RaptorMama

I had a lot of fun putting this page together.

The papers are pulled from several different October Afternoon lines.  I was about halfway done when I realized that I had used red, orange, yellow, and green.  Being a sucker for all thing rainbow, I looked in vain for some blue or purple paper.  (October Afternoon is cream based not white based so, while it looks fantastic mixed and matched with other pieces from its own collections, it’s not great to mix with other, often white based, patterns.)  (Holy run-on sentence Batman!  Not to mention several crimes against the comma!)  Never fear, I found some washi tape.

I quite like the scalloped edge on the yellow piece of paper.  I made it using the knock-outs system.  More on that later.

I traced around the paper with a brown marker, added some thickers and some trim and called it good.  Simple and quick, but I like it.

Those of you who know me know that I am a disaster in the kitchen, so easy snacks and lunches are a must around here.  Here’s an fun healthy snack I made for the girls.

Whole grain crackers, celery bites made with sun butter, cut up cheese sticks and strawberries.  The celery bites have been a surprisingly big hit.  The trick is to cut them up into bite sized bits so that there’s no stringiness to the celery.

And here they are enjoying their snack a fresco.  🙂

I came across this gem and knew I had to make it for Kate because how cute is it!  I started by painting some clothes pins to be the feathers.

I cut the edge off of a paper plate to be the base of the turkey and spaced the clothes pins around to see how many I would need it.  Looks like 12.

Then I painted them red, orange and yellow.

I used the plate as a stencil to make a circle out of brown construction paper.

And I modeled the rest of the turkey after this one.  I inked up the edges so that you could see them.

Then I gave it a face.

I cut some strips of paper in red, orange and yellow and glued them around the edge to show where the clothes pins should go.

At this point, I realized that I needed to laminate it so it didn’t fall apart, but since I’m not a teacher anymore I don’t have access to a laminating machine.  Mod Podge to the rescue!

I give this one 2 thumbs up.  Kate was a huge fan.  🙂

 

I decided to host a little Halloween party for Kate’s playgroup, largely because I saw these mummy milk boxes on Pinterest and decided that I *had* to make them.  (And really, how could I resist?)

Here’s our table all ready for our guests.  The menu included mummy hot dogs, fruit, crackers, spinach dip and veggies.

Oh, and cupcakes!  My friend started an awesome bakery and she made these adorable cupcakes for us.

They’re 100% organic and egg and nut free.  (We have some food allergies to work around.)  Now, I’ve gotten egg free cupcakes before and they were kind of gross.  These however were divine!  She makes gorgeous cakes too.

They were perfect with our milk boxes.

The table cloth, plates, bowls and napkins were all from Target.  I <3 Target.

I thought about planning elaborate games for the kids to do, but mostly they wanted to run around outside.  Works for me!  We had a blast and it was great to see all of our friends in their costumes.

 

Kate eats a decent variety of foods considering she’s a preschooler, but veggies are still a bit of a sticking point.  Enter the mini cookie cutters.  Kate loves to use the cookie cutters and cucumbers are the perfect firmness for her.

First, peel and slice your cucumbers.  I slice them maybe 1/4 of an inch thick?  Maybe a touch thinner?  Too thin and they don’t hold their shape well.

Then I give Kate a stack of slices and she punches out the pumpkins with the mini cookie cutter.

It’s nice because it took her a bit to punch all the way through which kept her occupied while I got everything else ready for the party.

And the veggie eating?  Well, Kate is more likely to eat cucumbers when they’re fun shapes, but even more than that I make her eat the leftover bits before she can punch out a new pumpkin.  Not in a militant way (at all, we avoid battles over food at our house) but she can’t punch out a new pumpin until she’s eaten the scraps from the last one.  Sometimes that means that she only punches out one pumpkin and that’s ok.  I’ll punch the rest (for her lunch or whatever) and put the scraps on salads.  But today we were punching a whole cucumber for our little party and she ate all of the scraps!  Honestly, I was amazed that she ate all of that.  I even gave her a pass after she’d eaten about half of them and told her that she could just keep punching if she wasn’t hungry, but she assured me that she wanted to eat more.  🙂

And here’s our veggie tray.  It was nice to be able to “cook” with Kate, but have her working on something independently so I could get everything else ready.

