RaptorMama

As predicted, we fell far short of finishing everything from our A is for Apple unit.  I’m totally cool with that.  Raptor and I had a delightful week (ok, that’s a bit of a stretch.  I’m sure anyone who has had prolonged experience with a 3 year old is giving me the side eye right about now.) and I think it really helped that I had some go to activities planned.  Our Bee week is a little less structured, only because I found that the structure wasn’t working for us.  I printed off a bunch of “worksheets” (Kate couldn’t get enough of these last week), planned 5 crafts/ activities, and made 5 Montessori-ish trays.

I keep our trays in this cabinet.  It was just a modular bookshelf thingy from Target, but RaptorDad was kind enough to add doors that latched when I decided to repurpose it from shoe storage to work tray storage.  He even spray painted the doors with chalk board paint.  Y’all, he’s a keeper.  😀

Our first tray this time is an oldie but a goodie.  Transferring pompoms (yellow and black this week to go with the bee theme) from a bowl into a muffin tray with tongs.

I think she’s going to *love* this one, though I’ll admit that I have some reservations about giving her free reign with the glue stick.  I cut out all of the pieces for the bee (including wax paper wings) and put them in a tray along with a marker, glue stick, and an example.

This one goes along with a little song.  Something about bees which escapes me at the moment. ::note to self, look this up before tomorrow::  I bought the bees at a teacher supply store a million years ago, they’re Learning Trend.  I cut the bee hive out with my Cricut using this SVG file.

Edited to add:  OK, I just looked it up.  Here ya’ go.  Incidentally, they have a ton of cute Montessori bee ideas.

Here is the beehive
But where are the bees
Hiding inside where nobody sees
Watch and you’ll see them come out of their hive — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

RaptorDad made me these life cycle cards.

Raptor seemed a bit bored with just the alphabet last week, so I thought I would mix it up a bit these weeks.  I wrote out some CVC words on beehives and then wrote the corresponding letters on some bees.  I deliberately did the words in lowercase and the letters in uppercase so Raptor could practice matching.  I hoping that this encourages some phonics practice, but I’m not overly concerned about it.

The other thing that I did this week was to prep some craft projects.  I have tissue paper and contact paper all ready to make some more faux stained glass.  This time a bee and the letter B.

We found these little finger puppets at Joannes and I sorted them so they would be easier to assemble later.  It makes 3 bees.

And how awesome are these?!?  They’re another RaptorDad find from Joannes.  I’m thinking that one day we’ll do a sensory bin with spit peas and these, then another day we’ll make and decorate some cookies with the.  Which reminds me, I need to add split peas to the grocery list.  🙂

That gives us 4 special things to do, in addition to the trays.  We have tentative plans to go to a strawberry farm (B is for berry!) on Friday and I think that will round out our week nicely.

I’m currently working on C is for Caterpillar and D is for Dinosaur.  Suggestions for other letters?  I’m leaning towards F is for Frog and H is for Heart (so that I can reuse all of my Valentine’s Day stuff!) but other than that I’m open to ideas.  🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…with digital project life!  I watched some lovely youtube tutorials and I now feel ready to conquer the world!  Or at least Photoshop.  🙂  I couldn’t wait any longer for my Honey edition before I started playing.  I’m way too cheap to pay for more than one, so I went off in search of free digital cards that I could use.  Y’all, I found the jack pot!  You have to check out this girl’s stuff, it’s amazing and a ton of it is free!  Best of all, I think it’s going to work really well with the Honey edition when and if I buy it.  I had hoped to have a whole spread done by last Tuesday today but there’s been a bit of a learning curve.  (I don’t even mind that it’s taking forever though because I love it!)  I do have the left half of the layout finished minus the title card which I’ll put in after the Honey edition is released.  ::please be released on Monday::

Shall we go through the layout?  (Can you tell that I had extra caffeine today?)  Just imagine that I have a title card in the top corner, mkay?  I want to use at least one thing from the Honey edition for consistency.

Top right is a DSLR photo.  I don’t know the real terms for any of this stuff, but I basically cut and pasted the heart from one of the journaling cards, made it bigger, rotated it a bit, and added some text.

Middle left is a Hipstamatic photo.  They’re square like Instagram photos so when I shrunk it down it left this weird gap.  I cut the bottom off of one of the journaling cards and shrunk it down to go on top.  I loved it so much that I saved it as a separate file.  Never mind that I cut it and resized it 3 different times before that occurred to me.

