Life Outside the Fishbowl

July Project Life(ish) - and a Free Download

I really have fun putting together Project Life spreads and July is no exception.  What makes things even more fun is creating my own cards, like I used this month.  I collaged two 3x4 cards and used them throughout my month combining them with digital stamps and brush files.

I had posted my first page of the July pages on the ScraPerfect blog. Here's the front and backside of my first July page, using a Design H protector. The front side is very clean & simple, but I had a bit of colorful fun on the reverse side.

And that July card?  I made it using my collaged card and a digi brush from Kerri Bradford.

My next page is a baseball card protector.  I wanted to showcase some of the photos I took on our trip to NYC, along with a commemorative coin.  I used a Studio Calico digital stamp on the same card with a wooden arrow pointing to New York.

The flip side has more photos, and a map of Central Park. I used a marker to highlight the route we took through the park.  Then I was back my standard Design A protector. I'd been saving this "travel time" card for awhile. 

The flip side of that page, and more fun cards, including using the second collaged card with another Kerri Bradford png file.

I enjoyed making these pocket cards and I hope you enjoy using them as well.  You can print them out and use them as is, or add a digital stamp or brush as I did. 

Just click the link to download. I'd love to see you do with them!

 DOWNLOAD HERE

 

It's a Nerf Gun Party!

This year Thomas decided he wanted to have a Nerf gun party, complete with an all-out capture the flag battle. We did quite a bit of searching and heavily relied on ideas we found on Pinterest.  You can look through my Pinterest idea board here for the Nerf party.

We started with handmade invitations, designed by Thomas. He really wanted the logo and a picture of a nerf gun on the front. I designed them in Photoshop and printed them on plain white cardstock. We layered orange cardstock and camouflage paper on top of a 5x7 card.

We also decided to supply the party guests with their own gun and quite a bit of darts, assuming they'd probably lose a good chunk in the yard.  Luckily Target was having a BOGO 40% off sale on all nerf products -- so we stocked up on both guns and darts. Each boy started out with around 15 darts and we had a large bowl with extras in easy reach.

In addition to a Nerf gun, we  added an ID tag, pop rocks, and a camo dart bag (home made) to make up a goody bag. I used my Silhouette to create the design for the bag. 

** update: download a free png file of this design here. Just right-click to save.  You can open in Silhouette and use the trace feature to turn this into a cut file. 

A quick note: using the trace feature I got the best results unchecking both the low and high pass filters, then moving the bottom threshold bar to the right.  You will have to release the compound path, then delete one set of lines. I chose to delete the interior lines of each shape.

To decorate, we picked up plain carboard cake plates at a party store. These were really super cheap -- the largest size was $ .65! All we needed were a couple of paint markers and we were set. We traced circles onto the plates and then painted with yellow, orange and blue markers.  We used Montana markers which were easy to use, however, you needed to apply at least two coats for each color. Once they were dry I used a black marker to outline each color.

We taped these targets up around the house, posted them outside and placed them on tables.

 Outside, we used a camouflage blanket underneath a yellow plastic tablecloth on our snack table. Thomas had seen an idea for pixy stix, so we included those in plastic camo glasses lableled "gunpowder."

And you must have games.  We set up two areas in the front yard: an obstacle course and a stacking target (thanks again to Pinterest for inspiration).  Thomas had liked the idea of the obstacle course and designed it himself, some you crawled under, stepped through and ran around.  He wanted to use tires for everyone to step through, but I vetoed that as too expensive.  As a replacement we picked up small hula hoops at the dollar store.

And our last "event" before an all-out capture the flag battle was this target complete with dollar store soldiers:

Finally, the birthday cake. Thomas wanted the same design we used on the goody bags. I have extremely limited icing skills and after having to bake and decorate cakes for both kids' parties last year, this year I wanted to let someone else take it on.

We ordered a cake from the Swiss Bakery this year, after having both Giant and Safeway frustratingly screw up orders for us in the past year (um, as in going to pick up an all-white cake that instead had colored flowers and "happy anniversary" on it...). They did not disappoint! All we had to add was the nerf darts and candles.

Thomas was extremely pleased with how his party turned out. He got to make most of the decisions, design and set up the games and help decorate. He even laughed at the trick relighting candles. We were delighted that he and his friends had a great afternoon.

