RaptorMama

Kate has a magnetic chalk board now and I’m so excited to start using it!  First project, a little something to get us in the Valentine’s Day mood while working on letter recognition.

   

I started by cutting out hearts and arrows on my cricut.  I used the SCAL software and created my own svg files using the included stamps.

Then I laminated them.  Excuse me while I totally geek out over here.  I <3 this machine.

After they were laminated, I cut them out and wrote the alphabet on them.  Uppercase letters on the arrows and lowercase letters on the hearts.  I figured that most of the uppercase letters can only go in one direction, but the lowercase ones can be turned (p, d, b, q for example) so I wanted them on the heart which can only go one way.

I thought about stamping them or using rubbons, but I didn’t for 3 reasons.  1.  I don’t have matching upper and lowercase stamps.  2.  The lowercase case alphas I have are the ones with the old school g and a (like the font I’m typing in now) and not the bubblier ones that Kate is used to.  3.  I wanted to make it more versatile so that in future years I can remove the sharpie with fingernail polish removed and put different things on them (sight words, math, sentences, etc.)

The last thing I did was to cut small stripes of magnet tape and stick it to the back.

Overall, I’m pleased with how it turned out!

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…  j/k.  I’m having a harder time with this project this year for 2 reasons.  1.  I just did October Daily which was a blast but still quite the task.  2.  I never did find 1 Christmas line that I *loved* so I’m pulling from a few different things to try to make it work.  That said, Kate was so excited about looking at our previous December Dailies that I knew I had to push through or I would regret it.  Here’s the next installment.

Day 7.  Are those peppermint Thickers not too die for?  I wish I had bought 4 or 5 packages instead of 1. Paper is Authentique:)

I added an insert since it was a busy day.  First we went on a tour of the post office with one of our playgroups, then we met up with another playgroup at the park after “nap.”  Tree paper is last year’s My Mind’s Eye.

Day 8.  We went to a peppermint themed birthday party for Emily.  So adorable!  I *think* this paper is Basic Grey, but I’m too lazy to go look.  If anyone is dying to know, leave a comment and I’ll see if I can find it.

Day 9.  More awesome Thickers.  And Authentique paper.  And Mimi cuddles.  🙂

I added a strip of this year’s My Mind’s Eye to the back.

Day 10.  The girls and I made ornaments!  It was super fun.  My Mind’s Eye with some October Afternoon stickers.

I added a page with a macro shot of some peppermints I was working on and put journaling on the back.  You can see Kate’s page poking through.  She was *so* excited to help.  More on that in the next installment.

Also, just a bit of a goals update to try to keep myself accountable.  (I’m writing this on the 10th.)  I’m way behind in Kate’s scrapbook and Project Life.  My goals this month are to finish her March and April layouts (pictures have already been printed); finish December Daily; sort and order pics for May and June; sort and order Project Life pics for April, May, and June; and do the Project Life journaling for November.  Oh and start cooking.  I’m making dinner once a week now.  Wow.  Seeing it all typed out like that is kind of freaking me out.  I have 21 more days…  Can I do it?  We shall see.

 

Guest Post from Raptor Dad.  🙂

Bellamon makes some of Raptor Dad’s favorite kid’s apps for the iPad. Fortunately, they also make some of Raptor’s favorites! Shape-O was the first app we purchased from them, and it is a near perfect kid’s app. Simple to use, generous with the stray touches that kids are likely to do at the edge of the screen, bright and cheery, and just a lovely experience for your little ones. It didn’t hurt that it included dozens of puzzles for our very picky little girl to sort through.

Next came Counting Catepillar, which was still good but a little more mind numbing to the full grown brain. It’s just counting, so it can get old and repetitive quickly, but that’s the sort of reinforcement kids need. Again, the software is well designed when it comes to children, interfacing easily without much instruction at all. Many kid’s apps fail in this way, including advertising or unneccessary screens plugging other apps by the company that just get in the way of your kid doing what they want to do (play games!)