Middle 2 cards are regular journaling cards.  I took the lines out of the left one and I’m toying with the idea of making it a color.  We’ll see.  Right one I used as is.

Far right is exactly the same as the far left except it’s a DSLR photo.

Bottom left is 2 hipstamatic photos that I shrunk down.  I cut a strip from one of the filler cards and repeated it 2 1/2 times to get the strip of hearts.  (It’s like custom never ending washi tape!!!)  Then I added a pink heart just like I did in the top right.

Bottom left is just a plain DSLR photo.  I’m trying to talk myself out of adding more crap to it.  🙂  It is an example of how I plan to tackle ephemera now that I can’t just slip it in a pocket.  I took a picture and then in 10 years, once I’ve fully committed to going digital, I’ll throw it away.  Until then, I’ll stick it in a box in case I change my mind and switch back to traditional.  🙂

The verdict so far?  Well, it’s slow.  In 3 days, I’ve made 3/4 of a layout.  Also, I can’t just stick ephemera in.  But y’all the good *far* outweighs the bad.  I think that I’ll get much faster.  Also, I love that I can look at a whole layout at once, pictures and journaling, without having to print pictures every week (which just isn’t going to happen.)  I love that I can easily resize the photos instead of being stuck with whatever I print.  I love that when I forgot a picture, I could get it immediately instead of waiting for another print order to arrive.  Most of all?  I love that I could make “washi tape” and “stickers”!  And that I will never run out of my favorite supplies!

I’ve had some questions about what I plan to do at the end of the year and the answer is I’m not sure.  Eventually I want to get it printed as a blurb book, but I’m not too worried about if that happens at the end of this year or 10 years from now.  I’m definitely not printing individual pages.  2 of my biggest reasons for going digital were to save space (I have way too many albums) and to save money for other scrappy purchases.  Printing 12×12 pages really cuts down on those benefits.

Oh, and I’m almost done with our B is for Bumbleebee stuff!  I’m hoping to finish it up this weekend and have it post on Monday.  🙂

 

 

Oh boy.  I had such good intentions of starting digital Project Life.  I had watched some tutorials, I know which edition I wanted, I had my photos edited and ready to go, I had even identified which stories I wanted to focus on.  Then…  reality hit.  The edition I want wasn’t released last week, or this week.  No problem, I thought.  I’ll just fill in the cards later.  I sent Raptor off to preschool, finished the grocery shopping and was finally ready to tackle digital scrapbooking.  Should be a piece of cake, right?  Ha ha.  Ha ha ha.  I’m laughing hysterically over here.  I spent about 30 minutes of my precious preschool time cursing at the computer and then threw in the towel. RaptorDad has assured me that he will teach me to do this.  Honestly, I’m not sure that I’m teachable.  I’m pretty much an idiot when it comes to computers.  All that to say that instead of looking at my shiny new digital page, I took pictures of some of my traditional Project Life spreads.  Enjoy!

Here’s a page where I did a little something different.  Raptor had her first hair cut this week and they gave us a certificate.  Now, this isn’t something that I’m going to put in her regular scrapbook, but it was fun to include in project life.  Incidentally, I only use design A, so if something (say this certificate) doesn’t fit, I cut it apart to fit into the pockets.  I actually think it looks neat that way.  Then I shifted the journaling cards around to make them fit.  (I do the journaling cards more in the moment and then add the pictures/ plan the layout later.)

I ended up with one Hipstamatic picture and one DSLR picture on this page.

The second page had one DSLR, 3 Hipstamatics, and the certificate which I cut apart to fit.

 Here’s an example of a more typical page for me. The journaling cards down the middle and a mix of DSLR and Hipstamatic prints.

Why yes, that is a picture of my TV.  What can I say, I’m obsessed with the Olympics.

Most of the time the craziest I get is added a bit of washi tape to the “B side” of a journaling card, but I went crazy here and added some October Afternoon letter stickers to this picture.

The first year I did this project, I was totally committed to a 365 approach.  This year?  Not so much.  I’d say that the majority of my layouts have a picture a day, but not all.  This right side of the spread is entirely from RaptorDad’s and my super awesome overnight date night!  I didn’t want to include a whole layout about it in Kate’s book (because it’s Kate’s book and all) but I did have some fun pictures.  Project Life was the perfect place for it.  The journaling is still a 365 approach because, like I said, I do the journaling much earlier than the layouts.  (This is a big part of the reason that I’m thinking of switching to digital Project Life for this year.)

