The Story Behind the Page - You Monsters

Happy Friday! Based on our new blog schedule "insider tips" posts are supposed to be on Thursdays....but yesterday flew by me without a chance to get on here and post. So today I'm going to post a quick little bit about how I created my layout called "You Monsters" from October's gallery. Kelly will get us back on our normal schedule later today I'm sure!

As soon as I saw the Sassafras monster paper I knew I had to cut out those cute little guys and use them somehow. Especially since we've been battling our own little set of 3 monsters here lately in the Samuels household. I don't know if it's the start of school, new schedules, different routines, or what...but lately all three of my kids have had a major case of the late afternoon crankys. It's almost like between 4-6pm they morph into these alter egos and lose their normal sweet selves! Anyways, I digress. So in an attempt to capture this season of life I thought the Sass monsters would be perfect!

First, I had the kiddos each pick out which monster they wanted to be. heehee. Yes, I really did. :) And they loved it. Then together we came up with what their monster names should be. It was funny because they were really quite accurate at coming up with appropriate names for themselves...which makes me think they KNOW which behaviors are bad! We have Grumpus for Jack, Whine Ball for Connor, and Queenie for Cate.

Then I found some photos of them all looking sweet, innocent and loveable to contrast with the monster theme and started designing the page. I did the journaling last (as I always do) and typed it out so that I'd have more room. I basically did a sum up of each kid, pointing out their normal sweet characteristics and then warning about their monster alter ego specialties. It was a fun way to journal and makes my kids laugh when I read it to them. Why? Because it's so true and they know it! LOL Plus, it's been a great reminder to them when they do start acting up now. I just start calling them their monster name and it lightens the mood immediately. Who knew scrapping would play a role in behavior management! ;)

Anyways, if you have any questions about the layout, post them here. Thanks for reading! :)