RaptorMama

So…  Kate started Girl Scouts this year and she and I are loving it!  Her troop is an awesome mix of kindergartners and first graders and all but one are new to Girl Scouts this year.  The girls have been busily earning their petals (those are like badges for Daisies) with a lot of fun patches along the way.  We love patches.  🙂

The other day, Kate asked me what her apron would look like when she had earned everything and was ready to bridge to Brownies.  I pulled up a picture, but pointed out that we were not going to earn the journeys with the troop since we would only be daisies for one year.  (If you’re not familiar with the new program, most of the badges have been replaced with journeys.  Journeys are generally meant to be earned over the course of about 6 meetings, though there are programs to earn them in a day.  There are 3 journeys at each level and, if you earn all 3, you get the summit award.)

I asked Kate if she wanted to try to earn a journey on her own (one of her friends has done a journey) and she was super enthusiastic about it.  In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that she wants to earn all 3.  Well, fine by me, we’re having so much fun with this one that I’m down for 2 more.  🙂  I talked to her troop leader about it and she was very encouraging.  In fact, one of her daughters is in first grade as well so we might work on the other 2 journeys together.

We’re adjusting a few things from the leader book, mainly taking out the group games and substituting crafts, and I think it’s going really well.  Since part of the point of doing this is to have some quality one on one time with Kate, I’m being very intentional about our “meetings.”  She wears her apron (omg, she’s so cute in it) and we start by saying the Promise and the Law.  Then we read the chapter in the journey book, do any of the written activities in the book, and do a related craft.  For our first meeting, I bought some flower pots, potting soil, and seeds at the Dollar Store.  I painted white around the rim of the pots to prepare them.  Then Kate and I talked about the Law and she decided on her favorite line, “Be a sister to every Girl Scout.”  We talked a little bit about some ways that she could enact that in her daily life and then she wrote it on one of the flower pots.  Since we had 3 more, I asked her if she would rather choose 3 more lines from the Law (there are 10 total) or if she wanted to me write the 3 lines of the promise.  She decided to go with the promise.  Then she colored 3 of the pots with sharpies and I colored 1.  Once she was satisfied with the crafty portion, we planted some seeds.  Tending to this little garden seems to be the point of the 1st 3rd of the journey, so fingers crossed that our dollar store seeds sprout for us.  🙂  We end our meetings by making a Daisy Circle and singing the Make New Friends song.

There are so many cute ideas online that I’m not even sure where all to link back to.  Mostly I think I’m using this site which is a council’s website that has amazing lesson plans for all of the journeys and a bunch of badges, and this site which is a blog where a mom is walking you through what she did with her troop.

Oh letterboxing.  We went once when Kate was 3 or 4 and had a blast, but when I looked in to doing it again there weren’t a ton of boxes in our area so I kind of gave up on the idea.  Well apparently it’s now super popular in our area!  There were 2 letterboxes in the park where we released the tadpoles so we planned on finding them after to soften the blow of making Kate release “her favorite pets!”

What is letterboxing you ask?  It’s like a little scavenger hunt.  You get clues off of a website (here‘s the one we used) and then follow the clues to find a little box.  Inside the box is a log book and a stamp.  You also have a personal log book and stamp.  You put your stamp in their log book and put their stamp in your log book.  Et voila!

We only ended up finding one because it was a bit cold for the babies, but I totally want to start doing this!  It gave us a great reason for a family walk/ hike which is something we’ve been wanting to do anyway.  Plus it’s just fun to collect stamps!

Kate enjoyed looking through the box’s log book to see who had visited in the past.

It turns out that there’s a Brownie badge for letterboxing!  (Which I think explains the increase in boxes.  The girls have to “plant” a box to get the badge.)  Kate’s troop leader saw our letterboxing pics online and asked if I would consider leading the letterboxing badge next year.  Yes please! I had the pinterest board going within 30 seconds.  lol.

Waaaaaaaay back in October I got suckered into taking some frog eggs.  Raptor’s Girl Scout troop (which is the best troop evah!)  decided to earn one of their petals by rescuing some frog eggs, raising them into frogs, and then releasing them.  For some reason I assumed this would take about 2 weeks.  hahahahahaha.  More like 3 months.  It was pretty cool watching them transform but, no lie, I was ready for them to go.  Despite RaptorDad changing their water on the regular, they stunk.  So when the first of the 4 surviving tadpoles turned in to a froglet, I started planning their release back into the wild.  On Friday, his tail was gone and he tried to hop out of his home.  They were getting the boot.  lol.

