Author: Raptor Mama

Working on catching up!  🙂

Still loving this project!  Also clearly loving my waterproof camera.  🙂

Do you guys like seeing my Project Life layout every week?  Would you rather see more traditional layouts?  More cooking disasters?  More crafts?  Leave me a comment and let me know what you want to see more of.  🙂

 

 

So, I decided to cheat and reuse all of my Valentine’s Day stuff this week.  I’m so glad I did!

I have all of the trays and crafts in the same box as our party decorations so I went ahead and put some of them up too.  Raptor is beyond thrilled.

Here is our counting work.  I’m not entirely sure that we have all 60 counters anymore, but since this is aimed for for E and we’re working on 1-5, I think we’ll be fine.

I also pulled out our uppercase/ lowercase letter magnets.  I might just work with E on putting them in order, but if they want to play with them as magnets I’ll get out a cookie sheet.

I threw in the puffs last week almost as an afterthought, but they were a big hit with all 3 girls!  I couldn’t find my heart ice cube tray, so I just used a muffin tin.

For math, I wrote out several problems and put them in a tin with a bunch of foam heart stickers.  I’m thinking they can stick the hearts to the paper to count with.

Basic craft with some stamps.  I’ll throw in the safety scissors when I find them.

I imagine this will actually be the biggest hit.  We got Raptor some new playdoh and I pulled out our party table cloth in hopes of containing some of the mess.  I’m so excited for this week!  I had forgotten how much fun it is to do a holiday theme.  There’s just so much fun stuff to work with.  🙂  We’ll be working on this for for 2 weeks I’m sure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love Valentine’s Day and I freely admit that I bought waaaay too much Valentine’s Day paper back in January thinking that Raptor and I would do lots of fun picture worthy things for the holiday.  Then RaptorDad got sick and I just didn’t take that many pictures in February.  I’ll be set for next year!

The pictures aren’t great.  What can I say, Raptor and I were having too much fun at her party to take many.  🙂  I scrapped them anyway because I they make me happy.  I love this line from Imaginisce.  The hexagons are precious!  I think this line is too cute to pack up until next year.  You just might see it on some non-Valentine’s Day layouts.  🙂

Initially, I inked the edges of the hearts like I did with the paper layers.  It looked a bit off though so I left them plain.  I think it looks better this way.

I deliberately left off any journaling.  Her party ended up being perfect, but there was quite a bit of upset in the days leading up to it which I didn’t feel like really had a place in her scrapbook.  I have the less pleasant aspects of the story in Project Life and that’s quite enough for me.  I like to keep her book positive.

 

 

 

We went on vacation this weekend so I decided to devote the entire right hand page to that.  🙂

I had such a hard time narrowing down the photos that RaptorDad suggested I use a photo instead of a title card.  I think I like it.  🙂

I modified the template so I could add more pictures.  One of the things that I love most about going digital for Project Life is that I can make changes to the template like this without it affecting the next week’s layout.

 

 

I love this new camping line from Jillibean Soup!  I’m almost out of it and I’m totally going to buy more.  Sorry for the excessive blurring on this one.  It’s kids from Kate’s class so I decided to err on the side of caution.

 

Today, my baby turns 4.  FOUR!  I’ll try to avoid getting all sobby and introspective here on the blog.  🙂  I have a tradition for her birthday pictures.  When she turned 1, she had 1 smash cake.  When she turned 2, she had 2 balloons.  When she turned 3, she had 3 scoops of ice cream.  I’m having a harder time finding 4 of something.

I had the idea of her underwater holding 4 rings, but getting good pictures underwater is such a crap shoot.  At least with my camera and unwillingness to open my eyes underwater.  lol.

I’ve been thinking of taking her to this crazy candy store in South Austin and giving her 4 of those big lollipops, but we just haven’t made it down there.  We passed by a little candy store and I gave it a shot, but they didn’t have the big multicolored lollipops and they mostly had chocolate.  While I’m sure it’s all delicious, it wasn’t the colorful backdrop I was going for.  I’m going to keep brainstorming this week.

In other news, June is over!  Let’s see how the goals faired.

1.  30 layouts in June.  Well, I did 10.  While it may not be 1 a day, it’s still pretty impressive for me.  I’m loving all of the layouts I’m getting done.

