RaptorMama

Kate and I took a little field trip down to the Zilker Science and Nature Center last week. I totally love this place.

We had a blast down by their little lake.  The light was gorgeous.  🙂

And Kate was being quite cooperative.  🙂

She loved looking at the rescue animals.

 

Isn’t this microscope the coolest?

 

She was so excited to be able to do the slides all by herself.  🙂

 

This one’s a bit blurry, but she was so proud of herself that I just had to include it.

 

Inspector Kate!

 

 

 

I’m on a scrapping roll!

Can I just say that I love October Afternoon?  Because I do.  🙂  This page was super simple to put together.  It’s basically 2 pieces of patterned paper on some cardstock with a bit of washi tape, a few wood veneers, some letter stickers and a journaling sticker.  Oh, and a wee bit of ink.

 

I’m so excited about this page.  I think it might just be my favorite page ever.

The title is a bit of an inside joke.  Kate is a huge ham and she loves to have her picture taken.  Once I asked her to run toward me and she’s seriously latched onto that.  Now anytime she sees my camera she wants to give me a “running picture.”  🙂

I tried to channel my inner Shimelle (you know, my scrapbooking idol) with the layering. Supplies: Papers are October Afternoon, the Midway Collection; Thickers are Amy Tangerine; Wood Veneers are Studio Calico.

 

 

I thought that this page turned out really cute.

I even got super fancy with the title and pulled out my DIY Thickers and some Doodlebug Flocking.

Imagine my frustration when I found 2 more photos that were supposed to be included about 10 minutes after I finished.  Grr…  I certainly wasn’t redoing the whole page so I decided to add a little flip up section.

 

It’s a super simple technique.  I taped 2 photos back to back and then set them directly on top of another photo.  I attached it with a wee bit of washi tape along the top to make a hinge.

I reinforced it with another bit of washi on the backside.  Clear as mud?

Here it is with the flap down.  I’ll cut a corresponding flap into the page protector so that you can see all of the pictures without removing the page.  I have a tendency to print *way* too many pictures and this is a great way to get them all into Kate’s book.  Let me know if you try it!

 

I probably need to peruse Pinterest for some new math activities as Kate has mastered these, but I’m hoping that the addition of some clothespins will help keep her amused.  Plus, the clothespins are good for developing fine motor skills.

I started with some laminated shamrocks which I added dots to with a sharpie, 1-10.

Than I painted 10 clothespins green and wrote the numerals 1-10 on them with a sharpie.

The idea is that she can either put either set in order or she can match the 2 sets up and clip the clothespin to the shamrock.

Love it!

Kate has been asking about another counting activity ever since we lost her Valentine’s Day one shortly after I finished it.

I bought some felt stickers at Joanne’s and wrote the numbers on them in sharpie.

I found these coins at Joanne’s too to use as counters.  Once I got home, I realized that I had bought 2 packages of gold and one of green instead of 3 packages of gold.  ::sigh::  I was super annoyed at first, but the I realized that I could use it to introduce the concept of odd and even.  Not sure if she’s got it yet, but hey, exposure is everything right?  🙂

Remember the JOY letters?  And the LOVE letters?  I’ve been putting them on a shelf in our built-ins and they’ve been so cute that I decided to make a set for every month! 🙂

RaptorDad suggested LUCKY for March, but they were out of Ys at Joanne’s so I went with LUCK.  I used the Lime Twist line from My Minds Eye.  I love this line.  In fact, I bought it when it was new and used every last scrap.  Imagine how happy I was when I found a huge collection of it at Archivers last week!

I was initially looking for some shamrock paper for this project, but I couldn’t find anything that I *loved.* Then I realized  DUH!  I can just use green paper.  RaptorDad suggested orange paint which ended up being perfect.  It made the green pop and it’s the colors of the Irish flag!  Perfection.

The last time I made these, people asked me what I did about the wrinkles in the paper and I was perplexed because I didn’t really have a problem with wrinkles.  Not the case this time.  The collection pack of these papers was quite thin and I think that’s why I ended up with wrinkles.  Bottom line, if you want to avoid wrinkles use a thicker weight paper.  I think that a brayer would have helped too, but let’s be honest, I only have so much preschool time available to craft and I’m not wasting it looking for/ buying a brayer.  In the end I decided that it looked fine wrinkles and all.

Cute!

Now, for the goals update.  I did pretty good this month!

1.  Finish April and May layouts.  This one is dependent upon me actually getting my pictures back from the printers which would involve me ordering them…  See number 4.  Done!  Barely, but it’s done.  I thought it was a lost cause, but Kate had school Thursday and I finished the last 4 layouts just in the nick of time.  🙂

2.  Finish December Daily.  Also done!  I finished this up on Tuesday during preschool.  I’ve been so productive this week.  🙂

3.  Sort and select phone pics for September, October, November, December and January Project Life.  I like to do the phone pics first and then see where I need a DSLR pic to fill in after.  The majority of my Project Life is phone photos.  This was quite the undertaking, but it’s done.  Who hoo!

4.  Order these dang pictures!  Done and done.  Can I just say that I <3 Persnickety Prints?  Because I totally do.  🙂

5.  Design and make Valentine’s for Kate.  They were super cute if I do say so myself.

6.  Finish up projects for Kate’s Valentine’s Day party.  I could always have done more, but I’m pretty happy with what I did do.