What about the other 3 poor tadpoles?  Two had back legs and the buds of front legs.  One was some kind a mutant tiny tadpole that never really developed at all.  We made the executive decision to let them all go at the same time.

Kate was not 100% on board with this plan.  She had gotten a bit attached and wanted to keep them, but one geriatric dog is already bordering on more pet than I can handle so I convinced her that they would be happier in their new home.

Bye bye froggie!  (Don’t worry, the jar was just for transport.  They had a much bigger tub at home.)  We went to a creek that has a shallow bit that I knew Kate would be able to walk out into for the release.  I also figured that shallow water meant less predators?  They didn’t get eaten in front of us so I’m counting that as a win.

Mia was soooooooo over the whole tadpole thing.  She is loving the whole baby wearing thing though.  😉

 

So…  I have always, always, always wanted to join a scrapbook kit club.  I never have though because they’re pricey and because I’m pretty picky about what I like.  But now that all of our local stores have closed I’ve been kind of blah.  I was having a really hard time picking a collection for my December Daily this year, but then I got an email that would change my life.  (And yes, I’m being waaaaaay overly dramatic.  lol.)  Ali Edwards was putting her past December Daily kits on clearance!!!  Needless to say I ordered both immediately.  I was so excited when I got them that I cranked out December Daily 2014 in less that a week.  Side note:  I was going to post pics of it, but it got packed away with the Christmas decorations.  Whoops.  Never fear, I’ve been making some progress on this year’s December Daily too so I can post some pics of it.  And I’ve already found some Christmas crap that missed the boxes so if there’s interest I can get it out when I put that stuff away.  🙂

I used an October Daily album that I painted white.  I then added the ribbon tape, letters, and rubber charm from the kit.

The October Afternoon page protectors are a bit big (which is irritating) but I’m making it work.  Last year (2013), I backed each page with paper from 12×12 sheets which looked great but took forever and used a ton of product.  This year, I started off stitching the pages in place and embracing the transparent elements.  I’m loving it so far.  Everything on this page, aside from the thread and the small red number stickers, is from the kit.

And on to day 1!  Top left is a pocket that I stitched closed filled with sequins from my stash (love these doodlebug sequins!) and some acetate shapes from the kit.  Top left has a card that I stamped on with the stamps from the kit and a wooden number 1 from the kit.  I’m planning to use these wooden numbers throughout the entire album to add some consistency.  And the bottom on has a pic from our Christmas card photo shoot that I stitched in place.  Then I added some trim (I glued 2 pieces back to back so it looked nice on the others side) and then stapled it in place with my tiny attacher.

Day 2 is on the back of Day 1.  The top right pocket is a cute 3×4 card from the kit.  I talked about our elf, Christopher.  Kate loves him so much that she made and furnished a house for him.  Today she left him a him a bingo game (that she also made) before she went to school.  <3  Obviously that pic made it in the bottom pocket.  I always do the front and back (so days 1 and 2) at the same time since I’m leaving a transparent element on each page.  Plus I’m stitching stuff in place.

That’s as far as I got until after Christmas.  What can I say, this month has been crazy.  But then I got this fuse tool for Christmas and my mojo returned.  It’s amazing!  In fact, I considered redoing the earlier pages with the fuse instead of stitching, but I’m not crazy.  😉  For day 3, I “fused” some sequins and a photo in the top left pocket.  Basically I turned it in to 3 pockets and sealed the top.  For the top right, I stuck the photo on a card then added some journaling and a wooden 3.  For the bottom pocket, I added some die cuts and stickers from my stash and just accepted that the photo was a bit small.  You can see some more blue trim peaking out from a future page.

The fuse has a bit of a learning curve, but I’m just embracing imperfection and going with it.  Oh, and speaking of kits and the fuse tool…  Why yes.  I will be starting a new Project Life even though my current Project Life is only half done.  In an effort to stay inspired (and just because I’ve wanted to for about 10 years) I’m actually subscribing to the Studio Calico Project Life kit club for 6 months.  It’s a big investment for me (I’m going to use my Christmas money) and I doubt I’ll be able to continue it once my subscription is up, but I’m hoping it jump starts my creativity and encourages me to finish 2015 while staying current with 2016.  Fingers crossed!