I included this half finished layout because I thought it might be interesting to talk about my process a bit.  The first thing I do is fill out the journaling cards.  I really try to keep current with these, but I’m usually a week (or 4) behind.  Then I go through and order several months of Hipstamatic prints at a time.  Once they arrive, I sort them by week and then plan the actual layout.  You can see in this one that I’ve adheared the prints and ephemera where they’ll go and then identified the gaps.  At this point, I edit my DSLR photos (if I haven’t already) and pick out a few to fill in the empty bits.  (I try to move pics that I want to order for Raptor’s main scrapbook in a special “to be ordered” file at the same time.)  I put a sticky note where these pictures will go and then move on.

And that’s basically my process!  I’m totally on the fence at this point with regards to digital vs traditional Project Life.  The traditional materials won’t hit the stores until May though, so I figure I have a bit more time to make my decision.  Anyone want to weigh in?  Digital fans?  Traditional fans?  I’m open to suggestions.  🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Kate’s been a bit bored lately and I know that it’s only going to get worse as it gets hotter here.  (I figure we have about 3 more weeks of being able to play outside before we start melting.)  This is a problem for 2 reasons.  1, she’s bored.  2, she drives me crazy when she’s bored.  Right then, time for action.  I’ve decided we should do a letter a week as a theme for projects.  Raptor attends a Montessori preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but they organize their units around the continents so I’m not worried about repeats or conflicting letters.  Kate loves projects and I love making them for her, but I get bored too so you can see how a theme is helping all of us.  My plan is to give her some Montessori inspired “trays” on Mondays that she can work with all week and then have a few structured things for us to do each day.  Just to be clear, I plan on following her lead with regards to how much “school” we’re doing each day.  If she wants to play in the mud one week instead of working on the letter Q, that’s just fine with me.

First up, I cut out some apples and seeds with my cricut.  I got the SVG file for the apples here for free and the seeds are a raindrop from the SCAL software.  I laminated them before writing on them so that I could reuse them over and over.  I’m thinking that the seeds will be great for a watermelon unit and the apples would be great for fall.  Also, I just love my laminating machine and will sieze any excuse to use it.  🙂

I’ve done this counting work several times, but Kate loves it every time I make it.  Why don’t I keep out the ones I’ve already made?  Because she gets bored with them.

 

Likewise, I’ve made these letters before, but I think she’ll enjoy them again.

Raptor’s been very interested in watching me work on this cross stitch project so I made her some more lacing cards.  On the left is a basic lacing pattern and on the right is one where she can stitch the seeds to the apple.  I’m currently looking for my yarn needle so that she can feel more like she’s stitching.

 

I think she’ll be the most excited about this.  I found this apple ice cube tray at the Target Dollar Spot and the idea is that she’ll transfer the red puffs into the apples using the tongs.

 

This one is sorting buttons by color into the muffin tray.  If I can find my tweezers, I’ll throw them in here, but if not I think she’ll like it just fine as a simple sorting activity.

Also, I’m sooooo cool that I spent my Saturday evening writing “lessons plans” for the first week.  Raptor still has preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays so those days are lighter.  Here you go!

Letter of the Week “Lesson Plan”

Letter: A
Theme: Apples

Monday
Book: Dr Seuss ABCs
Song: Apple Alphabet Song
Craft: My Apple Book
Worksheet: Pre-Writing Skills; Letter Trace
Snack: Crock pot apple sauce

Tuesday
Craft: A is for Alligator Book

Wednesday:
Song: I like to eat Apples and Bananas
Craft: Stained Glass Apples
Snack: Apple Chips

Thursday
Craft: A is for Apple Color Page

Friday
Book: 10 Apples up on Top
Craft: 10 Apples up on Top
Snack: Apples
Other: Apple seed graphs

Trays:
Number Apples with Seed Counters
Apple Alphabet
Button Sort with Tweezers
Apple Pompoms Transfer with Tongs
Apple Lacing Cards

Extras:
Cut out apples from magazines and collage
Cut out letter As from magazines and collage

You guys know that I have very few original ideas of my own so here’s where I stole them from found inspiration.

Oopsey Daisy’s Mommy School (This packet is incredible.  I only wish she had one for every letter!  We could do A is for Apple for a month and still not run out of things to do from this packet.)