7.  Rebuild my blog buffer.  Not sure if I can check this one off or not.  I was hoping to have a 2 week buffer and instead I have a 2 entry buffer.  Meh, it’s better than nothing.  I’ll keep this one on for next month though.

March Goals:

1.  Scrapbook June and July.  Eeeppp!  That’s a lot of pages.

2.  Organize/edit/select DSLR photos and phone photos from RaptotDad’s phone for Project Life for October, November, and December.

3.  Organize/edit/select photos for Kate’s scrapbook for October, November, December.

4.  Meal plan for March.

It’s finally finished!

My first inclination was to leave the acrylic cover blank, but since I wasn’t really that happy with the first page I went ahead and added some stuff to it.

Page 18: Pretty simple with some paper, washi tape and those yummy peppermint thickers.

Page 19: Again, simple.  You can tell that I was losing interest by this point.  lol.  This happens every year.  I might go back later and add some washi tape to the back of page 18…

Added an extra page for day 19.  I love the layers.  You can see the transparency and the page behind it as well.  🙂

Day 20: I love this page.  Kate seriously adores her preschool teacher.  I didn’t want to crop the picture down because I liked the idea of leaving the background of the class room visible, but I wanted to draw attention to her hugging her teacher.  In the end, I decided to make a box with washi tape.  I added a few wood veneers which we all know that I love.  <3

The pink is actually backing the photo on the back side.  It helps to set off the hearts and number as well as allowing some space for journaling on the back side.

I added another page so I could include some more photos.  I used my Knock Outs to pink the edges.  <3

Day 21: This one was a doozy.  🙂 First gingerbread decorating.

We went to the Trail of Lights that night and I got some neat pictures.  I couldn’t narrow them down!  This one’s on a transparency and I backed the picture on the backside with some paper since it’s landscape and this one is portrait.  I thought that it was neat (and a little sad) that her face was lit by the iPhone.  Such a statement about her generation.

I used the knockouts on this add-on page.

This one too.  🙂

Day 22:  A return to the simpler pages.

Day 23: Have I mentioned that I love transparencies?  ::swoon::  Also, how adorable is this picture?  🙂

Day 24: I always end up with a ton of pictures on the 24th and 25th, but December Daily is not a replacement for Kate’s regular scrapbook.  With that in mind, I decided to select only one picture from each day.  I love this one.  The color isn’t great, but it’s just so Kate.

Day 25:  The background paper is kind of blah, but I chose it because I wanted the  back side for the back cover.  I love the button pouch!  I have a tutorial coming up on it soon.

And it’s done!  I left the back acrylic cover blank because I thought this paper was perfect.  That and I’m a bit sick of this project.  🙂  Time to pack it up with the rest of the Christmas decorations.  Give me 9 months and I’ll be ready to do it all over again.

 

 

 

 

 

Kate loves new projects.  Even if it’s the exact same project in a different color.  🙂

I found these cute shoelaces at Joanne’s and remade my SVG SCAL file to look a bit more like a shamrock.  🙂  I used the heart stamp for the leaves and then added a trapezoid stem.  Tip: angle the bottom hearts down and it’ll look more realistic.  Then I punched holes around the edge with my Crop-A-Dile.

I had a few extra small shamrocks so I decided to try something a bit new.  Kate has been very interested in sewing lately and desperately wants me to teach her, but I’ve been struggling with how to go about it.

This was perfect. She could “sew” the smaller shamrocks to the larger shamrocks with the shoelace.  It let her practice sewing without dealing with a sharp needle.  It was a huge hit!  She loves sewing “like a big girl.”

 

Let the St Patrick’s Day fun begin!

Kate has been super interested in phonics lately which is both good and bad.  Good because she’s obviously learning a ton at school.  Bad because I stink at phonics.  We’ll have to learn together Kate.  lol.

I love seasonal stuff so when I packed away the heart and arrow letters, I decided to make a St Patrick’s Day version.  I created a SVG file with my SCAL software and cut out a bunch of shamrocks with my Cricut.  Yes, I realize that they look a little “off.”  Rest assured that the next set I made were better.  🙂

I laminated them with my super nifty home laminator and then wrote on them with a sharpie.  I know that it would look more polished if I stamped them or something, but let’s face it I’m throwing these together during loud quiet time and I think they look just fine.  🙂

Instead of doing an upper/ lowercase match game this time, I put the uppercase on one side and the lowercase on the other.  I opted not to make them magnetic this time because Kate is not nearly as interested in her magnet board as I thought she would be.  I think because it’s tucked away in a corner.  We’ve used the shamrocks in a couple of different ways.

1.  Putting them in alphabetical order.  I turned them all to lower case and Kate flipped them to upper case as she lined them up.  She also make the phonetic sound for each letter as we found it and we thought up words that started with the letter.  She got bored after H, but that’s ok.

2.  Sounding out words.  Kate told me that she wanted to make words, so I put together simple ones like DOG and CAT and then we sounded them out together.  I wouldn’t have done this with her except that she asked and she’s been trying to sound out anything she comes across.  Holy cow.  My baby can read!  (Not really, but she’s pretty darn close.  lol.)

3.  Sorting.  We haven’t done this yet, but I’ve thought that she would flip them all over to uppercase or lowercase.  She *loves* to sort thing.