Box of Princesses

I have loved painting peg people - here were some previous ones I did for my son.  But when I saw this idea by Lil Blue Boo, I decided to do another round of peg people.  I ended up making 3 sets...that's 24 dolls to paint.  It took about 2 weeks of nap times to do this - but it was fun. 

**Just an apology about my photos for a while.  Our house got broken into last week and one of the things they stole was our way awesome camera - a Nikon D80 :(  so my pictures for the forseeable future will be from my phone - which isn't anywhere near as good quality as my camera was.  Luckily, I had emptied the memory stick a couple days before we were robbed (all except for the photos of these peg dolls - so I had to get my friend to send me pics of the finished set with the lunch box since I had already given it away.)

My 6 year old niece was the initial recipient of these, and then I decided that I wanted to make a set for my 2 year old and a friend's 2 year old as well.  But the 2" dolls are a bit of a choking hazard to that age.  So I saw the set from Homemade by Jill and she found some 3.5" dolls online.  Both the 2 year olds love Tinkerbell, so I added her in - even though she's not technically a "princess."  I'm so grumpy about my stolen pictures.  My phone pics don't do these justice - Snow White turned out awesome, and I painted Rapunzel's hair with a metallic gold/yellow since her hair glows when she sings :)

Here you can see the back of the dolls - to get the hair details I did.  No one posted how they did the hair in the back, so it took a while to figure out how to get some of them to look just right.

Also, here's a pic of one of each size in my hand so you can see the size difference.

**I found the lunch box at Jo-Anns and just added the white and yellow vinyl to the front.  I also lined the inside with felt so that the dolls didn't get as bumped around and so that it's a bit quieter

Lacing Cards

I've wanted to make some sort of lacing cards for a couple years now, either out of wood or laminated shapes.  I finally opted for the laminated style.  I designed number cards and printed them on 4x6 photo paper, then laminated them.

I didn't have a hole punch to reach all the way in around the numbers, so I used the old school "eyelet setter" (the 4mm size).  It wasn't as fast or clean as a hole punch would have been, but it got the desired effect.  The shoe laces I got are too long, but they work.  I keep these in my church bag to help keep the kids calm on Sundays.

Sewing with Oliver + S

Here are a couple more things I made from this book by Oliver + S.  You can buy it, but I checked it out from the library.

Doll/Teddy Bear Carrier - My daughter has recently taken an interest in swaddling her baby dolls and carrying them around and pretending like they are sleeping, so I thought this was a good fit for her.

Red Riding Hood Cape - An addition to build my daughter's dress up outfits.  It's a little big on her for now, but it should fit her in a year or so.  This turned out cute, but it was a lot of work since it's fully lined.

Dress Up Rack

I found this idea a year and a half ago and fell in love with it immediately.  My husband built it for us in June, and it's been sitting in my room waiting until the beginning of this month so we could give it to my daughter for her birthday.  It's great to have it out where she can use it, and even better to have it out of my room and get some space back. 

I made her some dress-up outfits for Christmas, so it's not as bare and sad looking as in this photo.

And as you can see, she loves to stand in the box to hang the clothes up.

Felt Fun

Here are a few things I've made with felt for the Christmas decorations or presents

Holly Garland - I just drew my own holly leaf onto freezer paper and traced a quarter for the red berries.  Then I sewed it in a chain.  I love the simple, but classic touch it adds to the mirror in the entry way.

Felt fish and fishing pole - pattern and tutorial here.  I made a pole for each of my kids, but I'm not sure how long they will last until they start hitting eachother with them.  So this may be a supervised toy.

Animal masks - I saw this idea and this idea and decided to make my own.  The ones on etsy are adorable, but there was no way I was going to pay over $50 for a few masks I could make out of supplies I already have at home.  These are for my son (except for the pink owl - that's for my daughter).  I thought the owls looked fancier with the embroidering - which took a loooooong time.  I'm not going to post the patterns I made or a tutorial since I this is a knock-off from someone who is selling them. 