Mr Printables’ Alphabet Coloring Page (I went ahead and printed the whole alphabet.)

Kinder Teacher’s Apple Seed Graph (I forgot to send print this one, but I figure I can draw it out easily enough.)

Next week we’re doing B is for Bumblebee.  Get excited!

I started these hand towels for my grandmother, oh about 10 years ago.  Time to finish, don’t you think?

There was a deceptively small amount of actual cross stitching, but a *ton* of backstitching.  First one is done!  I really hope to have the second one finished by Sunday to give to my grandmother when I see her for breakfast.  ::fingers crossed::

In other news, I think we’ve just about decided to pull Kate out of preschool for June and July.  (We’re pretty much decided on July, but June’s still up in the air.)  What’s that mean for the blog?  I’m going to be blatantly stealing putting together a Letter a Week curriculum for this summer.  I might actually do 2 letters a week so that we can get through the whole alphabet.  Kate already knows her letters (frankly, she’s just about taught herself to read) but she and I both love theme activities and there’s a bit of a dry spell between Easter and Halloween.  lol.  I figure the letters will help give us a focus.  Hmm…  How many weeks are there until October?  Maybe I’ll start now.  🙂  More details next week once I decide on some.

Update: I just counted and if I start on Monday there are exactly 26 weeks between then and the first full week in October.  It’s a sign!  I think we’ll be starting on Monday.  🙂  I suspect that some weeks will have lots of stuff and some weeks will have very little, but I love having a plan.  I’m off to Pinterest.  🙂

 

And I <3 this rainbow chevron paper.  I’ve actually used it all up!  Clearly I need to order some more.  🙂

This page actually went together pretty simply.  I cut the chevron paper down to 11×11 and taped it to the cardstock background.  I trimmed the photos a bit, and then matted the focal point photo in the orange paper.  Then I slid a scrap of purple cardstock underneath.

Title is these glorious glitter foam thickers (These might be a slightly different color.)  I may need to order a case of them.  I used the journaling card out of the library pocket and saved the pocket for later.  A bit of washi tape, a few wood veneer hearts and it’s done!

I repeated those elements at the top.

I left the cardstock off of this one because it felt too “heavy.”

 

 

I have a bit of a canvas obsession.  More to the point, Raptor’s best friend happens to be the son of an amazing photographer and her photos are drool worthy.  I’ve said it before, but you just can’t place a price tag on professional pictures!  We had a session this past December and I had a terrible time deciding on which images to enlarge because they were all amazing.  I finally decided on these 3 and I’m thrilled with the end results.

I ordered these from FramedCanvas and I’m very pleased with the quality.  They took forever to get here, but they were worth the wait.  The center canvas is 20×24 and the 2 outer canvases are 16×20.  I deliberately didn’t crop the photo so that you could get a sense for the size of the canvases.  I have them between 2 large windows in my living room.

And…  it’s the 1st so we should revisit the goals for the month…

March Goals:

1.  Scrapbook June and July.  I’m close to being done with this one.  I have 3 pages left from June and 3 from July.  Does that seem like a lot?  I have 9 completed pages for June and 6 for July so I’m actually close to being done.

2.  Organize/edit/select DSLR photos and phone photos from RaptorDad’s phone for Project Life for October, November, and December.  I have October done, but sadly not November or December.

3.  Organize/edit/select photos for Kate’s scrapbook for October, November, December.  Once again, October is done, but not November or December.

4.  Meal plan for March.  Done!  And I’ve been super happy with it.  I’m using an app called Paprika and it’s made it very easy for me to manage our meal plan.

I didn’t do so hot this month, but I RaptorDad did put in a garden so that should count for something.  🙂

April Goals:

1.  Finish June, July and August in Kate’s scrapbook.  Only 11 layouts so it *should* be doable.

2.  Organize/edit/select DSLR photos and phone photos from RaptorDad’s phone for Project Life for November, December, January, February, and March.  I want to get last year’s book done!

