RaptorMama

Yum!  This was an easy project for Kate to help me with.

I melted the chocolate in a glass measuring cup and dipped the pretzels partway in.  I didn’t fully submerge them because then I would have gotten chocolate all over my hands, yuck.

Kate loved putting the sprinkles on them after I dipped them.  They probably would have looked prettier if we had done regular pretzels instead of bunnies, but we like to do organic when we can.  Especially when we’re about to cover them in ultra-processed food-dye-filled chocolate.  🙂

We dipped some cookies too since we had chocolate left over.  Yum.

 

These were not helping me with the dieting!  Luckily, they were a hit at the parties and are all gone now.

I have to be honest here and admit that I was ridiculously excited about making Valentines for Kate.  Like, for serious.  I decided to make the heart crayons that are all over Pinterest right now. (Should I just rename my blog “The Pinterest Show”?  I feel like I used to have original ideas.  lol.)

First step is to cut up the crayons.  Incidentally, I *may* have ruined our plastic cutting board cutting up the crayons.  I’m going to go ahead and suggest that you not do that.  Maybe put down some waxed paper first?  Then put your crayons in a silicon heart mold.  I got mine at Ikea for cheap which is good because, once you use it for crayons, you can’t use it for anything else.

I went with 2 colors in each mold.  Kate liked to mix the colors up more and, in the end, I think her’s looked cooler.  Regardless, it required about 2 crayon’s worth of wax for each heart.

So it turns out that I waaaay underestimated the number of crayons I would need. Particularly since, in addition to our playgroup party, we ended up going to a Valentine’s Day party at the library which required us to bring 24 valentines.  I may have used all but one of my child’s crayons up in this little endeavor.  It’s cool.  She and I both love brand new crayons.  OK, maybe I’m projecting a little  🙂

You “cook” it at 230* for 15 minutes. Well, if you have a normal oven you do.  With my oven, you check them at 15 minutes and then cook them for another 15.  This is probably super obvious to everyone who isn’t me, but you should put the mold on a cookie sheet before you put in it the oven.  Just trust me on this one.  Let them cool for an hour or two and then pop them out.  Basically, you want them to set up but if you wait too long (say overnight) they fall apart as you pop them out.  Ask me how I know this.  Grr…  No worries though, just pop them back in the oven and they remelt.

Now on to the paper portion of our Valentines.  My super awesome hubby got me a Cricut and SCAL for Christmas a few years ago.   For those of you living in a cave (hi mom!) a Cricut is a computerized die cutting machine.  SCAL is a piece of software that allows you to hook your Cricut up to your computer thus circumventing the need to buy cartridges.  I <3 it.  I cut out some 36 just-shy-of 3 inch scalloped circles.

I stamped, “You color my world Love Kate” on them.  (That’s another Pinterest rip off by the way.)  Now, I’m not a big stamper, but I think they turned out ok.  I had to stamp it 3 times because I didn’t have enough of each letter to spell out everything, but it was fairly easy to line it up using the acrylic block.  Not to mention, they’re 2 year olds y’all.  How critical can they be?

Hmm…  The plan was to put the crayon in the center, but even so I think it needs a little something.

I’m always a fan of bling.  Especially heart shaped bling.  

Maybe a little ink around the edges?

Ah ha!  A gray mat and we’re in business.  By the way, this is one of the crayons that Kate made and it’s totally my fav.  I <3 rainbows.

I stuck some Echo Park paper on the back and called it good.

I can’t wait for her to give them to her little friends at our party today!  🙂

I’m way a little bit behind on Kate’s scrapbook, but I’m making progress.  This page is from August.

I really liked the look of using the patterned paper as a mat, but it was a bit too busy so I added a solid colored mat too.  I didn’t want to sacrifice a whole sheet of green card stock though (I’m cheap, what can I say?) so I cut it out from where it would be covered up.

Then I inked the edges of everything and layered it all up.

I outlined the edges of these stickers with a brown pen to give them a bit of definition.

A little bit of flower trim and ric rac and I called it good!

Pretty simple, but I’m happy with the way it turned out.

Kate and I are hosting a special Valentine’s Day party for our playgroup.  I have a bit of a tendency to go overboard with the planning of these things, but I sometimes lack follow through.  🙂  This time I actually managed to finish one of my planned projects!  It’s a felt heart banner based on this tutorial from, where else, Pinterest.

Of course I had to change it up a bit.  🙂  I started off by cutting some felt into strips 1 inch wide and 4 inches long.

   

 

Such pretty little felt. 🙂

 

I didn’t end up having enough red, so I decided to make red squares in between the hearts instead of red hearts.

I sewed pairs of red squares together to give them a bit more definition.  Then I started on the hearts.  First stitch 2 strips together.  Then open them up and stitch the bottoms.  Voila!  Hearts.