Here’s a fun little page I made with the new Echo Park line, some twine and some washi tape.

I’m always perplexed with what to do with twine. I love the look of it, but how to attach it… This time I literally wrapped it around the paper and then secured the ends with some tape on the back. Easy peasy.

Then I just tied on a few strips to give it some dimension. This is a super simple page, but I like it. It took me less than an hour to finish while Kate was at preschool.

I’ve had these acrylic hearts for ages and I recently unearthed them while cleaning my desk.

I peeled the back off and used it to trace the shapes onto some patterned paper.

Then I cut the heart out and ran it through my zyron machine.  You need to make sure that you run it through the machine wrong side up so that the adhesive is on the front of the heart.

I like to burnish the paper before removing the backing.  It helps the adhesive to stick.  I also inked the edges before running them through the machine.

I set the acrylic heart on top of the paper and hope to get them perfectly lined up.  Usually I do ok.  🙂

I used the acrylic hearts as embellishments on this page and I think it turned out quite cute.  🙂

The letters are from October Afternoon and the papers are all Echo Park.

 

I decided to continue with the mummy theme after finding this Pinterest gem.  I’ll be honest, cocktail sausages gross me out so I used organic hot dogs that I cut in half.  (If I’m being really honest, hot dogs gross me out too, but some sacrifices are necessary in the quest for cute party food.  🙂  )

I rolled out some crescent roll dough and cut it into strips.  Then I wrapped the strips around the hot dogs leaving a little gap for the face.

And baked them according to the directions on the crescent roll package.  Actually, I had to cook them for almost twice as long, but my oven sucks and I never remember to preheat it so I’d go with the package directions if I were you.  lol.

I skipped the mustard eyes because I was running short on time, but I still think they turned out cute.  They were all gobbled up so I’ll assume they were good.  🙂

Raptor Dad here, with a post that is a little more philosophical and a little less how to. Little Raptor loves to paint and be creative which makes me smile. I have a degree in art after all, it was what I dedicated my life to for the first 22 years. Unfortunately, Raptor often wants to be creative at times that seem inconvenient or what’s worse, she wants to paint the wrong way! The wrong way?

I know, I should know better. I went to an art school that frowned on illustration and I railed against the “system” insisting on putting illustrative work in the student show on more than one occasion just for the sake of doing it. That said, I grew up without a lot of money and was certainly poor in art school. That’s built-in a strong respect for the tools. It flusters me when Raptor wants to mix paints the wrong way. Today, I decided I would take a step back, have a cocktail, and let her go nuts.

In the end it was easy to just sit back and let her do her thing. There was less stress for everyone and Raptor learned about mixing paint and cleaning brushes. Not just because I told her about it but because she got a practical lesson by seeing what happened when she didn’t clean the brush between strokes. It’s important to learn by doing and I think that we, as first time parents, sometimes have a hard time letting Raptor do that.

 

 

 

I usually try to scrap at least somewhat chronologically, (and I’m still working on March and April) but I couldn’t resist my new Halloween Paper!  It’s by October Afternoon, my current favorite manufacturer.  🙂

My general MO for 2 page layouts is to cut one piece of patterned paper in half and put it on the far edges.  Then I’ll put 3 photos down each side.  This essentially leaves me with a 12×12 space and it’s much easier for me to figure out how to lay things out in a square.  🙂

I used some Thickers and letter stickers (October Afternoon and Athentique) to make the title and added a bit of washi tape for fun.

I just had to use this date sticker!

I used 3 different journaling spots because I wanted to list all of the fun things that we did.

I inked up the edges of everything to give it some dimension.  Oh, and I used this giant witch sticker.  Love the retro look!

A note on the black chevron paper.  I intended to have it run the length of the photos, but it’s from the 8×8 paper pad so it was too short.  No worries, I cut short pieces and just lined them up so you have the illusion that the paper continues.  Then I added a strip of washi tape so there was a vertical element.  Overall, I’m pretty happy with how this page ended up!