Baby room make over in progress!

Its funny sometimes how things don't always work out in the time frame you expect them to. My plan when we moved into our house was to have the bedrooms decorated, painted and looking amazing with in the first month. Of course things don't always work out the way we planed. So here is the baby's partial bedroom make over 3 months after the time I planned it to be finished.

Before

Before

Before

After

Before

Cute Baby!

After

I made a crib sheet using this tutorial and I also made a cover for the changing table. I had some fabric covered diaper boxes that I made a little over a year ago and just used those as toy boxes. I still have a lot of work to do in this room but things are starting to come together. I want to add some lighter colors in here to brighten up things up and I would also like to put in some curtains. I still need to get a laundry basket and a trash can that look good in this space but its been hard to find what I am looking for. 

I will post more pictures when I get the nursery finished. Thanks for reading!

Pacifier Clips!!

Did I ever tell you how much I absolutely love pacifier clips? Its great to not have to worry about the baby dropping her binky on the floor and when I need it its always attached to her.
My son has gotten into the habit of stealing the baby's binkys right out of her mouth and then running off with them. I would bet that I have about 20 binkys floating around my house right now but when I need one I can never find any because my little boy likes to hide them.
I have found them in kitchen drawers and cabinets, under my bed, in the trash can, inside toy trucks and anywhere else an almost two year old can reach. He hides them EVERYWHERE! Its really frustrating when you have a tired screaming baby and you can't find a binky. So I have been keeping her binkys clipped to her for most of the day just to keep her big brother from taking off with them.

These were really easy to make and would have only taken me 10 minutes to make but I have kids so it really took me an hour. It has been a little over a month since I've used my sewing machine and it felt good to sit down and sew something, even if it was only for an hour.

I will make a tutorial for these clips and a few others when I get more time. Thanks for reading!

Painting the Kitchen

When we moved into our new house all of the walls were painted the same color. The first room we decided to paint was the in the kitchen. I didn't really want to paint the whole room so we painted an accent wall. 

before

before

after

after

It still needs more work but it's really nice to add some color to our house.

Thanks for reading!

Big Changes!

The past few months have been crazy for my family. We have added a new member to our little clan. Her name is Alice and she is just adorable! Charlie is just starting to learn body parts and he loves to poke her eyes and say "eye!" I am afraid to leave him in a room alone with her because she may lose an one. Other than poking at her all the time he seems to get along with her very well. He spends a lot of time giving her kisses and patting her stomach while he says "baby".

Another big change for our family is a new house! After 4 1/2 years of marriage my husband and I finally own a house. We have lots of work to do on it but we love having a place that belongs to us.

When we moved into our house, the baby was just two weeks old and adjusting to having two children has taken most of my time. Because things have been so crazy, I haven't really had time to work on any new projects but I will try to get things moving along as soon as I can. In the meantime, here are some other tutorials I've found online that I can't wait to try.

Totoro Hat

Painted chevron pillows 

This monster hooded towel looks so cute!

Thanks for reading!

Moved to Utah!

Its been a while since I have posted anything so here is a little update.

We have left beautiful Tri-cities Washington to live in Utah so we could be closer to my husbands work. We don't live near a big river any more but Utah does have beautiful mountains!

 This is our tenth (yes that is the # 10) move in 4 1/2 years. I have to say this was probably one of the easiest moves I have ever been through. My husbands work was nice enough to hire movers for us (honestly I think I would have lost my mind if they hadn't). I am very thankful to his work for keeping my sanity intact.  We were also very lucky to  have my sisters in-law there to help. They took care of Charlie for me while we were getting ready for the movers and while they were packing up our house. THANK YOU Charlotte, Brenda and Andrea! I don't know what I would do without you guys.

We made it to Utah safely and Charlie did better than expected on the 12 hour car ride. He did get a little fussy but that is to be expected when you are stuck in a car seat for that long. He spent a lot of his time playing with puzzles and making his stuffed bunny hop. 

Since we are looking for a house we put most of our stuff into storage, including my sewing machine and all of my many bins of crafts. I really miss my sewing machine! I guess I will just have to borrow my mom's until we can dig mine out of all those boxes. I will try to finish some new projects to show you guys soon.

Thanks for reading!

Kindle Case Tutorial

When you have a 1 year old running around your house, none of your possessions are safe. Charlie loves to play with anything that belongs to mommy or daddy, our phones, keys, wallets and computers. I probably spend about 50% of my day making sure he isn't getting into something he isn't supposed to.
A few days ago I caught Charlie playing with the kindle touch I bought my husband this last Christmas. He moved a chair close enough to our bed to climb on then got the kindle off of our dresser which is right next to our bed. After realizing how easily he could have just dropped the kindle on the floor and broken it, I decided it was time to buy it a case.
I looked at Wal-Mart and found nothing. They had cases for iPads and other electronics but nothing for the Kindle. I looked online and found a few cases that I liked but I didn't really want to spend a ton of money for just a case. So I looked through my plethora of crafting materials and came up with a plan.

