Crafting and kids.
So, I’m bored with my PL cards. I’m going to let myself buy one set of the theme cards, and then if I can get 3 weeks done I’ll buy the Halloween set. Here’s hoping I can get at least 1 week done today! If I do, I’ll post it.
Also, I’m on a roll with the organization! Kate has a space in the art room now and she’s thrilled.
I made another set of felt letters this fall and never blogged them. Whoops. I’ll be honest, I think this might be my last set. They take forever to make. I think if I do make some more, I’ll be raising my prices.
This set was for a new mom that wanted an alternative to the onesie stickers. She got the idea from my good friend Libby who did the same thing with a set I made for her first son.
I went over to my friend’s house yesterday and was once again totally jealous of how organized and clutter free her house is. After some word vomit on my part about how I couldn’t possible organize my pantry because it’s full of crap that has no other place to go (like Raptor’s art supplies) she suggested I start in the art room. And I am! January is the month I will tackle the art room. In February, I’ll pick a different room. (Hopefully. There’s a strong possibility that I’ll throw in the towel tomorrow on the whole thing. lol.)
Some background. We have an extra bedroom that we call the art room. Half of it is RaptorDad’s art supplies and half of it is my scrapbooking/ general crafting supplies. About 6 years ago, we went to Ikea and put butcher block countertops along 3 of the walls. The fourth wall has the closet and the door. We also bought some organization stuff and it worked really well for the way I scrapped 6 years ago. Now, my 6 year old supplies that I never use are still pretty well organized. My 3 year old supplies are pilled on top of every surface. And my current supplies are in a rolling cart in our bedroom since that’s where I actually scrapbook. ::sigh:: I’ve been scrapbooking since 1999 and I’ve basically never thrown away a thing. In addition, this room is pretty much our dumping ground for everything.
The plan? Purge purge purge! I’m setting aside of box of stuff for Raptor to play with, and then the rest is going in the trash. I filled up a whole trash bag yesterday and it was so freeing! Among my realizations were that, while I love to hoard memorabilia, I never ever use it on my pages. Even if by some chance I do go back and scrap that weekend in Dallas 6 years ago, I’m not going to put the hotel brochure on the page! This times a thousand. Programs, concert tickets, brochures, all gone! I can’t quite bring myself to start throwing away the post cards yet, but I’m close.
My ultimate goals for the room are:
1. All of my supplies purged/ organized.
2. Move all of the crafting crap out of our bedroom.
3. Put ongoing projects (December Daily, knitting, etc.) in some kind of cases or boxes so I can pull them out and work on them in the bedroom.
4. Create a space for Raptor to craft with me in the art room.
5. Get Raptor’s art supplies out of my pantry/ kitchen cabinets.
6. Wish list: Improve the lighting so I can photograph layouts on my table.
In the past 2 days, I’ve worked on my half of the closet and have started on my drawer system of embellishments. In the bottom of one drawer, I came across my in-progress travel journals. What are travel journals? Let me tell you. 🙂 I’ve done these 3 different times with varying degrees of success. The first was a 2 week trip while I was studying abroad. I basically bought a small sketch book and packed it with a glue stick and a pen. The idea was that every night, I would sit down and glue in any ephemera I had picked up and journal about the day. Of course, I’m a bit long winded (imagine that!) so I ended up finishing 2 or 3 days of the 2 weeks and then just collecting a bunch of stuff to glue in later. It was a lot of fun reading back over those 2 days, but I had to be honest with myself that I was never going to finish this project. I had no idea what any of the papers were anymore (it was 13 years ago) so I kept the finished bit and threw all of the other crap away!
The second time I tried this was a 3 week trip to South America with one of my best friends (7 1/2 years ago). I did better this time, and I had a ton of fun working on the project in the evenings in our hostels or sitting at cafes etc. Still, I was soooooo far behind. I think I had finished a week by the time we came home. I was good though about keeping everything sorted by day and writing notes of what I wanted to write about. After we got back, RaptorDad and I would go hang out at coffee shops on the regular. He would bring his sketchbook and I would bring this project. I *almost* finished it, but then Raptor came into our lives and I’ve been scrapping her ever since. Imagine my delight when I pulled out the final volume (I think I ended up using 4 notebooks?) and realized that I only had 1 day left to finish, our travel day. I sat my butt down and made myself finish it! And it feels great! Talk about checking off a long time unfinished project!
The third time was when RaptorDad and I went to Europe 5 1/2 years ago. I’ll be honest, I don’t think much of this book is done at all. I’ll take a look at it tomorrow, but I imagine it’ll go the way of the Italy one- in the trash aside from the 1 or 2 days that happen to be done. And you know what? I don’t feel bad about it!