3.  Finish Project Life journaling for March.

4.  Organize/edit/select photos for Kate’s scrapbook for November, December and January.

5.  Start digital Project Life!  I would like to have at least the first 3 weeks of April done.

6.  Buy/ plant enough veggies to fill in garden.  Keep plants alive.

7.  Finish cross stitched hand towels for my grandmother.

8.  Finish felt alphabet.

9.  Incorporate 4 new recipes into the meal plan rotation.

10.  Have a week long blog buffer.

I seem to be going a bit overboard here so I’ll stop with those.  🙂

 

I’ve been in a bit of a scrapping rut this week.  One of my March goals was to finish Kate’s June and July pages, but I just haven’t been feeling them.  I have to admit that I’m generally firmly in the October Afternoon camp, but I needed something super bright and fun for my swimming pictures.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Midway, but I needed some variety.  Enter the new Doodlebug line.  Rainbow colors.  ::swoon::

I may have gone a wee bit overboard.  Who am I kidding.  I totally went overboard, but I plan on getting more of this line anyway.  Archivers didn’t have the washi tape (and I *need* it!) and I’ve already used up all of the rainbow chevron.  In my defense, I made 4 layouts today while Raptor was at preschool.  🙂

I really like this one.  I have multiple pictures of Kate at this particular sprinkler park, so I tried to find a different story to tell.  In the end I journaled about how taking Kate to the sprinkler park had become our new Friday happy hour and I loved it.

I’m totally going to end up buying more of these Thickers too.  They’re the bomb!

Wood veneers.  ::swoon::

I tried really hard to have 3 clusters of embellishments all repeating the same stuff a la Shimelle, my hero.  Each cluster had the strip of paper, the washi tape, and the arrow wood veneer.  The verdict?  I’m pretty happy with this one.

Update?  I have 3 more layouts to do for June and 3 more for July.  Will I get them done by Monday?  Maybe.  I also start my new Project Life on Monday (my birthday is March 31st) and I’ve pretty much decided on the digital Honey kit.  I’m basically technologically an idiot so this should be amusing.  🙂  I’ll keep you guys posted.

 

 

 

 

 

Last year I got a Zoku for my birthday and I thought that it was just about the coolest thing ever.  In fact, I wrote a whole blog post about it here.  And one year later?  It’s still the coolest thing ever!

 

Last year I got all fancy cutting out hearts and adding color.  This time, I kept it simpler and it was still a big hit.

 

I tried to recreate the pictures of both the popsicles and the girls eating them because I think it will make a neat scrapbook layout.  #nerdalert

Reasons why I still love this.

1.  It’s quick and easy.

2.  I can make 3 popsicles from one organic juice box if I add a wee bit of water.  (I frequently have 3 little girls here.)

3.  The little pitcher from the accessories pack makes this super easy.

4.  I love being able to give Raptor and the girls a fun treat that is free of HFCS and dye.

5.  The popsicle maker is very well made.

6.  It’s cute!

In short, you need this!

I don’t have anything finished to show at the moment, but I have a bunch of in-progress projects!

Project Life, of course.  I’m currently working on November, but I have the journaling caught up through mid-March.  My book runs April 1st to April 1st and I’m 99% convinced that I’m taking the digital plunge this year.  It’s cheaper, smaller (I’m getting overrun with albums), and there won’t be a delay in getting photos printed (I send off my prints for everything except October/ December Daily) so I’m hoping I’ll be able to keep up with it.  We’ll see.

Photo Editing.  I was working on that PL Layout for November and I saw in my notes that we had gone to the sand park.  I decided to check on the waterproof camera to see if I had taken any pics and I found a ton of cute pics from this summer!  I love to take our waterproof camera into the pool, but I never think to pull the pictures off of it.  Side note: I <3 this camera.  We thought about getting Kate a toddler camera, but honestly they don’t take very good pictures.  And we already had this one that was supposed to be shock proof.  While I wouldn’t spend this much money on a camera to give my 3 year old, it’s been perfect!

 

Packaging Wipes.  Just trying to pad the old spending money before I go scrapbooking.  If I make it that long.  There are some mid year released calling my name!  ::cough cough:: Crate Paper ::cough cough::  Speaking of, I really wanted to get June and July of 2012 finished up by the end of the month, but I think I’m going to give myself a pass until I can get my hands on the new Crate Paper.  It’s just so perfect for swimming pictures!

 

Felt Alpha Set.  Speaking of spending money, I’m working on a felt alphabet set.  I would really *love* to get it done by Friday, but I’m not sure that it’s physically possible.  ::fingers crossed::

 

Gardening.  So far so good!  We bought a few more plants this weekend, but the guy at the nursery recommended that we wait until after Wednesday to plant them since we’re having a wee bit of a cold snap here.  I’m hoping that our already planted veggies survive!

Alright then, I’m off to stitch some more.  Wish me luck!  🙂