RaptorMama

First off, let me say that I just looked back and realized that most of my titles end in an exclamation point.  Wow.  Sorry about that.  🙂

So this weekend, I went through and replaced a bunch of our framed pictures with more recent ones.  I also decided to redo the photo collage in our dining room.  I’ve never been super happy with the arrangement in there so I decided to take all of the frames down and start over.  I also bought a few new frames to add to the mix.  Initially, I was hanging them all willy nilly and was getting very frustrated when the arrangement wasn’t turning out the way I wanted it to.  The problem was that the frames were all different sizes.  We have a travel photo collage in our hallway and I’ve just added to it as we’ve gone new places.  I think it’s a nice arrangement, but all of the frames are the same size so it is easy to arrange them.  This one was much more challenging so I decided to arrange the frames on the floor first.

This is so not my own idea by the way.  I’ve seen it a million times on the internet, but I can’t find a source at the moment.  Actually, I probably could but I’m lazy.  Don’t judge me.  OK, so I just went and looked, but google is not my friend today.  Sorry guys.  I thought that I had pinned it, but no such luck.

First up, I taped some butcher paper to the wall in roughly the area that I thought I would like to put the pictures.  We have an awesome mural on the wall that Michael painted and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t cover it up so I traced the flower on to the butcher paper.  It also gave me some prospective on where the pictures would be on the wall.

Then I took put the paper on the floor and started playing around with the arrangement of the photos.  Michael helped me out because he has a much better eye for these sorts of things than I do.  He also suggested some overlap between the mural and the photo collage.

Once I was happy with the arrangement, I traced around each frame with a pencil and taped the paper back up.  I thought about just marking the tops of the photos, but in the end traced all the way around them.

Then Michael and I used a level to mark where the tops of the frames should be.  He drew the lines a smidge lower to allow for the width of the frame.

He suggested that if we do this again, we use the level to hang the paper instead of having to redraw each line.  Always thinking that one.  🙂

Then I nailed right through the paper.  So much easier than what I was trying to do before.  When I was done, I just tore the paper off.  I was a bit worried that the nails would come out with the paper, but they stayed put.  Here’s the point when I was really glad that I had traced all the way around the frames.  I was able to use the paper as a map to show me which frame went where.

And here’s the completed collage the next day.  I am really happy with how it turned out, though looking at this photo I can see that some of the frames aren’t quite level.  Michael marked the lines with a sharpie and it was a bit thick.  Next time I’ll use a pencil.  I do wish I had taken the time to do this the first time because now I have pencil lines and nail holes all over that wall.  🙂

By the way, the big 8×10 in the middle was done by the amazingly talented Libby of LibbyAnn Photography.  If you’re thinking of splurging on some pictures, I totally recommend her.

We’ve been getting tons of cucumber with our CSAs so I decided to try to make some tzatziki.  It seemed easy enough, although the recipe had fairly vague directions.  Kate and I decided we were up to the challenge.

First we gathered our ingredients which involved a trip to HEB.  We were hoping to buy a dill plant, but we had to settle for some clippings.

Next up we had to hollow out the cucumber.  Kate got a bit bored with the prep work and wondered off to play in her ball pit.

I lured Kate back into the learning tower by offering to let her smell the dill.  She loves to smell stuff.  I think she would have shoved it up her nose if I had let her.

I let her try to crack some pepper in to the food processer and she thought it was awesome.  I think Kate’s definition of “to taste” is a little different from the rest of us.  🙂

I let her throw in the cucumbers and it was time to blend.  She left the room for this part because, although she is fearless about most things, loud noises scare her.

Kate gave it too thumbs up!  Side note: apparently dill is spicy.  Who knew.  I just kept throwing it in there assuming that since it didn’t have a strong smell it wouldn’t have a strong flavor.  Whoops.

I freely admit that I let her stick her fingers in the dip and lick it off because I thought it made a great picture.

 

I am seriously amazed that I have managed to keep up with Project Life for this long.  I was worried that I would get super behind and then be unable to come up with pictures or journaling for the days I’ve missed, but so far so good!  I’m not going to lie, there are a few still life photos in there that I’ve fudged after the fact, but I have a photo *representing* each day even if it might not have been taken that day.

A few things that have helped me keep up:

1. I use pictures that my husband and I take on our iPhones.  I take a ton of pictures with Michael’s DSLR, but even I don’t take photos every day with it (as evidenced by Kate’s blog, whoops.)  I don’t carry the giant DSLR camera everywhere, but I do have my phone pretty much everywhere.  Plus, taking a photo in the fabric store with your DSLR?  Not super discrete.  Snapping a quick photo with your phone?  Easy pretty much anywhere.  I love that these photos represent our everyday life.  I even went so far as to take a picture of our groceries out on the conveyer belt at HEB.  That will be neat to look back on it 10 years.

2.  I keep Project Life in its box on our kitchen table.  Michael works from home, which is awesome by the way, but since we share an office it means that I can’t get into my crafting area during Kate’s nap.  Since I keep Project Life out in the kitchen, I can work on it if when Kate naps.  My favorite thing to do though, is to work on it while Kate is doing stickers at the table with me.  She is crazy about stickers.

Oh, and a sticker tip.  Kate loves foam stickers, but the paper backings used to drive me nuts.  Now I give Kate a bowl for trash and she happily keeps all of her trash contained.  I thought it was going to take some time to get her to use the bowl correctly, but she took to it right away.  Sometimes I don’t think we give kids enough credit.

First off, Michael pointed out to me that the thank you notes were totally his idea and that’s why he was having her do handprints in the first place.  Whoops.  I guess great minds think alike.  🙂

On to today’s post.  Now, I realize that there is really nothing handmade about this activity, but it’s one of Kate’s favorite things so I thought I would showcase it here.  A few months ago we got her a wooden bead set by Haba.  (Incidentally, I love all things Haba.)  I thought that she would be too young for it just yet, but man has she proved me wrong.