The tutorial has you sew all of the hearts before cutting them down to 1 inch wide.  In retrospect, that might have been easier.  🙂

I spent forever stitching the hearts together in a chain.  I tied the thread off at one edge of the first heart, ran it through the red square and then tied it off at the edge of the second heart.  I was pretty proud of myself for doing it this way because it kept there from being a thread through the center of the heart.  Of course I was only proud of myself until I tried to hang it.

Then I noticed that the weight of the hearts was causing them to flatten and look idiotic.  ::sigh::  I took it back down and strung the hearts like beads.  Much quicker and with the added advantage of not pulling the hearts flat.

You can hardly tell that the thread is there anyway.  I should have done it this way from the beginning!  The hearts are kind of wonky and turned in different directions, but I like it that way.  It seems more playful and less Martha Stewart.  Perfect for a playgroup.

I had some extra hearts so I added them hanging down from the banner.  All in all, I think it turned out super cute!

When I was pregnant with Kate (a million years ago!) I saw some homemade knock off taggie blankets in a cloth diaper store and I thought, I can make that.  🙂  It took a bit to figure out, (especially because it was pretty much the first thing I had ever sewn other than a scrapbook page) but I ended up pretty pleased with the result.  Kate sleeps with it every night.  In fact, it’s the blanket for her special bear, Boris (long story.)

It should become quite apparent at this point that I was *not* a sewer when I picked these materials.  Both of these are a bit difficult to sew (understatement!) but the different textures are fun for babies.  What compelled me to put these on the blog after all this time?  Well, my awesome sister-in-law is pregnant with twin boys (so excited for her!) and I wanted to add something homemade to her baby shower gift so I decided to make 2 of these.

 

Initially, I wanted to make them coordinating and not identical (which is how their mom plans to dress them) but them I found this brown satin and blue minky.

After I found this awesome ribbon (that matched perfectly!), and I knew I had to use it.  Since I didn’t have it in green and I bought it forever ago, I decided that identical blankets would be the way to go.

I cut the ribbon in maybe 3 inch strips, folded it in half and pinned them to the satin loops facing in.  Don’t pin it to the minky!  It’s way too stretchy, trust me.

I went with 3 ribbon loops across instead of 4 this time.  When you use 4, they have a tendency to get caught up in the corner seams.  3 is *much* better.  Trust me.

 

Stich once around the satin to catch all of the ribbon loops.  I like to backstitch over them to make sure that the ribbon won’t be pulled out as the baby plays with it.

Once you’ve gone all the way around the satin, pin it to the minky right sides together and stitch around again.  The minky will stretch out and get all out of shape, but that’s ok.  Just use your satin as the guide and your final blanket will be square.

Leave a little spot to turn the blanket right side out and then hand stitch it closed.  I’m pretty lazy with the hand stitching, so I only leave about an inch, maybe an inch and a half.  I don’t have a picture of the blue ones, because I finished them right before the shower and forgot!  Trust me though, they turned out really cute.  🙂  I’ll leave you with a picture of Kate’s instead.

After 2 1/2 years, it’s a little worse for wear, but I think it’s held up surprisingly well.  Her’s is pink minky on one side and this green satiny stuff on the other side.

Brings back memories!

 

Let’s see how I did, shall we?

1.  Lose 4 pounds.  Hot damn y’all, I did it.  I started the month off at -17 and ended it at -22!  Now I just need to keep the momentum going.  Let’s say another 4 pounds for February.

2.  Work out twice a week.  Um, yeah no.  I think I worked out twice in the month of January.  Might have to carry that goal over.

3.  Update the blog 3 times a week.  Success!  I need to get my buffer built back up, but I have a lot of cool things in the works.  Stay tuned!

4.  Finish December Daily.  I did it!  So glad it’s done and I’m loving how it turned out.

5.  Make 4 new mama crafts.  Hmm…  I made a skirt, an apron, some taggie blankets for a gift (more on that next week) and several scrapbook pages.  OK, so I made the skirt on December 31st, but that still counts, right?  RIGHT?  Umm…  I have a lot of other projects that are half done.  Need to get them finished.  🙂

6.  Cook 2 dinners.  Done!  One was even edible!  I think I might have to break up with my crock pot though.

7.  Do 4 new Kate projects.  Let’s see.  The cloud dough and water beads were our only big projects, but we also did lots of stickers, playdoh, cookie decorating and a pretty cool field trip.  I need to get more intentional about this though.

8.  Plan 4 date nights.  I managed to do 3 which would be pretty good if Michael hadn’t totally shown me up.  🙂  He orchestrated a Kate/ grandma sleepover, ordered me a gorgeous new dress and picked a great new spot for dinner.  My husband’s the best.  Might need to step it up next month.  😉

9.  Order and Edit December Pictures.  Done and done.  Now, there was a bit of an issue with the pictures for Project Life (they’ll have to be reprinted ::sad face::) but Shutterfly was totally awesome and issued me a print credit even though it was probably my fault.  I just need to sit down and resize them all/ reorder them.

10.  Walk Ninja daily.  Poor ninja.  She always gets the short end of the stick.  She has been getting more walks, but still not daily ones.  Before Kate was born, she used to get TWO walks a day, I should be able to make one happen.

