RaptorMama

I finished them!  I used this tutorial and it’s great so I didn’t feel compelled to reinvent the wheel.  🙂

The main change I made was to use the same fabric for all of it instead of trying to find coordinating fabrics for the outer, inner, and handle.  I had a hard enough time picking coordinating fabrics for Baby Girl and Baby Boy!  Not to mention, I could feel my feet started to swell while I hemmed and hawed in the fabric section of Joannes.

Here’s Baby Boy’s!  Incidentally, we’ve reached the point in the pregnancy where we’re doing phone photos.  #SorryNotSorry

And here’s Baby Girl’s!  I’m really proud of how these turned out.  And it only took 2 days which is pretty good considering my lack of sewing skills.  lol.

Speaking of the babies, Baby A is a stinker and has decided to flip around into the breech position.  What does this mean?  It means we now have a c-section scheduled for April 8th.  Y’all, that’s less than 3 weeks away!  Eeep!  Time to prioritize a few last minute projects while making sure to take lots of put-your-feet-up breaks to avoid the dreaded bed rest.

Whew.  Last week was a week, you know?  One of those weeks.  Raptor, who is almost never sick, got a nasty stomach bug that she so generously shared with me.  She and I were out of commission for almost a week.  I literally cannot remember a time in my life when I have been so sick.  Plus, RaptorDad and Raptor left on an epic road trip yesterday for Spring Break and he was trying to get everything packed and ready while taking care of 2 sickies.  I finally started to feel like myself this weekend and my mom came over to help me go some spring cleaning before the babies’ arrival.  And by help, I mean that she made me sit on the couch and just chat with her while she cleaned like a wee tiny tornado.  She’s awesome.  🙂

I took the opportunity to go ahead and (finally) finish up the wipes!  Incidentally, I made twice as many as I need.  lol.  I’m pleased with how they turned out.

And if you’re curious, this is that it looks like when you’re 33 weeks 4 days pregnant with 2 baby dinosaurs.  3 1/2 weeks left!

 

 

I did a bit of scrapping this morning after dropping Raptor off at school.  I decided to try and tackle some of my December pages before my box of new goodies got here.  I know once that happens I’m just going to want to scrap summer pages because I ordered some delicious summer papers!  🙂

Photo credit goes to the lovely Libby (and I promise the pics aren’t blurry in real life!  I just suck at taking pictures of pictures.  lol.)  This page actually came together pretty quick.  The red paper was a scrap that was already that size, and the strip at the bottom is actually the branding strip.  I found another branding strip cut off (I love it when they have cute stuff on the back!) and added it to the top.

Then I just added a title using some thickers (the “s” is actually an “8” that I cut up), some journaling, and some super simple embellishment clusters.  In this case, washi, a flair badge, and a few wood veneers.  Here’s hoping for some scrappy time this weekend.  🙂

 

 

Slowly but surely plugging along.  🙂

I’m still using almost exclusively phone photos because those are the photos that are being taken these days.  🙂

This was the week that my baby sister got married so I devoted the right hand page to the wedding festivities.  She hired an amazing photographer so I didn’t even bother to bring my camera to the wedding.  You know what?  It was fantastic!  I can’t wait to see the professional pics!

I love this card.  I didn’t have enough to say to justify using a whole card, so I found a filler card that I liked, added an acrylic heart that I probably bought 10 years ago, and wrote around it.  It turned out just as I had hoped.

 

 

We had a “snow day” today so Raptor and I worked on some crafty projects.  🙂  First up was a Project Life spread.

Only 47 more spreads to go.  lol.

 

Before Raptor was born, I added patterned rick rack to a bunch of gerber prefolds to use as burp rags.  It was super cute and it only took a few minutes.  Why not just use these same ones for the twins?  Well, because they are a little worse for wear.  lol.  We use them all the time to dry dishes, clean up spills, and more.  Have I mentioned that we don’t use paper towels?

My initial plan was just to make some new ones with the same patterned rick rack.  A few problems soon became apparent.  First, despite buying premium prefolds again, they were super rough and scratchy this time.  I guess I got organic ones last time?  Or maybe a different brand?  Second, I kind of wanted a way to distinguish between baby burp rags and kitchen burp rags.  Third?  I can’t find the damn rick rack.  lol.  Time for plan B.  lol.

I was playing around on Pinterest, and I found this tutorial.  Perfection.  And goodness knows I have plenty of flannel laying around.  It was super easy.  I was able to do all 9 in 1 day.  First I cut out the flannel using the rotary cutter.  I just measured the center of the burp rag and added about an inch.  Sorry, no pics of that step.  I was working with limited time first thing in the morning.

 

Then I *gasp* ironed the seams.  I know, I know.  I was scared of the iron too, but it was really no big deal and it did make the rest of the project easier.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to go crazy and start ironing clothes or anything.  lol.

 

Here you can see that I just went around and ironed about a half inch on each side.  Then I just pinned the flannel to the center of the diapers.  I ended up getting the Gerber prefolds since that’s what they had at Target and they’re, well, far from perfectly stitched.  lol.  Good news is that it took the pressure off of me a bit with the stitching since no amount of pinning was going to make them perfect rectangles.  lol.

 

Then I just went around the edges with the zig zag stitch.  Easy peezy.  🙂

You can see that the stitching isn’t perfect, but I’m currently embracing imperfections.  After all, a baby is just going to throw up on it.  lol.  Overall, I’m super happy with how these turned out.  The flannel is nice and soft which is awesome considering how rough the diapers themselves were.  Plus, I can easily tell these apart from our kitchen rags.  Bonus?  Super cute.  I think I might add these to my baby shower gift idea list.  🙂

 

 

I made a page that I like!  lol.  You may have noticed that I make a lot of pages where I cut an inch off of 2 sides of patterned paper and then back it with cardstock to have a bit of a frame for the background.  As you can imagine, this leaves me with a ton of 1 inch strips of paper.  Today I decided to use some of them.  🙂

As you can see, I just took a bunch of the strips from my Jillibean Soup drawer (I love their B sides!) and layered them to mat the photos.  Then I added a few strips of washi tape and a couple of stickers.