I used...
1 Kids craft foam sheet
Elastic
Material
1 Button
1 Thin elastic hair band

1) Cut 8x11 inches of the foam

2) Cut 9x24 inches of the material
(If you are cutting your fabric on the fold cut 9x12)

3) Fold the material in half (good sides facing each other)
then put the foam in between it.

4) Sew the fabric around the foam and leave a 4-6 

inch hole so you can invert the fabric in a later step.

Make sure you don't sew over the foam!

5) Cut off the extra fabric except the fabric around the hole.
You want to leave the extra fabric there so that you tuck it in
and sew it down when the time comes. It should look like this.

6) Pull the foam out.

7) Turn your fabric right sides out. It should look like this.

8) Put your foam back in, fold under the extra fabric and pin down.

9) Sew a top stitch all the way around the case.

10) Find the center of you case and sew a straight line from
top to bottom. This will be where your case folds.

(Click the image to see it full sized with measurements)  
11) Add the Elastic. Measure 2 3/4 in. from the side, 
1 in. from the bottom and mark with a pencil. 
Then measure 3/4 in. from the side and 2 1/2 in. 
from the bottom corner and mark it. 
Do the same thing for both the top and the bottom .

12) Add the elastic hair band vertically centered of the
back side of the case and the button to the front side.

Here it is!

Thanks for reading!

Baby Skirts!

The past couple of days I have been looking through my fabric and extra craft stuff, trying to get some inspiration for a new project. I had some remnants from a project that I finished a week ago and there was just enough to make a skirt for my new baby. 

I didn't have a patter so I just made some thing really simple.

First I cut out a piece of fabric 32 in x 8 in, then  I used remnants of fold over elastic from one of my other projects. Since I don't have a baby to measure to make sure I am making this skirt the right size, I took one of the 0-3 month outfits I recently purchased and measured around the waist band of the pants. I ended up using about 17 inches of  Fold over elastic. Just to be sure that was the right size, I did a search online  for baby waist sizes and found a baby sizing chart.

Put the material wrong sides together and match up the ends that are 8 inches long then sew. Flip it right side out (you should have a tube). Next sew on the fold over elastic, you have to pull the elastic tight while sewing to get it all the way around the skirt, which can be a little tricky. I usually tack down about half a centimeter of the elastic before I start pulling it tight so that it is anchored down to the material. Once the elastic is on, hem up the bottom and your done!

Fold Over Elastic

I made some flowers on just for fun

I love the way this turned out

Each skirt took about 20-30 minutes

Thanks for reading!

Ceramic Painting

My little sisters love anime and manga, so for fun my husband and I painted some mugs as a gift for them. Just so you know, I am not a painter or an artists so the mug I painted didn't turn out as nice as I would have liked. I figured I would show them to you anyway.
I bought some ceramic paint for $3.00 at Hobby Lobby, a paint brush set from Wal-Mart for about $4.00 and 2 mugs from the Dollar Tree.
I printed out a few images to use as an outline for my cup, then I practiced drawing them on paper. After practicing for a while I used a pencil to draw out the images onto the mug (this was very hard to do because the pencil kept rubbing off). Then I painted over the pencil outline and let it dry.  It took me a while to finish but that's because I had to paint one layer, let it dry, then paint another one, to get it to look right.

This is my finished product!

My Neighbor Totoro! 

 This is the mug my husband painted, he finished it in about three hours.

Ichigo from Bleach

Naruto!

Vash from Trigun.

I still haven't cooked them to keep the paint from coming off, but I hope to get that done sometime this week. I just hope that I can do it without totally messing up all of our hard work. Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading!

Baby Tights

Just a few days ago my husband and I found out that we are having a little girl! I am only 24 weeks along so I still have a long way to go before we see this baby, but I couldn't help looking at little girls clothes online. I found this wonderful pattern and it looked so easy I had to make it.
I used some material that I have had sitting around for a really long time, it was really stretchy and a really pretty shade of purple. I love it!

This was really, really easy to do and it only took about ten minutes. Pattern is for a 3-6 month old so it wont fit my little girl for a while, but she will eventually fit into them.

Thanks for reading!

More Diapers

Ok so I was going to try to make my own pattern for the new cloth diapers but I am out of PUL so.... I have been taking apart my old ones that didn't work and I've been altering them to make them fit Charlie a little better. I got rid of the pocket and added gussets to this diaper just like I did with the one in my last post. I also took it in a few inches so that it doesn't look so bulky in the butt area. I still have to try it on him and do a leak test, but it's almost 12:00am (I just finished the diaper about 5 minutes ago) and there is no way that I'm going wake him up for that.