Priscilla's Papercrafts: Happy Birthday, Charlotte!

My granddaughter is ONE! I can't believe it! After having 4 grandsons, I couldn't wait for little Charlotte to be born. I flew to Maryland to be there for the birth. My daughter-in-law's parents were there too.

Sarah went into labor in the early afternoon. She and my son left for the hospital, leaving her folks and me in charge of our two grandsons. After we put them to bed, her mom, Lynn, said to me, "Let's go!" I looked at her and said, "Where?" And of course she replied, "To the hospital!"

So we left grandpa in charge of the sleeping tots, got in the minivan and took off trying to find a hospital that was about 25 miles away (we are both from California, and I had not driven in Maryland). Fortunately Siri told us where to go, and after only one wrong turn, we found it.

However, it was a military hospital, and there we were, two grandmas from out of state, in a car that wasn't ours, staring down an Air Force airman, who asked us to get out of the car, open the hood and the hatch, and stand "over there", after taking our licenses.

And I had no idea how to open the hood. I looked at Lynn; she shrugged. I made sad cow eyes at the airman, who stared at us, stonefaced. But he finally relented, came to the door and showed me where the release was, and the two grandmas giggled as they searched our car.

Things didn't go as well inside the hospital, but the outcome was a C-section, and beautiful Charlotte was born. All was well with mom, dad and baby, and we finally got back home after 2 a.m.

So here we are, a year later...and my darling little granddaughter is one.
Here's her card:

Baby Bear makes such a CUTE card! Of course the card had to be pink--I've had my fill of trucks, dinosaurs and blue cards.

My three-step stamping bear was stamped in Smoky Slate, Basic Gray (stamped off once) and Basic Gray, full strength. It's easy to stamp the bear--the stamps are photopolymer so you can see through them. I started with the lightest color, stamping the shape of the bear. The next stamp is most of the fur, and the last one (the darkest color) are all the details.

The sentiment is from Number of Years, and was stamped in Sweet Sugarplum. And I punched three balloons in Fresh Fig and some retired In Color Designer Series Paper. I placed the balloons where I wanted them, without gluing them down and used the Fresh Fig marker with a ruler to draw the balloon strings.

Inside is special too. With a stamped balloon string and birthday wish from Happy Birthday Gorgeous, and a sentiment from Baby Bear, I was able to send love to this little girl.