Thinking Day 2014

For this year's Thinking Day our troop's country was the United Kingdom.  A good chunk of our girls are Doctor Who fans, so it wasn't too surprising that this country was on their list. And luckily we've been there this year and had lots of photos and mementos to help with the booth.

We decided to prepare for Thinking Day by working on several of the retired junior badges -- Girl Scouting Around the World, World Neighbors and Global Awareness -- and worked on this over four meetings.  We were able to finish the first two badges, and got most of the way through Global Awareness.

For Thinking Day our service unit has participating troops create a country display with a food sample from that country as well as a country swap. Each girl is given a bag of $4 in dimes to "spend" on food samples & swaps. The dimes get donated to the Juliette Lowe World Friendship Fund.

Girl Scouting Around the World: 

We gave the girls homework for  #2, #5, #6, and #10 by giving them the Girl Scout and WAGGS websites with a specific list of items to look up, read and explore.  We then talked about it during a meeting.   For #1 and #3 the girls  participated in Thinking Day and put together our display.

World Neighbors:

We focused on our Thinking Day country to complete this badge.  The girls were given a list of websites to help them look up information on the UK (#3, #7, #10).  We set aside different meetings to focus on the three main areas of the UK and their culture: England, Scotland and Wales.  We learned Welsh and Gaelic words and English slang; talked about their holidays, food, traditions, government, famous authors (Harry Potter, anyone?), culture (including popular movies and tv), and school life and well as girl scouting in the country. We played games from the country in another meeting. And of course we sampled some shortbread cookies!

Global Awareness:

In the course of working on Thinking Day we also completed #1, #3, #7, and #8.  We'll have to work in the rest of this badge in future meetings.

We picked up country booklets from Patchwork Designs. They have patch programs for different countries and even have cute rubber stamps for your Thinking Day passports.  We just picked up the booklet to use with the girls.  We loved the booklets - they have info on food, holidays, a fun language word-match, maps, flags, games, website list and more.

Here's the websites we gave the girls to use:

http://www.worldthinkingday.org/en/home
http://www.wagggs.org/en/home
http://www.girlscouts.org/who_we_are/global/
http://www.girlguiding.org.uk/home.aspx

http://projectbritain.com/
http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/united-kingdom-guide/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_inventions_and_discoveries
http://www.msichicago.org/scrapbook/scrapbook_exhibits/catw2005/traditions/countries/united_kingdom.html

Putting Together the Display:

We talked with the girls about what they wanted to have (and should have) on their display and then let the girls decide what they wanted to bring for the next meeting to put together the poster.  They decided to decorate the back of the display with the UK flag.  So, we picked up a blue tri-fold board, red and white duct tape, and a yard stick to make the flag.  All the girls got to help trace the lines and make the stripes.

We accessoried our display with books and pamphlets, a real sporran, a large flag, British food (thank you World Market!) and shortbread cookies.  I wish I'd realized the photo I took was a bit blurry (or had taken a few more) but right after I snapped these the back of our table collapsed and the whole display went flying! Nothing like last minute stress....

The display  - an old cookie tin used to hold our country swaps.  One parent had a kilt including the sporran and a traditional Welsh hat. And we had to include Harry Potter!

A quick shot of the other side - our food samples (we chose the easy way this year and bought boxes of shortbread cookies).  Tea & clotted cream jars with a cute metal phonebox that used to hold tea bags was used to collect dimes.

Swaps!

Everyone needs a cool swap.  The girls had a good discussion and came up with some great ideas for a country swap. In the end they voted on the double-decker bus. One of the girls wanted the flag across the bus.  A parent took that idea and really went to town, adding a picture of each girl looking out the window of the bus.  We printed these out on heavy cardstock and attached ribbons to the pin.

 

 Want our list of topics we gave the girls for homework? Download the file here:

Download World Thinking Day-Topics.pdf (53.5K)

 

Doctor Who Party - Scavenger Hunt

Rachel wanted to have a scavenger hunt at her party. We made a list of 40 items and then found pictures to match. I used Photoshop to add numbers, and sometimes quotes. Then Thomas hid them all over the yard.

Want to use my list?  You can download it here.

Download Scavenger Hunt.docx (82.0K)