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.