I love how she gets this look of intense concentration when she’s threading the beads.  She chooses to play with this everyday.  She can’t do the big animal beads quite yet, but she totally rocks the other ones.

This activity works *way* better at her little table than at the high chair because her little table has a lip that runs along the edge.  Also, we were all happier once I tied a bead to the end of the string so that they weren’t all falling off the bottom all the time.  Duh.

Kate loves to fingerpaint and she especially loves doing “Kate’s hand!”  Yes, my daughter frequently refers to herself in the 3rd person.  Well, Michael had her making stamps of her hand on some index cards yesterday and I realized that they would make really cute thank you notes for her birthday gifts.

I had him help her make up a bunch and then I wrote notes on the backs this morning after they were dry.  I think it turned out cute!

 

So we decided that one box of yummy veggies every other week was just not enough for us.  That’s right folks, we signed up for another CSA.  This time we went with Johnson’s Backyard Garden.  Don’t get us wrong, we are still loving Farmhouse Delivery, we just thought, why not try something different too?

Johnson’s Backyard Garden is more of a true CSA in that it’s one family farm.  It seems like we get more food with Johnson’s, but more variety with Farmhouse.  (Michael disagrees with this, but I still think we get more fruit with Farmhouse.  That may be because I’m not a melon fan and that’s what we got with Johnson’s.)  We got a ton of squash, a melon, a bunch of peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, garlic, onions, beats, mint, basil, and I think some other stuff that I’m forgetting.  It was seriously a ton of food.

Johnson’s will deliver, but there is an extra charge.  Plus, apparently their delivery route was full so we pick ours up at the Round Rock farmers’ market.  This was our first time at this farmer’s market and Kate really liked it.  It was hellishly hot, but Kate got a popsicle and all was right with the world.  The popsicles were *really* good.  Next time I’m getting one of my own.  🙂

 

So remember when I decided to dye the easter eggs?  Yesterday I worked on the corresponding scrapbook page.  Now I’m not one to reinvent the wheel, so when I came up with a layout that I liked the other day I planned to use it again and again.  After all, there are only so many ways that you can arrange 9 4×6 photos in a 12X24 space.  This time I wanted to play with a layered look for the patterned paper strip.  I’ve been really drawn to this layered look for a long time, but haven’t been able to replicate it until now.  I’m liking it!

The “sweet” and “adorable” strips are actually bits of ribbon that I’ve had forever.  I can’t wait to play around with some more layering!  Maybe tonight.  🙂

So, Michael has the day off and it totally didn’t register that today’s a Monday and I should have a blog post up. Whoops!

Yesterday was Kate’s second birthday party and we had a great time celebrating with family and friends.

I would love to say that I made these cupcakes from scratch… That’s a lie. I was *thrilled* to pay a bakery to make these cupcakes. Kate asked for pink cupcakes and boy were they pink!

And here she is blowing out her candles. 🙂 You can see her gorgeous dress here that was a present from her aunt and uncle. Love! The plan is to have my awesome mimi help me trace a pattern from this one so that I can make some more. So cute!

So Raptor turns 2 today!  How did that happen?

I’m happy to say that I’ve busted out of my funk.  I don’t know what was going on…  First up, Kate’s birthday banner.  We went to Archiver’s and I let her pick the paper she wanted to use which she thought was pretty cool.

I cut out all of the circles and letters on my Cricut and then glued them together with a tape runner.  Then I punched holes in the circles and tied them together with some ribbon.

Overall, I’m very happy with it!  I was planning on making cupcake toppers as well, but I’m not sure if that’s going to get done before Sunday or not.  At least I got the cupcakes ordered!  I’m so glad that I’m not going to be making them this year.

On another note, we got our second CSA box yesterday and we’re still loving it.  I made some more lasagna, squash this time, but I froze half of it.  We’ll see how that turns out.  🙂  I thought that Kate was going to be all over helping me to mix the cheese, but when I showed her how to mix it with her hands she looked at me and went, “um, no.”

Maybe next time baby girl.

I am in a serious crafting rut.  I think partly it’s because I am in complete denial that my TINY BABY is turning 2 on Friday.  TWO!!!  How is this possible?  I am also freaking out mildy concerned that I have gotten nothing done for her party on Sunday.  Last year, high on sleep, I was a crafting machine.  (Kate didn’t sleep or nap until she was almost 10 months old.  For real.)  Seriously.  I finished a bunch of trim, redecorated the guest bathroom, made a banner, learned to decorate cakes with fondant, cleaned the whole house, baked cupcakes, made Kate a tutu for her birthday pics, hand stitched Kate a felt alphabet…  I could go on and on.  This year, not so much.  I think that I am so overwhelmed with everything that I wanted to get done that I have reacted by doing nothing but read angsty teen fiction about vampires.  Oh my.  It has to stop.  Tomorrow of course.  🙂

Michael took control today (thank goodness) and we got a few things accomplished.  I found some tasty cupcakes that we could order that weren’t $2.50 a piece and Kate and I are going to take care of that tomorrow afternoon.  We also went to the party place and bought cups and plates and stuff.  Now I can stop hemming and hawing over the “theme” because there’s not one.  Kate and I are going to buy some paper after yoga tomorrow and hopefully I can get her banner and some cupcake toppers knocked out during her nap.

I created an elaborate Pinterest board for Kate’s party but I think I’m just going to have to come to terms with the idea that I am not, in fact, Martha Stewart.  Kate’s one request?  Pink cupcakes.  I think I can make that happen.