Oh my.  I can’t believe that I didn’t write a single blog post in November or December.  Actually, I can.  😉  The babies haven’t been sleeping great (understatement lol) so we’ve just been on survival mode.  But those of you who have been readers for a while know that I can’t resist a good goals post, especially on New Year’s!  You guys also might remember that I don’t generally do year long goals.  I just find them too ambitious and easy to quit.  Now a month long goal?  Who can’t commit to doing something for 31 days?  (Spoiler alert: me.  lol.  But I’m going to try to do better this year.)  With that in mind, here are my goals for January.  With some cute pics from a little photoshoot I did for our Christmas cards sprinkled in.  Don’t worry, Xander didn’t manage to crawl off the bridge.

1.  Write Thank You notes.  I’ll actually try to tackle this one this weekend because I hate to have them hanging over my head.  The big question this year is if I can include the babies thank yous in the same note as mine…  (Kate does her own.)
2.  Blog!!!  Oh my.  I realize that this is a goal pretty much every month.  The reason being twofold.  One, I actually enjoy the writing aspect of keeping a blog.  Plus I hope that one day I might have an actual following.  Two, keeping up with the blog forces me to actually do something creative so that I have something to put on the blog!  And my mental health is soooooooo much better when I’m taking regular time to be creative.
3.  Meal Plan/ Grocery Shop.  This should be interesting.  I got a fancy shopping cart cover for Christmas and I was so excited to try it out that I took all 3 kids to the grocery store.  Well, we made it out alive, with groceries even, and Xander only broke one giant glass jar of preserved peppers so I guess I’m counting it as a win.  Still, I think I need to think of some new strategies for next week.  (Ones that don’t involve instacart as tempting as that may be.  lol.)  Suggestions?

4.  Dinner Prep.  I’d like to start making dinner at least 3 times a week.  The ultimate goal will be to find recipes that I can prep in the morning or during naptime.  So heavy focus on crock pot and things that can be assembled and then baked later.  I got some awesome new baking dishes for Christmas so I feel like this is feasible now.  Trying to cook (or having RaptorDad cook) at 5:00 when RaptorDad gets home is a disaster.  The babies are just d.o.n.e.  I feel like if we can eliminate the need to deal with dinner we can have some quality family time.
5.  Which brings me to goal number 5.  I would like to make a daily walk part of my routine with the babies.  I’m thinking in the morning?  But a family walk might be nice too if I can get the dinner thing situated.  Maybe both!  At a minimum, I want to take the babies for a walk every “work day.”  We went yesterday and today and it was lovely.
6.  On to the crafty goals!   First up is that I want to complete 2015 December Daily.  If you follow me on instagram (did I post this?) you might know that I splurged and ordered 2 back kits from Ali Edwards when they went on super sale.  OMG.  I’ve never had a kit before and I had no idea how much fun they could be!  It actually inspired me to go back and do a December Daily for 2014.  I think I’ll blog it this month.  Also, I’m considering buying a Project Life kit or 2 with some of my Christmas money.  I’m currently trying to decide between the Studio Calico one and the Hip Kit one…

7. Speaking of Project Life, I want to do 6 layouts.  3 from January 2016 and 3 as a catch up for 2015.  What about 2014 you ask?  Blah.  It’s digital and I’m over it.  I have the notes and I’m sure I’ll go back and do it eventually, but Photoshop and I are not currently on speaking terms after a bit of a failed Christmas present.
8. Scrapbook December 2014.  If I can knock this out, I’ll be done with another album!  I love finishing up a whole album.  🙂
9. Scrapbook current layouts.  I like to at least try to do some layouts in the moment before I forget the details!  So I’d like to knock out a few from this fall even as I work on bridging the gap to the babies’ births.
10. Take (and edit!) pics of the babies at least once a week with my “real” camera.

Here’s another layout I put together last week with Kate’s assistance.

I’m actually quite pleased with the embellishment clusters!  I don’t love the title, but it was Kate’s main contribution so I’m keeping it.  🙂

I should be getting a new box of goodies today!  Tracking shows it’s out for delivery.  🙂  It’s mainly stuff for December Daily and I’m excited to get it and start playing.  Especially after missing last year.

Kate wanted to scrap with me this weekend (be still my heart!) so we made this page of her doing story time for the twins.  Usually she wants to make her own pages, but I think she’s discovering that I don’t always share the coolest supplies with her.  Whoops.  😉  She decided that we should make this page together.

She was super excited when I let her do some journaling ::gasp:: on the page with one of my pens!  She also took her time and used her very best penmanship.  I love that I have a snippet of her voice and her handwriting in my scrapbook!  I’m going to make a point to have her do some project life cards too.  🙂

The babies are 6 months old!  How did that happen?!?  We started solids today (actually a week ago, I’ve been slacking a bit on the blog) which was super exciting.  We started with avocado because it’s soft and nutritionally dense.  With Kate, we did Baby Led Weaning (here’s a book if you’re interested) and we loved it.  Basically, you skip purees entirely and just let the kids eat real food.  Xander was all for it!

