RaptorMama

I almost waited too long this year because I kept looking for an awesome patch of bluebonnets.  Well, I never found full, rolling hills of bluebonnets, but I knew that I would seriously regret it if I didn’t take any.  I also knew that the babies were not going to be able to hang for an evening session so I resigned myself to getting us up and moving this morning.  I almost talked myself out of it at 7am (I am the opposite of a morning person) but the flowers had already peaked and I’m pretty sure they’re going to be looking pretty raggedy by next weekend.  And I was treated to the most beautiful light.  It’s almost enough to convince me to get up early with my camera more often!  But not quite.  😉

Other than cropping them, these are straight out of the camera.

I will say that is harder than you would think to get 3 kids all smiling and looking at the camera at the same time!  One of my friends is going to teach me how to do a head swap.  🙂

And this out take of Kate cracks me up.  The expression on her face!  lol.

I had a lot of fun playing with my real camera this morning!  I think I’m going to throw gently place it in the diaper bag more often.  Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone takes some great pics, but I’ve been missing my big girl camera.

lol.  Maybe I should start with one goal: post some blog posts.  😉  For real though, I’m going to make an effort to start posting more regularly.  I have some projects and ideas that I’m working on so at least the inspiration is there.  I have plenty of time to type up the actual posts while I’m nursing babies.  The main hang up is in photographing projects and editing said photos.  Perhaps I’ll try to have a massive Project Life photo shoot and editing session tomorrow.  More likely I’ll end up making some new Project Life layouts.  lol.

Last month I didn’t really have set goals, but I did get a lot accomplished.  For one thing, I finished my 2015 Project Life!  And since I’m insane, I’ve just about decided to go back and do 2014 with traditional products.  I was supposed to be doing it digitally, but let’s be real here.  I’m not *that* big of a fan of photoshop.  I think I’m going to try to order the prints for it in big batches instead of printing at home like I usually do.  We’ll see.  I’m also pretty excited to make some actual scrapbook pages again!  I’ve gotten super behind while playing catch up with Project Life.  I’m way back in December of 2014!

I’ve also decided that I really want to do a gallery wall in our living room so I’ve got a whole Pinterest board full of ideas.  I’ve decided to do a Texas/ Austin/ map theme.  We’ll see.  lol.

Oh, and the babies are turning 1 next Saturday!!!  I have no idea how on earth that happened as they are just tiny tiny babies.  lol.  I’ve bowed to the inevitable and accepted that their party will not be the DIY extravaganza that Raptor’s first birthday was.  In fact, my sister saw that I was a basket case and offered her services as party planner for their birthday gift.  She’s the best sister ever!  I’ve also ordered some stuff off of Etsy, super cute outfits and those little faux chalkboard signs.  Outfits have already arrived, but I’m sweating the posters a bit.  Fingers crossed!

Raptor and I have also been continuing our Girl Scout adventures!  She completed her second Daisy journey and she is still super gung ho and doing the third one and earning her summit award.  I’m so proud of her.  🙂

Too long; didn’t read?  I’m making a comeback!  (maybe.  lol.)  And I’m adding some home decor projects, party planning goodness, and girl scout action to the mix.  Stay tuned!

Hello!  Long time no blog.  Things have been crazy around here!  We completely redid Raptor’s room, I organized the babies room, and I’m working on organizing my room.  The amount of stuff we have taken to Goodwill is astounding!  And there is still so much to go.  I’m also been on a huge Project Life kick.  Not only am I basically caught up with 2016 (I’m waiting for my Studio Calico kit to get here so that I can start on March) I’m making huge progress on filling in all of the gaps in 2015!  I started off the year with 22 missing weeks.  I’m now only missing 6.  Yes!!!  I really hope I can wrap them up in the next week or so so I can get that album out on my shelf.  Then I plan to stay current with 2016 and actually start scrapping some 12×12 layouts again!  I am woefully behind on the main scrapbook.  lol.

You might ask, why no blogging if you’ve been being so crafty?  Well, it’s really hard to take good pictures in my scrap room.  And it’s even harder to take good pictures of stuff in a page protector.  The glare!!!  My solution?  I’m just going to post some crappy iPhone pics.  Hey, it’s better than nothing right?

