Author: Raptor Mama

I just got this

for my birthday. It’s chilling in the freezer now. I’m so excited! Thanks Stacy. 🙂

So, we live in Texas, also known as the surface of the sun.  It may be only March, but it’s already getting too hot to play outside.  We set up the kiddie pool today because the water table just wasn’t cutting it.  🙂

Santa brought Kate a really cool playscape this year for Christmas, but the plastic slide is getting too hot for her to use.  We decided to try and shade the slide so Michael headed over to Home Depot for supplies.  He’s so awesome y’all.  It came out way cooler than I was expecting.  He even made a place for Kate to have a little planter box.  She is thrilled.

On the recommendation of my mother-in-law, we decided to put some morning glory in a few little pots.  They are supposed to do well in full scorching sun.  ::fingers crossed::  I tried to have Kate help put soil in the pots, but most of the soil ended up on the deck or on her face.  Eh, she had fun doing it.

   

Then we added the seeds and some water.  (Duh.)  We did 4 pots.

Here you can see the pots in place on the slide shade contraption.  The pots slide right down into it.  ::love::

Kate is super excited to have some plants in her “house.”  She’s in charge of watering them every day.  We’ll see how long I can keep them alive.  🙂

Just found the crafting area in the Children’s Museum. So cool. 🙂

So my sister-in-law had her twin babies this week!  Very exciting.  🙂  We haven’t gotten to see them yet as they’re in the NICU getting a big bigger, but we have high hopes that they’ll be able to come home soon.  ::fingers crossed::

Kate and I decided to make some lactation cookies this weekend and drop them off.  Now I’m not going to claim that these are the tastiest cookies in the world, but they are edible.  I never made them while I was nursing Kate, but whenever I ate oatmeal I would be drowning in milk so maybe there’s something to them.  🙂

I asked Michael to print the recipe off for me, but he scoffed at my poor formatting and redid my pitiful pages document.  (side note: pages is like word but awesome.)  Here’s the link to the recipe in case you want to make some cookies of your own.  Some of the ingredients are a bit out there (brewer’s yeast?) but I was able to find everything I needed at Sprouts.

 

 

I’m working on Project Life today. Sill loving it. 🙂

I use almost exclusively hipstamatic pics from my phone like this one. I live the square size! I also love capturing everyday moments. I take a lot of pictures with our DSLR, but I always have my phone with me. Michael takes a lot of phone pictures too and I think it’s nice to add in his perspective since the big scrapbooks are mostly from my perspective.

It’s been too pretty to stay inside, so we set up the water table today.  Kate even got a bit of ice cream after dinner.  With sprinkles, of course.  🙂

 

My friend Kate sent us these awesome tongs for our Kate.  (Thanks!)  I gave her a muffin tin, the bowl of pony beads and the tongs and she went to town.

She insisted on only sorting the pink beads.  🙂

I love this activity.  Using the tongs helps develop her fine motor skills and sorting is always good for the ol’ brain.  We’ll be doing this again soon I think.

We got Kate a few pony beads and some pipe cleaners this week.

   

It was a hit! She had a blast threading the beads on the pipe cleaners.  She’s been threading wooden beads on shoelaces for a long time now, but it was nice to change it up with the pipe cleaners.  The stiffness of the pipe cleaners made it really easy for her to work with.

The fact that they were sparkly didn’t hurt.  🙂

   

We worked with her on making patterns for a bit, but as you can see she lost interest towards the end.  🙂

Michael and I went to a figure drawing class on Sunday night and it was awesome!  Instead of having a nude model, they had a burlesque dancer and instead of being in a stuffy studio, it was in a trendy East Austin bar.  ::love::  I felt a bit out of place amongst real artists, but I was content to sit in the back and scrapbook.  Due to the nature of the class, I brought almost no supplies.  Literally, photos, a 6×6 paper pack, paper trimmer, tape runner, ink pad, pen, cardstock and a few rolls of washi tape.  I’m not going to lie, it was a challenge to create pages with so few supplies, but I had a great time doing it.  Hopefully we’ll go again next month!

I had to cut out my own title, what with no thickers, stickers, or cricut, but it ended up just fine.

I was a bit worried about having only 6×6 patterned paper, but I was able to layer it in such a way that it spanned the whole page.  Of course I added some washi tape.  🙂

And here’s the full page.  A very different style and color scheme for me, but I love it.  I think I’ll experiment with limiting my supplies more often.  🙂

Kate requested a “Mommy Day” today, so we hung around the house and did some art projects.  She asked to scrapbook, be still my heart!

I dug out some paper scraps, some misprinted photos, stickers, glitter glue, markers, tape and scissors.  She was thrilled!

   

She was particularly fond of the tape.  That is, until she got it tangled up in her hair.  It’s extreme crafting!  We decided to go with a pony tail for the remainder of craft time.

I worked on Project Life while she created so that I wouldn’t a. interfere b. freak out about the mess.  She loved having tons of choices.  Usually I give her one thing at a time so this was a bit of a treat.  I’ll have to do it more often.