable!) and to give her something interesting to look at.

We found this great animal print that matches her bed set and picked up a few extra yards of yellow and blue as accents. I wanted to do something different for each pillow and created different stripes and blocks of color. The backs are overlaps (similar to our own embe pillow covers!) so that they can be removed and washed if soiled.

I also wanted to add a personal touch and created a “birth pillow” (you can see it peeking out behind in the photo). I was inspired by some of the posters I saw on ohdeeoh.com. I used inDesign to layout the words with her name, birth day, time, and weight. Then I printed it on iron-on transfer paper in order to place it on the pillow.

My daughter really finds it interesting to look at and enjoys touching it… which has made the iron on transfer start to peel. Hehe. I guess it’s going to be more for decoration then use!

We’ve only been using them for a few days but I think they really help define her play area (not that the toys don’t already do that!) and help keep her safe.

A lot of people are surprised to learn that I’m a self-taught knitter or that I knit at all! It all started when I got married and discovered a love for HGTV. I remember watching a show called “crafters from coast to coast” and thinking that it would be fun to pick up a crafting hobby.

I initially learned from a “Learn to Knit” kit I picked up at Michaels. While the book was helpful in learning the basic techniques of casting on, knitting and purling I found I needed more guidance then what the book could provide if I wanted to make more than potholders. Not knowing anyone who knitted and being an IT professional, I turned to–you guessed it–the Internet!

One of the firsts websites I came across was knittinghelp.com. What drew me in were the free instructional videos. They were just the thing I needed to learn more advanced stitches, like increasing and decreasing! (It’s funny to hear myself say that increasing and decreasing were considered advanced but to me each new technique is advanced!) Even now, four years later, I return time and time again to KnittingHelp for a refresher on a technique I hadn’t used in awhile or for something new.

Another site I use is knittingdaily.com. They just recently started posting how-to videos and some of my favorites are how to knit joggless stripes in the round and tubular cast on. The knittingdaily blog also is a wealth of information. It’s taught me how to take my body measurememtnts to ensure that a sweater will fit, how to knit lace, and different types of cast-ons and cast-offs.

I’ve come a long way since my potholder days and I owe it to all the great online knitting websites. Now that I’ve given out my secret, you can start knitting now too!

P.S. I am in no way affiliated with KnittingHelp and KnittingDaily, nor did they pay me to say such great things. KnittingDaily image from knittingdaily.com