Would I do this again if we went on another trip? Absolutely! I love the one that I finished and it was fun to take a look at the few days from the others. I took a few pics of the South America one so you could get a better idea of what I’m talking about.
One of my favorite things to include is post cards! At the time, I was a terrible photographer, but I love pictures. This also helped me to remember what all of the pictures were when I came home.
More postcards. The one on the right is folded over because I wanted to be able to see both sides.
I also love to include receipts! I think it’s fun to look back and see how much stuff cost, especially in different currencies. Ignore the craziness, I was too lazy to pull it into photoshop to blur my name so I used the spot tool in lightroom. 😉 I also included my boarding pass.
Sometimes I put in really random stuff. This was inside a kinder egg. I fell in love with kinder eggs when I was studying abroad, but you can’t really buy them in the US. I was so excited to find them in South America! If you don’t know, they’re thin hollow chocolate eggs with a toy inside. 🙂
I actually scored some of these die cut packs at Hobby Lobby! I was pleasantly surprised to see current product. 🙂
So everything on this page aside from the letter stickers/ thickers is from that die cut pack. And I still have tons more to play with! It was a great value.
I’m still in withdrawal from using up all of my The Pier slide frames, so I was thrilled to find 2 frames in this pack.
And these tags? Precious! I’m not in love with the look of the title, but I’m sooooooo far behind that I’m just going with it. 🙂
We had a bit of fun with the sparklers this year. 🙂
May the Force be with you!
Rainbow!
RaptorDad did this heart. <3
Then a couple where I cranked up the ISO and tried to get her in focus using only the light from the sparklers.
Next year, I’m busting out the tripod. 🙂
I think it’s fair to say that I was the opposite of productive in November and December. Sometimes that’s ok though! I go through periods when I’m super creative and periods where the well has run a bit dry. I’ve been in a dry spell for a while, but I’m pretty sure it’s run it’s course. I’m going to set 10 goals for January. Not for 2014, just for January. I do better in smaller chunks. Maybe I’ll set new goals in February. 🙂
1. Healthy Eating! We already tend to eat pretty good meals, mostly organic, avoid processed foods, etc. (I actually have broth simmering on the stove right now!) Our problem tends to be snacking on crap when Kate’s not around (I freely admit to being a food hypocrite) and portion sizes. Goals should be measurable, so let’s say I’ll try out 4 new healthy dinner recipes, and come up with a plan to curb the snacking.
2. Renew Teaching Certificate! Actually, it’s up for renewal in March, but I need to finish my continuing ed hours. I need to check, but I’m pretty sure I have 120 out of 150 done. I want to wrap up the remaining ones and start studying for the EC-4 Generalist test. I’m thinking of taking it this spring.
3. Finish October Daily! I’m halfway done and I’d love to wrap it up. I’d actually really love to play with my December Daily goodies… Just need to get some pictures edited.
4. Send out Christmas Cards! It would be more accurate to call them MLK Day cards at this point, but I do still want to send them out. We got some awesome family pictures done, I just need to design/ order the cards.
5. Exercise! I would love us to start walking every night as a family. Maybe after dinner? Maybe after rest time? I need to figure this out so we can just make it a daily habit. Before Raptor was born, we took our dog on 2 walks a day. I know we can do this. I also want to start walking on the treadmill again, but I’m focusing on family walks first.
Uh, these are all pretty big goals. Maybe I should throw in some filler ones…
6. Start blogging again! 3 times a week. No more excuses.
7. Plan a fun outing with Raptor.
8. Put some pictures up on Raptor’s personal blog. It’s looking a bit lonely over there.
9. Start on Project Life 2014. Even if I’m woefully behind on 2013.
10. Purge! Get rid of one trash bag or goodwill box a week.
I’m feeling super behind on my scrapping. I need to sit down, edit a big batch of pictures, and get some stuff in albums. Might be time to knock out a bunch of simple pages just to get them done. I’m also so far behind on Project Life. I need to sit down once the computer is set up again and just do a bunch of weeks in a row. I like this project a lot more when I’m caught up.
One big goal I did meet was my reading goal for 2013! I read 104 books (2 a week) in 2013. I’m keeping that goal for 2014 as well. 🙂
I’m blogging from my phone today (our iMac got moved for a Christmas party and our house isn’t quite back to normal yet) but I just had to share this. I swear, it’s the easiest, most satisfying, not to mention warmest, craft project I’ve ever done.