Most recently we purchased the Math Tree, which is again a lovely app with all the design benefits of the others, but targeting a little bit more advanced skill: Addition and Subtraction (note, there may be more advanced math like Multiplication and Division, but Raptor hasn’t gotten there yet and I haven’t sought it out). Hopefully no one gets judgy that we are drilling our little girl on Math skills, this is something Raptor has come to on her own. She started doing simple adding and subtraction without any guidance, which blew our minds a little so we’ve tried to gently encourage it and make sure there are tools available for her to explore at her own pace.

Anyway, on to The Math Tree. The app is beautiful as ever and Raptor loves it. On screen ‘manipulatives’ allow her to see and discover the answer to each math problem and then answer from 1 of 4 multiple choice options. When she gets one wrong it gently suggests that she try another option. Because the options are just there for her to see, I have noticed that she will grow impatient at times and just mash buttons until she gets the right one, but she is just three – I suppose a little impatience is expected.

All in all it’s a great app and I’d encourage anyone with an iPad and little ones to pick up anything Bellamon makes.

As promised, here’s my first project made with the laminator!

First I cut out out a heart with my Cricut and laminated with with my awesome laminating machine.  🙂  The paper is last year’s Valentine’s line from Echo Park.

I flipped it over and marked where I wanted the holes with a sharpie.

I punched the holes with my crop-a-dile.  This was probably my favorite tool until the awesomeness that is my laminating machine entered my life.  🙂

It’s hard to see the holes in this pic, but they’re there.  🙂  I dug up a red shoe lace from one of Kate’s lacing cards and got it started for her.

She was thrilled!

I’m also considering setting her up with a yard needle and some pink yarn so she can try her hand at sewing.

Day 4: Hanging up the Christmas lights with the girls.  Crate Paper base with some October Afternoon stickers and some washi tape.

Day 5: Gymnastics!  I used a transparency (Hambly maybe?) as the base and some cool glittery Thickers.  I matched 2 photos front to back to hide the adhesive.  I also put a strip of cardstock behind the letters and used it for journaling on the other side.

I added a little half sheet with a picture of Kate writing a story with Michael.  Michael even did some journaling on the back for me.  🙂

Day 6!  More Crate Paper with a My Mind’s Eye sticker.

Another additional sheet, Echo Park this time, with an October Afternoon sticker and some washi tape.

I left the back of the page blank just because.  🙂  Stay tuned for days 7-9!

Michael got me a laminator for Christmas!  Y’all, I’m probably more excited about this than any normal person would be, but I am *so freaking excited* about this!!!

It’s beautiful isn’t it.  Best part?  It’s only $30.  Seriously!

First I cut out a bunch of hearts and arrows using my Cricut.  Side note: I’m super excited to start on Valentine’s Day crafts!

Then you put the stuff you want laminated into a little pouch.  You get 100 of them for $15.  That’s super cheap!

I was a little worried that all of the hearts could shift around since I had to tilt the pouch a bit to put it in the machine, but I needn’t have worried.  I mean, you need to be careful and go slowly, but I didn’t have to glue them down or anything like I was afraid of.

The machine sucks them through and then they come out all perfectly laminated!  Squee!!!!

When I was teaching I had an unhealthy addiction fondness for the laminating machine.  I’m working on some fun stuff right now that I’ll put up on the blog soon!  🙂

I’ve finally started working on mine!  I never did find a whole line of paper that I liked, so I’m using a bit of this and a bit of that.  Crate Paper, Echo Park, October Afternoon, My Mind’s Eye, and Authentique mainly.  It’s going to be a bit eclectic for sure.  lol.  I’m keeping the basic structure the same as my past December Dailies and October Daily: one 6×6 page front and back with additional pages added as needed.

I haven’t figured out what I want to do with the covers, but here’s day 1.  I’m not super happy with it, but sometimes you just have to do it and move on, know what I mean?  It’s last year’s My Mind’s Eye (why didn’t I buy more of that when I had the chance?!?  Still my fav Christmas line ever!) with some stickers from Echo Park, some washi tape and a Thicker number.

