Author: Raptor Mama

I am seriously amazed that I have managed to keep up with Project Life for this long.  I was worried that I would get super behind and then be unable to come up with pictures or journaling for the days I’ve missed, but so far so good!  I’m not going to lie, there are a few still life photos in there that I’ve fudged after the fact, but I have a photo *representing* each day even if it might not have been taken that day.

A few things that have helped me keep up:

1. I use pictures that my husband and I take on our iPhones.  I take a ton of pictures with Michael’s DSLR, but even I don’t take photos every day with it (as evidenced by Kate’s blog, whoops.)  I don’t carry the giant DSLR camera everywhere, but I do have my phone pretty much everywhere.  Plus, taking a photo in the fabric store with your DSLR?  Not super discrete.  Snapping a quick photo with your phone?  Easy pretty much anywhere.  I love that these photos represent our everyday life.  I even went so far as to take a picture of our groceries out on the conveyer belt at HEB.  That will be neat to look back on it 10 years.

2.  I keep Project Life in its box on our kitchen table.  Michael works from home, which is awesome by the way, but since we share an office it means that I can’t get into my crafting area during Kate’s nap.  Since I keep Project Life out in the kitchen, I can work on it if when Kate naps.  My favorite thing to do though, is to work on it while Kate is doing stickers at the table with me.  She is crazy about stickers.

Oh, and a sticker tip.  Kate loves foam stickers, but the paper backings used to drive me nuts.  Now I give Kate a bowl for trash and she happily keeps all of her trash contained.  I thought it was going to take some time to get her to use the bowl correctly, but she took to it right away.  Sometimes I don’t think we give kids enough credit.

First off, Michael pointed out to me that the thank you notes were totally his idea and that’s why he was having her do handprints in the first place.  Whoops.  I guess great minds think alike.  🙂

On to today’s post.  Now, I realize that there is really nothing handmade about this activity, but it’s one of Kate’s favorite things so I thought I would showcase it here.  A few months ago we got her a wooden bead set by Haba.  (Incidentally, I love all things Haba.)  I thought that she would be too young for it just yet, but man has she proved me wrong.

I love how she gets this look of intense concentration when she’s threading the beads.  She chooses to play with this everyday.  She can’t do the big animal beads quite yet, but she totally rocks the other ones.

This activity works *way* better at her little table than at the high chair because her little table has a lip that runs along the edge.  Also, we were all happier once I tied a bead to the end of the string so that they weren’t all falling off the bottom all the time.  Duh.

Kate loves to fingerpaint and she especially loves doing “Kate’s hand!”  Yes, my daughter frequently refers to herself in the 3rd person.  Well, Michael had her making stamps of her hand on some index cards yesterday and I realized that they would make really cute thank you notes for her birthday gifts.

I had him help her make up a bunch and then I wrote notes on the backs this morning after they were dry.  I think it turned out cute!

 

So we decided that one box of yummy veggies every other week was just not enough for us.  That’s right folks, we signed up for another CSA.  This time we went with Johnson’s Backyard Garden.  Don’t get us wrong, we are still loving Farmhouse Delivery, we just thought, why not try something different too?

Johnson’s Backyard Garden is more of a true CSA in that it’s one family farm.  It seems like we get more food with Johnson’s, but more variety with Farmhouse.  (Michael disagrees with this, but I still think we get more fruit with Farmhouse.  That may be because I’m not a melon fan and that’s what we got with Johnson’s.)  We got a ton of squash, a melon, a bunch of peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, garlic, onions, beats, mint, basil, and I think some other stuff that I’m forgetting.  It was seriously a ton of food.

Johnson’s will deliver, but there is an extra charge.  Plus, apparently their delivery route was full so we pick ours up at the Round Rock farmers’ market.  This was our first time at this farmer’s market and Kate really liked it.  It was hellishly hot, but Kate got a popsicle and all was right with the world.  The popsicles were *really* good.  Next time I’m getting one of my own.  🙂

 

So remember when I decided to dye the easter eggs?  Yesterday I worked on the corresponding scrapbook page.  Now I’m not one to reinvent the wheel, so when I came up with a layout that I liked the other day I planned to use it again and again.  After all, there are only so many ways that you can arrange 9 4×6 photos in a 12X24 space.  This time I wanted to play with a layered look for the patterned paper strip.  I’ve been really drawn to this layered look for a long time, but haven’t been able to replicate it until now.  I’m liking it!