I know what you’re thinking, but hear me out. Yes, a trained monkey could make one of these blankets, but they’re so warm and snuggly! And I made 2 of them in just a few hours.
The first one was from a kit that RaptorDad liked. I didn’t find a kit that I liked, so I just bought some fleece by the yard. The kit was easier since it already had all of the cut lines marked, but it really didn’t take that long to measure and draw all of the lines on the second blanket. Plus I got to pick my pattern *and* I made it a bit longer- 2 yards. Perfection.
Does anyone actually need directions? You just cut a bunch of stripes and then tie them together. I tied about every tenth set while I was cutting to help me keep them together. Mine were 5 inches by 1 inch. Go forth. By fleece (use your coupon!). Cut, tie, snuggle.
I got a lovely box of goodies yesterday from twopeas with all of the stuff I had ordered for December Daily! I’m structuring it a little differently than I have in the past since I wanted to play with divided page protectors. I decided to go with the Daily Flash system from October Afternoon and, for the most part, I’m happy with it. I was a bit dissapointed that the 4×6 pockets are not a true 4×6- more like 4 1/4 by 6 1/4. I was hoping to be able to just drop photos in the pockets, but it seems that I’ll have to mat them all. Also, any premade 4×6 cards will not work. I’m using mostly Crate Paper’s Bundled Up for paper and embellishments and OMG. I have not been so in love with a Christmas line in years. I have a feeling I’ll be ordering a lot more of this for my regular 12×12 December layouts. 🙂
I love the pockets! I’ve been kind of in a funk lately with my scrapping and this was enough of a format change to make me love it again. I kind of viewed each pocket as its own little canvas and, while I did try to make sure the page worked as a whole, I wasn’t overly fussed by it.
I considered adding some sort of embellishment to this picture, but decided to leave it alone.This is Raptor at our new Children’s Museum. (Which is the bomb by the way.)
This card is from a cutapart sheet by Jillibean Soup. I inked the edges and added some twine to a Thicker number 1.
I did trim the photo down a bit side to side, but not top to bottom. You can see how much of the mat shows. Like I said, a bit annoying, but not horrible. I added some twine and a few enamel dots.
I’m hoping to play with it some more today!
Things have been a bit crazy around here the past few weeks. Raptor and I have been trading illness back and forth which has resulted in a bit of a forced bloging break. I’m back though! I’m still working on my October Daily; I’m a little over halfway done and I’m hoping I can knock it out in the next week or so. My big question currently is if I should post it now or wait for next October… I also finally decided on my December Daily structure and ordered some supplies! More on that later. (If they ever arrive.)
It’s confession time. While I love to bake, I don’t love making sugar cookies. Among the multiple reasons is the fact that I don’t want 5 dozen cookies hanging around my house waiting for me to eat them! Frozen dough makes 2 dozen. Much more reasonable. Next time I might freeze half and just do 1 dozen.
I also have a serious sprinkle addiction. I have 6 different sprinkles for Christmas alone.
Also? I love that Wilton coloring gel that comes in little pots. I mean, how else are you going to get RED icing. True red, not pink. And yes, I fully get the hypocrasy of my cookie decorating obsession given my general neuroses about high fructose corn syrup and food dye. What can I say, I’m not dying icing with beet juice. In for a penny, in for a pound and all that jazz.
I just love the level of concentration!
This one is supposed to be The Grinch. Notice the Christmas tree eyes, candy cane nose, and snowflake hair and teeth. Or maybe the sugar sprinkles were the hair? Still, *awesome!*
The whole Raptor family is having a food overhaul in January (well, maybe not little Raptor. She eats pretty well, Christmas cookis excluded.) so we’re living it up now.
I got out a few boxes of Christmas decorations this weekend and started decorating!
We don’t have a mantle, so I used whatever surfaces I could find. 🙂 I put our pepermint topiearies from last year on Kate’s toy cabinet and hung our advent calendar above it.
I need to go through and add the cards that say what we’ll do each day, but I’m still loving it.
I put our nativity set on top of the piano. I actually like it a lot here. Before I had it on one of our built in book shelves and it seemed pretty cramped. Here there’s more room to spread out. I have Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus elevated on a Melissa and Doug food crate so they weren’t blocked by the music stand. I have plans to cover the crate with some burlap or something. You know, someday. lol.
I still like the card wreath, at least for now. I’m thinking I’ll remake it at some point with something other than a clothes hanger. It doesn’t stay as a perfect circle… Still, I love the concept.
If the weather isn’t terrible, we have plans to go cut down a Christmas tree this weekend! Our stockings are in with our ornaments. 🙂