2.  Elephant, Frog, Garden, and Heart Letter a Week units prepped and blogged.  I got 3 of the 4 up on the blog, and most of the Heart stuff is done since I’m reusing all of the Valentine’s Day stuff.  We’re going to be out of town for most of the week so we’re going to stick with G is for Garden until next Monday.

3.  Edit pics for February, March, April, and May.  This one was down to the wire!  I had a free shipping code for Persnickety Prints that expired on the 30th.  At about 2:00 on the 29th, I remembered this.  Yikes!  I spent the whole afternoon/ evening editing (thus no new page to put up) and then RaptorDad gave up a large chunk of his time to get them all uploaded and ordered.  I can’t wait to get them in.  In addition to really wanting to have some summer pictures to scrap, I should be able to finish last years Project Life!

4.  Photos ordered.  Done and done.  See 3.

5.  4 new Digital Project Life layouts.  Done, although I am still behind.  I need to just make some simpler ones for a few weeks so I can catch up.  I feel like I get more of the story told when I dealing with the current week.  Side note, it was much easier to order pictures to scrap when all of the photos were already organized, culled, and edited!  Loving the new work flow.

6.  2 new recipes.  I actually tried 3!  Including roasting a whole chicken and then making stock!  I might have to take some pictures and write a blog post for that one next time I do it.

 

 

I’m such a slacker.  No post on Wednesday and today’s post is up late.  What can I say, it’s summer!  I’ve been channeling my inner Martha Stewart this week.  I roasted a whole chicken!  (Ok, RaptorDad had to give significant help because, well, ew.)  And now I have the carcass simmering on the stove to make broth.  I feel like such a good hippie.  🙂

In other news, I made a scrapbook page!  This is probably the fastest I’ve ever made one.  I bought this awesome Jillibean Soup paper and diecut pack on Tuesday, took the pictures on Wednesday and scrapbooked it on Thursday.  Love it.

 

Time for a new theme!  I had a really hard time deciding on what to do for G.  Gorilla?  Giraffe?  Goat?  None of these were really striking my fancy, which was a bummer since I had tons of ideas for F.  Frogs, fish, flowers…  Then it hit me.  I could do flowers if we did G is for Garden!  Perfect.  Here are my trays for the week.

I found these flower stickers at Hobby Lobby and thought that we could continue with our color wheel/ rainbow fun.  I wouldn’t have repeated it, but that was the first thing Kate pulled out when I told her to get her last playing in with the frogs.  I probably should have made the color wheel in photoshop and printed it out, but I’m a bit pressed for time this week so I just drew it with a sharpie.

Here’s another activity with the stickers.  The idea is to put one in each spot and then cut them apart.  Extension ideas include making patterns or rainbows.

I made this one with E (3.5) in mind, but as soon as Raptor saw it she demanded to play with it.  First she just put one puff in each spot using the tongs.  Then I suggested she make some patterns and try to replicate them.  She really liked this.

We’re taking a week off of the sight words, but I thought we’d still do a bit of math.  The problems are on the stems and the answers are on the flowers.  I made these more with A (almost 6) in mind since I think they might be a bit hard for Kate to do without counters.  She frequently surprises me though so we’ll see.  🙂

I was cleaning up my scrap desk (shocking I know) and I came across these stamps so I threw them in a tray with a stamp pad and some paper.  I figure the girls can make some gardens and then color them in.  🙂

I also have some foam flower stickers which I figure we’ll play with this week.  It’s a bit late in the season to be growing things from seed here on the surface of the sun, but I’m pondering ways to do this with the girls.  We’ll see.  RaptorDad also really wants to make a “Dirt Cake” so we might be doing that later in the week.

I’m also halfway through with Raptor’s birthday banner, so finishing that is on the list for this week along with assembling goodie bags.  And maybe some party decorations.  Yikes!    Let’s hope it’s a productive week!

 

 

 

 

 

I’m a few weeks behind (it’s currently week 12) but I’m working on catching up.  Rather, I’m treading water.  Maybe catching up will come next week.  🙂

The To Do list for tomorrow includes G is for Garden and photo editing.  Of course, RaptorDad just fixed one of the computers so that I can print photos at home again so scrapping might win out.  🙂