Craft Day

When I was younger, my mom would get together with her mom and sisters and have a craft day in December that lasted ALL DAY.  Once I was in college, they decided to let their daughters join in.  So it's been a few years now and our group is growing - my grandma, aunts, mom, sister, and girl cousins and the girls that are married/dating my brothers and boy cousins. 

We get to have fun crafts and eat yummy snacks/goodies all day.  Here are a couple of the crafts that we did - different people in the group teach us how to make a craft, or a food or one year my aunt taught us how to make balloon animals.  It's so much fun to get together and to see how everyone's craft can turn out so differently from eachother.

Winter soap - this was the project I brought for everyone to make - a different version of the Halloween Soap.

2x2 Simple Nativity - my mom taught this one to the group - I'm not sure where she found the idea, but she saw it online and found all the pieces at different stores and put together her own kits for us to make at our craft day.  Everyone painted their different colors or didn't paint them at all and left them natural.  It was fun to see the different styles everyone made out of the same kit.

some recent sewing projects

I've been busy sewing things for my kiddos for Christmas, so here are some of them...

toddler backpack - pattern and tutorial in this book (I just checked it out at the library since I didn't want to spend so much on the book that I would only need for a couple projects)  We are decorating my son's room in a Nautical theme, and this is some outdoor canvas fabric from JoAnns that I have left over.  This backpack was so fun to see come to shape - I enjoyed making it!

car roll ups - made a couple for some of my nephew's birthdays that just came up (tutorial here) my son has used his every sunday during church for the past 3 years and it is one of the best things I've found that keep him quiet during sacrament.

toddler girl apron - made a pattern up myself and got quite frustrated by it, so i don't think anyone would want my pattern with all the headaches - plus I threw it away since I was mad at it.

baby doll diapers - I made a couple different sizes for by daughter's different sized dolls - just used the basic shape and instructions in this tutorial, but had to make my own sizes.

Reindeer Board

I found an idea online here, and altered it a bit.  I wanted to use vinly for a clean, crisp look.  And I added some phrases to the board so Rudolph stood out a bit more.  **I know I spelled Donner wrong - typo - and I've fixed it but didn't feel like taking another picture**

I kinda lost the mood for blogging for a while and not sure if I'm gonna keep up with this blog much longer, but for now...my mom said she likes seeing the things I've made, so I'll probably just post pictures and links to where I found the tutorials if there were any.

Halloween 2011

My internet is really slow, so I haven't had the patience to post for a while.  But here is a pic of my kid's halloween costumes.

It was a joint effort - my mom and I made different parts of each costume - Luckily, she made the tricky parts of the costumes (Minnie's dress and Batman's head piece - which she had to make 2 of since my children have HUGE heads and we had to go up two sizes to make the head piece fit right.)  Thanks Mom!  They turned out awesome, as always!

Minnie's dress has boning in the bottom to give it that hoop skirt look.  And I didn't think I would find yellow shoes anywhere for her, but then I realized I could buy black ones at goodwill and then spray paint them yellow.  Worked awesome.  But I wouldn't do this for anything other than a costume.  It isn't holding up well - it cracks and scrapes off easier than I hoped.  But it was great for a Halloween costume and looked awesome.

Here's Emeree with our newest family addition - Adam (wearing the lion costume my Mom made 11 years ago and has made it through all 6 grandkids so far)

 And just love this shot of my husband and Emeree at the pumpkin patch- such a sweet shot.  But the rest of the pics of her on his shoulders were of her pulling on his hair.  Glad I got the one cute shot.

Thanksgiving and Halloween Bunting

I found this idea for a Halloween bunting, and they mentioned using the other side for Thanksgiving.  Wonderful idea. 

Except I forgot how much I HATE working with burlap.  It's messy when cutting, it's itchy and just aggrivates my exczema and makes me feel like I'm wearing an itchy burlap blanket.  Anyway, I love how it turned out.  I put a maple leaf on the last spot since "thankful" didn't fill up the whole line. 

Even though Halloween is past, you can still make this in time for Thanksgiving and then make the Halloween side to be ready for next year.  I didn't have mini black ric rac, but I did have thin sparkly ribbon!

I couldn't find the same font she used, so I found a similar one on dafont.com - called IFC Rail Road