The “sweet” and “adorable” strips are actually bits of ribbon that I’ve had forever.  I can’t wait to play around with some more layering!  Maybe tonight.  🙂

So, Michael has the day off and it totally didn’t register that today’s a Monday and I should have a blog post up. Whoops!

Yesterday was Kate’s second birthday party and we had a great time celebrating with family and friends.

I would love to say that I made these cupcakes from scratch… That’s a lie. I was *thrilled* to pay a bakery to make these cupcakes. Kate asked for pink cupcakes and boy were they pink!

And here she is blowing out her candles. 🙂 You can see her gorgeous dress here that was a present from her aunt and uncle. Love! The plan is to have my awesome mimi help me trace a pattern from this one so that I can make some more. So cute!

So Raptor turns 2 today!  How did that happen?

I’m happy to say that I’ve busted out of my funk.  I don’t know what was going on…  First up, Kate’s birthday banner.  We went to Archiver’s and I let her pick the paper she wanted to use which she thought was pretty cool.

I cut out all of the circles and letters on my Cricut and then glued them together with a tape runner.  Then I punched holes in the circles and tied them together with some ribbon.

Overall, I’m very happy with it!  I was planning on making cupcake toppers as well, but I’m not sure if that’s going to get done before Sunday or not.  At least I got the cupcakes ordered!  I’m so glad that I’m not going to be making them this year.

On another note, we got our second CSA box yesterday and we’re still loving it.  I made some more lasagna, squash this time, but I froze half of it.  We’ll see how that turns out.  🙂  I thought that Kate was going to be all over helping me to mix the cheese, but when I showed her how to mix it with her hands she looked at me and went, “um, no.”

Maybe next time baby girl.

I am in a serious crafting rut.  I think partly it’s because I am in complete denial that my TINY BABY is turning 2 on Friday.  TWO!!!  How is this possible?  I am also freaking out mildy concerned that I have gotten nothing done for her party on Sunday.  Last year, high on sleep, I was a crafting machine.  (Kate didn’t sleep or nap until she was almost 10 months old.  For real.)  Seriously.  I finished a bunch of trim, redecorated the guest bathroom, made a banner, learned to decorate cakes with fondant, cleaned the whole house, baked cupcakes, made Kate a tutu for her birthday pics, hand stitched Kate a felt alphabet…  I could go on and on.  This year, not so much.  I think that I am so overwhelmed with everything that I wanted to get done that I have reacted by doing nothing but read angsty teen fiction about vampires.  Oh my.  It has to stop.  Tomorrow of course.  🙂

Michael took control today (thank goodness) and we got a few things accomplished.  I found some tasty cupcakes that we could order that weren’t $2.50 a piece and Kate and I are going to take care of that tomorrow afternoon.  We also went to the party place and bought cups and plates and stuff.  Now I can stop hemming and hawing over the “theme” because there’s not one.  Kate and I are going to buy some paper after yoga tomorrow and hopefully I can get her banner and some cupcake toppers knocked out during her nap.

I created an elaborate Pinterest board for Kate’s party but I think I’m just going to have to come to terms with the idea that I am not, in fact, Martha Stewart.  Kate’s one request?  Pink cupcakes.  I think I can make that happen.

So I have lots of crafty projects in the works, but nothing *finished* right now.  Yesterday I went over to help a friend with some flower arrangements for a third friend’s wedding.  I wish I could say that I had some mad skills as a florist, but usually I just get the grunt work.  This time I actually got to stick some roses into the gorgeous arrangements.  I claim no design credit.  🙂

By the time I left, they had gone through almost 1000 pink roses and were contemplating where they could buy some more locally.  Yikes.  The arrangements were stunning though.

On Saturday, I did 8 layouts.  Eight!!!  I even liked one of them.  🙂  After a wee bit more scrapping on Sunday I’m almost out of adhesive, but I am caught up through the end of February.  At least on Kate’s book.  My goal is to be one month behind, so I should be scrapping May right now, but hey, March is way closer to May than January.

As I was working on this page, I found myself wishing for some red star brads.  I even looked through my red embellishments to see if I had any.  Then I looked over at the paint from the d-a-d pictures (that’s still sitting on my desk) and went, duh I can paint some of the silver brads that I’ve had for a million years.  Now the smart thing to do would have been to go out to my car and get the florist foam that I have leftover from doing the 30 sucks project, but I’m lazy so I just ended up with paint all over my fingers.  Eh.  It’s washable.

I love this picture.