If I do a page like this again, I think I’d add even more embellishments to the strips of paper, but all in all I’m happy with how this turned out.

In other news, I just placed a huge order with scrapbook.com and I cannot wait for it to get here!  After making over 80 pages in the last 2 months without buying anything aside from cardstock, it’s time for some new product!  I will say, I’ve enjoyed falling in love with some of my old papers again, but there’s nothing like a big box of goodies to inspire me.  🙂

Speaking of inspiration, how did I do on February’s goals?  Well, not as good as I did on January’s, but I did get quite a bit accomplished.

1. Baby Girl’s Blanket- Well, I got a teeny bit done, but I really need to put in some time on this one.
2. Finish Felt Letters- I have got to work on these.  For serious.
3. 2014 Project Life- I got 2 out of the 5 layouts done.  That’s something, right?  lol.
4. 2015 Project Life- I got 2 of the 4 done.  I want to catch up on this next month.
5. Add trim to burp rags.  Done!  I’ll be blogging this soon.  They’re super cute.
6. Fraycheck wipes.  Ugh.  I need to buy the fraycheck so I can finish these already.
7. Scrap September 2013.  Done!  I got 9 layouts done and it feels great.
8. Scrap October 2013.  Also done!  11 layouts for this month.  🙂
9. Scrap November 2013.  So close.  Only 2 more to go.
10. Scrap December 2013.  I think I was a bit ambitious with the scrappy goals.  lol.  2 left to go in this month as well.  You guys!  That means I only have 4 more layouts left in 2013!  Sweet!
11. Blog!  I was able to get a blog post up 3 times a week this month which was my goal!

I set some ridiculous lofty goals for February, so even though I didn’t meet all of them I’m feeling pretty great about the progress that I did make.

Now March…  Since the babies are going to be here early to mid April, the pressure is on!  Also, RaptorDad is taking Raptor on a wee road trip for Spring Break so I’m going to have a few days of dedicated crafty time.  Yay!  So goals for March.

1. Shopping List for Frozen Meals
2. Assemble/ Freeze Casseroles (0/3). I want to make several batches of lasagna, mac n cheese, and something else and freeze them so we don’t starve when the twins arrive.
3. Scrap November 2013.  Only 2 to go!
4. Scrap December 2013.  I’m actually hoping to knock out most of these before my big box of scrappy goodness arrives.  I know I’m only going to want to play with new things then and I didn’t order any Christmas stuff.  lol.
5. Scrap February 2014.  Believe it or not, January 2014 is already done.  As is March.  🙂  I may end up skipping February for now and working on April since I didn’t order any Valentine’s Day stuff, but I did order some summery stuff.
6. Finish Baby Girl’s Blanket.  Down to the wire here folks.  Yikes.
7. Finish Felt Letters.  It’s pathetic that these still aren’t done.
8. Make Carseat Covers.  I’m excited about these!  I found a tutorial on line and I can’t wait to go pick out fabric for them.  🙂
9. 2014 Project Life (0/6)
10. 2015 Project Life (0/6)
11. Paint Nursery.  Soon!
12. Assemble all of the Baby Stuff!
13. Summer Activities for Raptor.  I want to come up with some throw down activities/ crafts for her for this summer.
14. Blog! (0/27). This seems ridiculous, but it will give me a buffer through April.  I’d really like to be able to have some content post while we’re busy with babies.  🙂  I’m think I’m going to photograph some of my older layouts and put them up on the blog.  I spotted a few blog worthy ones while I was assembling the 2013 (part 2) album.

 

 

Raptor and I finished a project for the babies today!  We made them little taggie blankets.  Raptor loves hers as a baby so I decided it was time to make some for the twins.  She was a big help finding lots of ribbon to use which partially explains why poor baby boy has so much pink on his.  lol.  May as well get him used to it early.  🙂

I did a tutorial of sorts here so I didn’t want to try to make another.  The big change this time is that didn’t stitch the ribbon on first, I just stitched it all together at the same time.  I also top stitched it, but if I had a do over I would have skipped that as it didn’t make much of a difference.  Mainly I did it so I could tell Raptor’s blanket apart from Baby Sister’s.

Basically, cut out 16 lengths of ribbon and pin them to the right side of a 9×9 square of minky.  Then pin a 9×9 square of satin on top, wrong sides together.  These fabrics kind of suck for sewing, but babies tend to like them, so don’t be alarmed when your minky gets all out of shape and you end up with more of a 7×7 blanket.  lol.  Or maybe you actually know how to sew and this doesn’t happen to you.  I imagine it involves the mysterious walking foot.

At any rate, here are the finished products.  Luckily babies aren’t all that critical.  😉

 

Another week done!

Slowly but surely I’m plugging away.

Photo credit for the cute Valentine’s Day pic goes to Kelly at Happy Soul Photography.  🙂

 

 

Still behind (of course) but still plugging along.  🙂  Here’s Week 5.

 

Pretty simple again.  I added a few thickers and some washi tape, but that’s it.

All of these pics are iPhone pics aside from the top right.  I find that I’m using my iPhone more and more and leaving my DSLR at home.  I wonder what that will look like when it’s time to scrap these months traditionally…  Still have a ways to go on catch up before that’s an issue.  lol.