Kate was all about helping.  Don’t worry, she didn’t actually shove food in his mouth.  lol.

I love his expression in this one.  He’s like, “Why did I just put that in my mouth?!?” 3 seconds later, “OMG, give me more!”  Do all babies react to solids like this or is it just my kids?

Mia was more of a challenge.  We didn’t want to spoon feed her, but she wasn’t quite ready for BLW either.  After discussing it ad naseum with her occupational therapist, her speech therapist, and her nutritionist (wow, that was crazy to type out) we decided to do kind of a hybrid approach.  Our goals are to explore food and have fun, we’re not bothered about them actually ingesting anything, which makes it easier.

Our speech therapist suggested using her chewy stick (it’s like a therapy teether) sort of like a spoon.  We also loosely mashed up her avocado instead of giving her big chunks, but we didn’t puree it.  Since it’s not smooth, we’re hoping to avoid texture aversions later.

We’re also following her lead as far as when she wants more and when she wants the chewy in her mouth.  It’s a lot more work than straight BLW (which is like the lazy parent version of solids and I love) but we feel like she’s still getting a few of the benefits without being so worried about her choking.

Incidentally, I freaking love our high chairs.  They’re pricey, but we were lucky enough to have received both as gifts.  One we still have from when Kate was a baby.  We didn’t think we’d be able to have more kids, but I just couldn’t bring myself to part with it because I loved it so much!  And after seeing daily use for almost 3 years, it still looks almost new.

 

It’s no secret that pink is my favorite color, but gold?  I resisted that trend for a long time.  I finally gave in and I’m kicking myself for waiting so long.  Pink and Gold 4 Lyfe!

I did some pink stars with a bit of texture medium and then  sprayed some hearts using my heart stencil and some Heidi Shine.

It was subtle, but I like the way it turned out.  The cardstock is actually teal, not sure what’s up with the color in this pic.  That’ll teach me to try to be all fancy and use my real camera!

Also loving the vellum with gold!  And the gold washi!  And my adorable cousins.  🙂

Let’s see how we did with the September goals, shall we?  🙂

1.  Scrapbook October- Done!  In fact, I love my new Crate Paper goodies so much that I was wishing I had more pics from last October to play with.  Luckily it’s October again so I’ll have new pics to play with soon!
2. Scrapbook May 2015- Also done!  I love scrapping more current pics.  🙂
3. Project Life- Well, I did 5/6 layouts, so I didn’t make much forward progress, but I didn’t fall further behind either.  I’m counting this one in the win column.
4. Blog- I fell down a bit on the blogging last month.  Things have just been so crazy around here!  I’ve decided just to give in and start posting iPhone pics of my layouts.  The quality isn’t as good, but the reality is that I have limited time and I’d rather scrap than edit photos of layouts.  lol.  At least I have a plan moving forward.
5. Register for the Buddy Walk- Done!  In fact we have a team and everything.  We might even get shirts.  🙂
6. Reframe DAD pics- Not yet, but I bought the frames so that’s a step in the right direction.
7. Decorate for Halloween- Done!  I <3 decorating for Halloween.  🙂
8. Decide on Halloween costumes- still working on this one.  I’m pretty sure the babies are going to be bats, but I need Kate to commit to being a witch first.  She has until Wednesday to decide!
9. Finish cross stitch project- If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I got a lot closer to finishing this than I thought I would!  Still, not quite done yet.  It’s being put on hold while I focus on Xander’s stocking.
10. Layout list for August- Done!  It’s almost all iPhone pics.  Need to bust out the real camera this month!

Look at my adorable babies!  I took this pic on Friday and I had to scrap it right away.

I used my stencil to make the hearts, and then I did some splatters with my gold Heidi Shine.  I matted the pic with what might be my last piece of my favorite paper from the October Afternoon Witch Hazel line.  Then I added in a bunch of pieces from the Crate Paper After Dark ephemera pack, a bit of washi from Target and some sequins.  I love it!  And I just uploaded some more pics from this weekend to play with.  I might end up staying caught up with October.  lol.

Speaking of staying caught up, I need to set some October goals.

1. Scrap June 2015
2. Find a Christmas line I like
3. Scrap December 2014
4. Scrap January 2015
5. Layout list for September 2015
6. Project Life
7. Xander’s Stocking
8. Twins’ Halloween costumes
9. Kate’s Halloween costume
10. Blog