RaptorMama

I set some lofty goals last month, so I figured it was time to check in and see how I did.  🙂 Just to remind you, my goals were to edit/ upload pictures for March and April and to finish scrapping November and December.  Barring some amazing burst of picture editing energy, I’m unlikely to meet that first goal though I did get March uploaded.  I even got most of March printed!  As for my scrapping goal, I surpassed it!  I’m only 3 layouts shy of being caught up through the end of February!  To be fair, I had a lot of these done before the month started, I was just finishing them up.

Let’s see, I should probably set some goals for this month too.  It helps me make better use of my precious preschool time.  🙂  Hmm…  How about scrapping March and April?  That’s pretty ambitious considering that I have nothing scrapped and I don’t even have pictures edited/ printed for April, but it’s possible, right?  lol.  Oh, so let’s throw in editing/ printing April and May.

Other things on my crafty to do list include:

Making Kate’s Halloween costume.  I bought 12 yards of tulle yesterday.  I’m not convinced it’ll be enough.

Knitting projects.  I have 2 things in the works for gifts.  Sadly, they’re both “due” next weekend and I’n not sure I can knit that fast.  Maybe I should pick one and focus on it.  🙂

Halloween party!  Well, playgroup.  lol.  I want to DIY some decorations and stuff.

And because I couldn’t leave you without a picture, we went to the most awesome playdate yesterday!  It was a “mud” playdate, but Kate preferred the shaving cream.  I might have to buy some of this to play with at home.  🙂

She also make a carwash for the kids to play in.  So super cool.

That cozy coupe has never been so clean.  🙂

ETA: I just powered through and edited/ uploaded all of April!  And all of my Project Life pictures going back to the end of February!  This order is going to cost a small fortune.  lol.

So, Kate started preschool a few weeks ago and I dutifully took pictures in front of our front door before we dropped her off.  They kind of sucked though.  For one, our door is brown.  Not the most attractive backdrop.  Two, it was humid outside and my camera lens fogged up.  Most of the pictures didn’t come out at all.  Three, let’s be real here.  I was a bit frazzled considering that my *tiny baby* was starting school.

Then this week my facebook feed has been full of adorable first day of school pictures, lots of them featuring tiny chalkboards.  I decided to go ahead and fake first day of school pictures.  😉  After driving all over creation looking for a dumb chalkboard (they’re sold out everywhere) I ended up borrowing one.  Then I carefully recreating Kate’s first day of school outfit and posed her on our front porch before school yesterday.  And yes, I predated the sign.  🙂

In case you’re wondering, why yes, I do plan on forcing Kate to take a picture with the chalk board when she’s in high school.  🙂

I found this on Pinterest and I’ve just about convinced Kate that she wants to be Little Red Ridding Hood for Halloween.  Mom?  Mimi?  I’m going to need some help here.  🙂

I would love to include the link, but it goes back to a spanish language blog where it is credited to Etsy.  I’ll keep poking around on there to see if I can credit the original designer.  🙂

ETA: I found the photographer at least.  🙂

http://yoursparkleboxphotography.blogspot.com/

I bought some bleeding tissue paper (the colors bleed, we’re not doing Dexter crafts over here) awhile ago for Kate to play with and then I forgot about it.  Today she really wanted to do a project (not coloring or stickers!) and I found it in the cabinet as I was poking around for something new to craft with.  🙂

First we practiced cutting the tissue paper.

Kate really likes to cut things.  I’m *really* hoping that this never translates into her trying to cut her own hair.

   

Then we put the tissue paper on some water color paper and tried brushing it with water to get the colors to bleed.  To say that it was unimpressive would be an understatement.

I figured that maybe we could try some decoupage next so I put some glue into our water.  Umm…  glue doesn’t dissolve.

   

Mod Podge to the rescue!

Kate had a lot of fun with this project and we got to talk a little bit about color theory (yellow and blue make green etc.)

Here’s another layout- cookies this time.  I went crazy and matted the pictures.

First a progress update.  I finished November!  And I only have a couple of more layouts left for December.  Ask me if I’m working on my Christmas stuff though.  Nope.  I’m kind of sick of my Christmas paper.  4th of July it is!

This paper is from WR Memory Keepers.  I liked that the B sides had tons of little embellies that you could cut apart.  Here’s a pic of another B side.

The ones I cut apart were shrunk down even further.  Love this!  It’s perfect for scrapping on a budget.  Plus, let’s be honest.  I’m going to make 2 4th of July pages.  I don’t need to spend $50 on various packages of embellishments for 2 pages!  I mean, I totally could, but I don’t *need* to.

I just cut them apart, inked the edges and layered them to my heart’s content.

I just packed Kate’s lunch for preschool tomorrow. 🙂 It’s in a lunchbots bento box.

I’m sending her with strawberries, turkey, celery bites and a few wheat thins. The celery bites are just celery with some sunbutter. I wasn’t sure how to package them so they would make it until lunch, but in the end I just sandwiched them together and put them in a cup. I’ll report back on how they did next time. 🙂

Kate’s starting at a Montessori preschool tomorrow ::cue panicking:: and we had to decorate a cubby for her.  I’ll be honest, it was a little hard for me to step back and let her do it herself because I wanted it to be perfect, but I also thought it was important for her to have ownership over it.  The preschool director might have mentioned that too.

Our only parameters were that it had to have her name on it.  My initial idea was to embroider some felt letters and glue them on, but since that was pretty much the opposite of letting Kate do it herself I had to scrap that.

Then I had the idea of buying wooden letters and having her paint them.  It would still look neat (neat as in clean) but it would allow her to be part of the creative process.  Win win.

We got the letters to spell her name (twice since they come in a 2 pack) 2 hears and 2 flowers.  The had some other awesome shapes, but they came pre-painted.  Lame!  We let her lose with some paint and she had a blast.  Somehow I seem to have missed taking pictures of the painting.  Then Michael helped her glue to shapes down.

Here’s the finished cubby!  I just hope the glue holds up.

And here’s Kate’s opinion of me taking so many pictures.

What’s a dad to do when faced with a daughter that wants him to craft with tissue paper and glitter glue?

Glam Batman, that’s what.

I haven’t scrapped since March.  Wow.  Talk about a dry spell.  Never fear though, I’m back!  Super behind, but back and committed to working towards getting caught up.  Just as a status update, Kate’s books are caught up through the end of October 2011 and I’ve edited/ ordered prints though the end of February 2012.  Should I set a goal?  Hmm…  How about editing/ uploading March and April and finishing scrapping November/ December by the end of August?  Now onto the pretty paper and cute pictures!

You’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s a bit overexposed.  I was holding the camera above it to get a straight down shot and I couldn’t look through the viewfinder.  These pics are from January so they’re not exactly helping me with my goal, but they’re so cute!  We thought about getting Kate a toddler camera for Christmas, but honestly they’re expensive and take crappy pictures.  We gave her our waterproof camera (which happens to be shock proof as well) instead.  Bonus?  Free since we already owned it.  She loves taking pictures and is getting quite good!

There’s so much adorable paper with cameras, but I could never figure out what to do with it.  I was at a crop a few weeks ago when I came across these pictures and I just knew it was a match made in heaven.  The “Fun-O-Meter” clenched the deal for me.  (Paper and embellishments are largely The Escape by Little Yellow Bicycle.  Also, some Thickers and October Afternoon letters, Bazill cardstock, gems and some washi tape.)

These pictures cracked me up because Kate insisted on holding the camera up to her eye even though there’s no viewfinder because that’s what I do.