“Open up. Here comes the airplane. Zoom! Zoom!” We’ve all played that game with our children. Now that a bottle is not enough for baby, the doctor will tell you that you can add a bit of solid food like cereal, fruit or veggies to their meal to fill them up. Using a small coated spoon, scoop up some cereal and touch the spoon to their lips. If they open up to accept it, baby is ready to have solid foods. Now the fun begins.

When my son could sit up on his own, I fed him from a high chair. He liked the freedom of being able to look around. A few times I made the mistake of leaving the bowl of cereal or strained fruit on the tray while I answered the telephone. Imagine the mess I found when I got back. Sometimes he would smack the bowl and more food ended up on me than in him. Keep a wet dishcloth handy.

Picture Ideas:

Feeding time is always fun time when baby starts on solid food. Buy yourself an apron if you don’t already own one. Mommy and daddy should take turns feeding and photographing baby.

Don’t forget to snap a picture of baby’s messy face and your messy apron. Every time you introduce a new food into baby’s diet, take a picture to capture the faces he makes.

Scrapbooking Ideas:

Find cute stickers and foam decorations of fruits and vegetables to use for your scrapbook page. Try to find scrapbook paper with a bib design. Glue the food randomly around the page.

Crop your pictures in the shape of the food baby is eating in the picture: a box of cereal, peaches, pears, sweet potatoes, etc.

Baby has moved on to solid foods. Now it’s time for teeth!

Although there are endless amounts of scrapbooking supplies, tools, and embellishments available, you may come to a point where you are finding it difficult to get the right start on a particular page layout for one of your scrapbooks. Don’t worry, this happens to all of the most creative types in the world, and often it just takes something to get your mind of of the creative rut that it’s currently in.

You can find general inspiration everywhere around you, especially in advertising.  You may want to take a break and watch television but keep the general idea in the back of your mind, watching the ads for ideas.  You could also go for a nice drive and check out billboards and other advertising. On the other hand, you may want to go straight to the source and pick up some scrapbooking magazines that focus on page layout ideas and begin your project by mimicking one of the examples you like.

Don’t be afraid to just put it away all together and not think about scrapbooking for an hour or two. The ironic part is that it’s very likely that once you get your mind working on something else entirely, that’s when an idea will strike you for your scrapbooking page layout.

What about going to visit a friend? Meet someone for coffee and chat about your ideas. They might have a fresh perspective that they can share and lead you to scrapbooking bliss!

The ultimate source of inspriation will often comes from the pictures themselves if you can get your mind into it at the time. You can pull design ideas and colors from the photos, and match the backgrounds with the paper you choose, etc.  The best thing to do is not stress out about it and just have fun, take breaks, and share your ideas with others.