I added an extra page that I used the American Crafts knock-outs punch on.  I <3 that tool.  Also, American Crafts has the best costumer service ever.  I should probably write a whole blog post about that tool…  ::adding it to the list::

Here’s day 2 with the Crate Paper as a base along with an October Afternoon tag, an Echo Park number, some washi tape and a vellum tag also from Crate Paper.  I liked that it was more subtlely Christmas since these pictures look more like they were taken in June than December.

I added an extra page here too.

Only in Texas do you go shopping for a Christmas tree in a sundress.  Lol.

And of course another added page of decorating the tree.

I went ahead and left day 4 in so that you could see how the pages will look layered, but I’ll have a separate blog post with days 4-6 later.  I’m going to try to do 3 days per post so that we’re not still talking about December Daily in April.  I guess I better get cracking on those pages then!

 

I had so much fun hosting Christmas Eve!  I had a few more ideas that I ran out of time for, but I’m really happy with what I did accomplish and now I have a list of ideas for next year.

We decided that it would be fun to have a theme for the food this year.  Since we decided while we were shopping at Ikea, Swedish seemed like the way to go.  We had meatballs, salmon, marinated cucumbers, and potato pancakes on the menu as our Swedish foods and then we had asparagus, salad and rolls in case the Swedish food was gross.  Luckily it was all delish!

I seriously love plates and I probably have more than any one person really needs, but I can’t help myself.  🙂  I don’t quite have enough of these salad plates so I alternated with the plain ones.  Hopefully it looked intentional.

I made some napkins out of flannel with my serger.  I love that thing.  I also bought some red stripped juice glasses at Ikea that we used as wine glasses.

In the end the peppermint topiaries were too much with the stripped table runner, so I put them out on the island with some appetizers.  Funny story about the appetizers…  We weren’t planning on having any, but then I found these awesome bowls from Crate and Barrel that I was given last year when I was digging out my plates.  They are perfect!  That and my genetic inability to host an event without having enough food to feed a small army led me back to HEB on Christmas Eve.

I think everything turned out great and I loved the look of the red and white.  I think we’ll be sticking with that for a while.  🙂  Bonus, I just realized that I can repurpose a bunch of it for Kate’s second annual Valentine’s Day play group party!

 

I had grand plans for an awesome post after my week off, but, well… if y’all have been reading for very long you know that I’m a major procrastinator.  lol.  It’s currently 2 AM and I just finished addressing my Christmas cards.  Except that I’m missing some addressees and I ran out of stamps.  ::sigh::  One day I’ll have it all together, right?  RIGHT?!?  All that to say that I *don’t* have an awesome craft ready to blog about at the moment.  What I do have is some awesome pictures.

We were at my brother-in-law’s house this weekend and Kate’s cousins were playing in a giant pile of leaves. They had a blast raking them into a pile and jumping into them.  Here’s my beautiful niece.

And here’s my gorgeous daughter.  I had to bribe Kate with chocolate to cooperate (she might just be the most photographed child in existence) but I’m super happy with how these turned out.  I used my 50mm 1.8 lens (best. lens. ever.) and the settings were as follows: shutter- 1/250; f stop- 2.2; ISO- 400.  I sometimes shoot in full manual mode, but more often that not (on this occasion for example) I shoot in Apature Priority mode.

I cropped these in Lightroom (which I am totally in love with) and then ran an action in Photoshop.  I don’t often pull pics into Photoshop, but I wanted to punch up the color on these a bit since the leaves were kind of drab straight out of camera. I even used the pic of Kate as our Christmas card!

In other news, I’m now caught up through December 6th on December Daily.  🙂  Hopefully I’ll have some of that to share on Wednesday.

Guess who got Lightroom for Christmas?  And a laminating machine?  😀  I didn’t even know you could get one for your house.  Let’s just say that RaptorDad is the best hubby ever.

Sorry I’ve been MIA this week, but I’ve been having a blast hanging out with my fam and playing with my new toys.  Expect me to get back on track with Monday, Wednesday, Friday posting starting next week.  🙂  I finally started on December Daily so expect some posts about that.  Any other requests?

Pretty picture.