This was made largely using the Studio Calico Documenter Kit from December.  Love it.

I used my Fuse tool to seal in the acetate confetti in the middle pocket.  I love how it turned out.  🙂

First let’s see how January went, shall we?

1. Thank you notes: Embarrassingly enough, I still have a few to go.  Need to get those done tonight!
2. Blog: I did great until last week.  I need to figure out a better way to photograph my Project Life spreads.  The glare is driving me crazy.
3. Meal Plan/ Grocery Shop: I did pretty good here!  Although I have to admit that I’m resorting to instacart today.
4. Dinner Prep: Not bad!  I’d say I made 75% of the meals and I’m pretty happy with that.
5. Walk: This was kind of hit or miss.  But still, any amount of walking is an improvement over no walking.
6. December Daily: It’s done!  I just need to photograph it and blog it.
7. Project Life: Y’all.  My goal was 6 layouts.  I finished 9!!!  And I’m gearing up for more.  🙂
8. Scrapbook December 2014: Zero progress.
9. Scrapbook current stuff.  Also zero progress.  BUT I know that I go through phases of liking Project Life more or liking 12×12 more so I’m fine with it as long as I’m creating something.
10. Weekly Photos:  I’m not too sure if I managed 1 a week, but I did make it a point to take more pictures with my real camera.

On to goals for January!

1.  Continue with grocery shopping/ meal planning.
2. Continue with dinner prep.  Try to add one healthy dinner a week.  Either a new recipe or making an old favorite better for us.
3. Project Life: 6 layouts
4. Scrapbooking: 15 layouts.  Can be a combo of Project Life and traditional.
5. Spend more time playing with the babies.  Subtext: Spend less time playing online.
6. Set aside a block of time everyday to work on Mia’s therapies.
7. Crochet.  Learn to crochet (this is in progress) and finish 1 small project.
8. Fill up 1 donation box or trash bag a week.
9. Sell all the Girl Scout cookies.
10. Blog!!!

Still loving these kits!  In fact, I just knocked out my 4th layout and I think the number of cards was pretty spot on.  🙂  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Here’s the second layout from the kit, week 50.

Since I had so many cute cards and embellishments that I wanted to use, I printed 6 photos as 2×2 squares.  It also lets me save on printer paper since I can get all 6 to print as 1 4×6 photo!  🙂

Plus, I loved getting to include bunches of instagram pics.  🙂  Now the question…  Go back and fill in the gaps for 2015 or play with the January kit…  Or both!

Oh my gosh, y’all.  I am loving these Studio Calico kits so much!  I knocked out 2 spreads this weekend and I have my photos printed for a 3rd.  Fingers crossed for some good naps!  

Sorry about the glare.  I need to find a better way to photograph these I think.  Any thoughts?

My first Studio Calico box arrived today and I am in love!  I got the babies down for their naps and dug in.  ::drool::  If every month is as awesome as the 2 I just got, I think keeping up with Project Life just got a lot more likely.  🙂

Of course, right as I got my pictures printed out Xander woke up.  lol.  That’s ok.  I have all weekend to play!  Kate and I are also finishing up our Take Action Project this afternoon.  I ended up fast tracking the last half of our Girl Scout journey so that we could have our culminating garden party this weekend when her cousins are in town.  So looking forward to this!  And I finished my December Daily yesterday!  So much fun stuff to blog about as soon as I find some time to take pictures.  🙂

We are having so much fun with this Girl Scout journey!  🙂  Kate has even been coming up with extra crafts for us to do.  I love that she’s taking some ownership over this.  For our second session, we had a guest speaker.  Mi madre!  My mom has a spectacular garden so while we were over there this weekend she gave Kate a tour and talked to her about the garden in general and garden helpers (bees) specifically.  Session 2 has a helpful bee so it seemed appropriate.  Then we made a bee craft!

