Getting Ready for Back to School

The kiddos go back to school in one month. They don't start until after Labor Day. I'm not sure if I like the new schedule or not. Cole is ready to go back and counting down the days until the first day of school. I'm not quite that anxious but I have already started getting ready for the big day.

I saw that Jen Gallacher is offering THIS new blog event. (I'm a stalker, oops, I mean frequent visitor of her blog.) I am SO excited! I know I'll be there because I love back to school photos and layouts. I adore Jen's style and can't wait to see what she has to offer. I've taken her classes before and I've never been disappointed!


One of my favorite things about back to school is taking back to school photos. We started the tradition when my oldest started kindergarten and we've kept the tradition. I love to get the kids in their new school clothes and get some great personality shots of each of them. Cole is usually silly and thinks he his way too old for mom to be doing this I expect he'll get better when he gets older (I know, I know, it's only going to get worse). Kayleigh loves to have her pictures taken and gives me the sweetest smiles and wants to take pictures in all of her new school clothes.

This is one of the layouts I did with last years back to school photos.This photo is on the list of my all time favorite photos. It's so Kayleigh. She takes a book with her wherever she goes and is constantly reading. She even takes breaks from her school work to read a book. She brought her books along when we went out on our back to school picture taking spree so I couldn't help but get some photos of her enthralled in her latest book.

I wanted to give the layout a unique embellishment that looked like books so I rolled a few patterned  papers and lined them up together to look like books on a shelf. I added some crochet thread and a button to dress it up a little bit.

 I also used part of a wooden ruler as a border on the bottom. I had already cut it down and used the other portion on another craft project.

Happy Monday and thanks for stopping by!

I have a few more layouts with back to school photos that I'll be featuring throughout this week.