11.  Clean up my bedroom.  We did it!  Of course, it’s starting to look a bit pit-like again what with the piles of laundry that need to be folded, but underneath it’s clean.  Like we threw away/ donated to Goodwill trash bags full of stuff.  It was super cathartic.

12.  Write thank you notes.  Done and done!

This super awesome sculpture thing called a luminaria was in Austin for 1 week.  Umm…  Methinks it’s field trip time!  The line was supposed to be several hours long so we dragged ourselves out of bed super early so we would be among the first in line.

   

It worked!  No doubt because we were riding with a friend and had no choice but to get our booties in gear.  It was pretty cold when we first got there so I convinced Kate to wear my hat.  So cute.

   

 

The downside to arriving 45 minutes early to avoid the lines is that you have 45 minutes to kill before they’ll let you in.  Luckily there was a nice open area for the kids to run around in.

   

Kate was amazed and, to be honest, so was I.

   

It was kind of like being onside of a giant bouncy house made of tubes.  Oh, and with crazy light coming in.

   

We were in the first group in so it wasn’t crowded when we first entered.  Of course 15 minutes later it was getting quite crowded, so I’m really glad that we got there early.

Kate is generally all over having her picture taken, but today she refused to pose.  She kept wanting to lay down in the middle of the rooms and stare at the ceiling.  I can’t blame her!

   

It was an awesome morning capped with a trip to the hamburger joint that has an attached playscape and ice cream shop.  Let’s just say that Kate was one very happy 2 year old.

Flush with success from my crock pot beans, I decided to try out a tofu recipe.  It sounded delicious.  I mean, orange, honey, and soy sauce.  What’s not to love?

I started off my sautéing the tofu in a little bit of butter with some garlic per the recipe.  Side note: let’s all pretend like my stove is sparkling clean.  I actually considered spending an hour trying to photoshop out the mess.  Perhaps next time I’ll just spend 30 seconds cleaning the stove instead.

The recipe called for 1/4 of a cup of orange juice, but we don’t keep juice in the house.  I used my lime squeezer to juice some clementines instead.  Incidentally, I found that it’s much easier to juice them with the peels still on so I switched to that method right after taking this photo.  I threw the crushed (and peeled) oranges into the crock pot for a bit of fiber.  Even after adding the soy and honey, it didn’t seem like enough liquid, but it ended up being fine.  At least with regards to the liquid.

I put in some broccoli like the recipe called for and I added a bit of squash because we like veggies.  Perhaps I should have stuck with the recipe…

It looked (and smelled) great.  The last hour I threw in some quinoa since that worked so well with the beans.  It’s at about this point that it all started to go downhill.  The quinoa didn’t cook (probably because there wasn’t enough liquid), the veggies were totally mushy, and the sauce was pretty flavorless (maybe I should have stuck with the juice?)

Final verdict?  Well, Kate and Michael both felt the need to rinse their mouths after tasting it so we ordered pizza.  I might have to break up with my crock pot.

I think I would totally try this recipe again, just not in a crock pot.  The sauce has a lot of potential and if the veggies were just lightly steamed I think it would have been great.

I know that I can’t be the first person to post about this, but it’s new to me so I’m going with it.  🙂  I helped make a bunch of rose centerpieces (they were gorgeous by the way) for my college sorority’s formal recruitment a few weeks ago and we had a ton of these water beads left.  I knew that Kate would love them so I snagged a ziplock of the extras before they were thrown away.

Kate thought that they were just about the coolest things ever.  I’m not really sure how to describe them…  They’re sort of squishy, but firm at the same time.  Almost like tapioca but cooler.

None of us could stop playing with them.  🙂

Fair warning, after about a week and a half they started to attract fruit flies so they had to go.  Next time, maybe we’ll keep them in the fridge or something.  And trust me, there will be a next time because these are awesome.

It’s done!  Finally!  I’m so glad that I did it again this year, but I’m not going to lie, I was happy to pack it away.  🙂

   Seeing as how Christmas Eve is my favorite, I had a lot of pictures I wanted to include.  We let Kate open up her present from us on Christmas Eve morning.  We had lots of fun playing candyland as a family.

   

These 2 pages are just pictures taped back to back.

   

This base for this page is a transparency with a bit of washi tape added.  I used some metal numbers to add the date.

   

Here’s the backside.  I kept is simple with just a photo collage.

   

I had a lot of pictures from Christmas morning too so I added a page.  I used a sheet of card stock as a base for this page and added a bit of twine and a rubbon.

I added another photo collage and some journaling to the back.

   

Santa brought Kate a playscape and she was thrilled.  She immediately proclaimed, “I have a park in my backyard!”

Backside just has a picture collage.  In retrospect, I wish I had flipped the base piece of paper so that the dots were in the front and the trees were on the back.

   

The back cover is a piece of acrylic just like the front cover.  This helps give the book some more stability.