We made SWAPs (something with a pin) which apparently is a Girl Scout thing now.  I’d never heard of them, I guess they’re all the rage.  At any rate, I’ve seen loads of cute SWAPs holders on Pinterest.  lol.  I got the idea for these from this blog and they were super easy.  I hot glued 3 yellow pom poms together, then we used a black pipe cleaner to attach it to the safety pin.  We tied on some tule and we were done!  Originally it was supposed to have googly eyes, but I couldn’t find any so I told Kate to just imagine that they had eyes.  lol.

So…  Kate started Girl Scouts this year and she and I are loving it!  Her troop is an awesome mix of kindergartners and first graders and all but one are new to Girl Scouts this year.  The girls have been busily earning their petals (those are like badges for Daisies) with a lot of fun patches along the way.  We love patches.  🙂

The other day, Kate asked me what her apron would look like when she had earned everything and was ready to bridge to Brownies.  I pulled up a picture, but pointed out that we were not going to earn the journeys with the troop since we would only be daisies for one year.  (If you’re not familiar with the new program, most of the badges have been replaced with journeys.  Journeys are generally meant to be earned over the course of about 6 meetings, though there are programs to earn them in a day.  There are 3 journeys at each level and, if you earn all 3, you get the summit award.)

I asked Kate if she wanted to try to earn a journey on her own (one of her friends has done a journey) and she was super enthusiastic about it.  In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that she wants to earn all 3.  Well, fine by me, we’re having so much fun with this one that I’m down for 2 more.  🙂  I talked to her troop leader about it and she was very encouraging.  In fact, one of her daughters is in first grade as well so we might work on the other 2 journeys together.

We’re adjusting a few things from the leader book, mainly taking out the group games and substituting crafts, and I think it’s going really well.  Since part of the point of doing this is to have some quality one on one time with Kate, I’m being very intentional about our “meetings.”  She wears her apron (omg, she’s so cute in it) and we start by saying the Promise and the Law.  Then we read the chapter in the journey book, do any of the written activities in the book, and do a related craft.  For our first meeting, I bought some flower pots, potting soil, and seeds at the Dollar Store.  I painted white around the rim of the pots to prepare them.  Then Kate and I talked about the Law and she decided on her favorite line, “Be a sister to every Girl Scout.”  We talked a little bit about some ways that she could enact that in her daily life and then she wrote it on one of the flower pots.  Since we had 3 more, I asked her if she would rather choose 3 more lines from the Law (there are 10 total) or if she wanted to me write the 3 lines of the promise.  She decided to go with the promise.  Then she colored 3 of the pots with sharpies and I colored 1.  Once she was satisfied with the crafty portion, we planted some seeds.  Tending to this little garden seems to be the point of the 1st 3rd of the journey, so fingers crossed that our dollar store seeds sprout for us.  🙂  We end our meetings by making a Daisy Circle and singing the Make New Friends song.

There are so many cute ideas online that I’m not even sure where all to link back to.  Mostly I think I’m using this site which is a council’s website that has amazing lesson plans for all of the journeys and a bunch of badges, and this site which is a blog where a mom is walking you through what she did with her troop.

Oh letterboxing.  We went once when Kate was 3 or 4 and had a blast, but when I looked in to doing it again there weren’t a ton of boxes in our area so I kind of gave up on the idea.  Well apparently it’s now super popular in our area!  There were 2 letterboxes in the park where we released the tadpoles so we planned on finding them after to soften the blow of making Kate release “her favorite pets!”

What is letterboxing you ask?  It’s like a little scavenger hunt.  You get clues off of a website (here‘s the one we used) and then follow the clues to find a little box.  Inside the box is a log book and a stamp.  You also have a personal log book and stamp.  You put your stamp in their log book and put their stamp in your log book.  Et voila!

We only ended up finding one because it was a bit cold for the babies, but I totally want to start doing this!  It gave us a great reason for a family walk/ hike which is something we’ve been wanting to do anyway.  Plus it’s just fun to collect stamps!

Kate enjoyed looking through the box’s log book to see who had visited in the past.

It turns out that there’s a Brownie badge for letterboxing!  (Which I think explains the increase in boxes.  The girls have to “plant” a box to get the badge.)  Kate’s troop leader saw our letterboxing pics online and asked if I would consider leading the letterboxing badge next year.  Yes please! I had the pinterest board going within 30 seconds.  lol.