Domestic God!

I've been wanting to scrap these photos of my youngest for some time now (he's 3 1/2!) but I'm always put off by the mess & clutter in the background. Somehow, with the busy stripes in the background & picking out the red of his dungarees, the chaos seems less noticeable.
I've been having a few days taking stock & really thinking about where I am & where I want to be. Whether I should scrap more or scrap better - the latter is where I want to be. So for this page, I took my time & added all the details that I've been skipping lately in an effort to produce more. It took twice as long - but I LUUUUURVE this layout - so it was worth it! LOL
The sketch is by Valerie Salmon, for last week's challenge (the new one goes up tonight), the faux stitching (on all the lettering, around the photo mat & along the red deco strip to the right) satisfy the Arty Girlz challenge & this page also qualifies for the Wednesday Stamper challenge: 'children' theme & use at least one stamp. The stamps I used are from HOTP's new Thinga-ma-jigs clear stamp set - I'm really loving the brackets around the title. It would be v. cool to have a set of alphas in a font like that! The polka dot ribbon is American Crafts & the red decorative strip is made by trimming with deco scissors, punching adjacent holes with the cropadile & the dots are added with a vellum writer - I know this isn't vellum but it's just the perfect shade of black!