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

Custom Halloween Soap

I got together with a few friends, and we had a craft hour.  We made these soap bottles for Halloween.

We found the idea here, using the printout from Eighteen25.  But I cut them out of vinyl instead of printing on a transparency.  Instead of gluing the spider to the outside, we ended up putting them inside the bottle so they kinda floated - giving that extra 3D creepiness.

Mayflower place setting - or toy boat

I saw this idea last year, and it's been patiently waiting on my to do list for a while.  It's a cute idea to fill up with candy and use as a place setting for the kids.  I did it a little different. though.

I wanted something else to make the sail "pop" and thought I remembered a red insignia on the pilgrims' boats.  But when I looked up pics of the Mayflower, the sails were plain white.  Then I looked up The Nina, The Pinta, and The Santa Maria, and found what I was looking for.  So I guess my boat isn't a "Mayflower" technically, but my son loves it.

I just want to try and figure out a way to make the mast stay up without candy in it as a place setting so that he can use it as a toy.

Autumn blocks

I made a "summer" version last year like this and decided to try an "autumn" one.  Me and a friend had a craft/play date (hi Megan!!) where we crafted and the kids played.  We only got the blocks painted and paper cut out before we had to stop for nap times, so we both finished them up at home.  Here are mine:

I cut the wood blocks to random sizes (the tallest is 5.25") and the whole thing ends up being about 22" long.  And then I just sized the letters in Sure Cuts-A-Lot to fit the blocks. 

Font used:  Pharmacy (found on dafont.com)

Bat Swarm

The bats swarmed my living room again. 

What I love about this decoration is that my 3 year old makes it a priority to show the bats to EVERYONE who comes over to our house.  I put them up while he was taking a nap, and he woke up and found them and was SOOOO excited.

Last year we didn't have the giant clock on the wall, so the look is a little different. 

**I traced an image of a bat I found online and cut them out with my cricut - really easy to make.  And just stick up with some painter's tape and you're all done!

Halloween Pillow Cover

My new holiday obsessions seem to be wreaths and pillow covers. 

Here's my pillow cover for Halloween.

I love, love, love this fabric.  I was in Portland this week visiting my sis-in-law (hi, Kari!!) and we went to Fabric Depot - being there is like a sewer"s version of a kid in a candy store.  I think it said it's 1.5 acres of fabric...or something like that.  Anyway, we were on our way out the door, and I spotted this fabric and HAD to turn around and go back to get some.  The selvege says it's called "ghastly forest" by Alexander Henry (I think - the words got cut off where my yardage ended)

I like having pillow covers for different holidays.  They fold down so small and are easier to store than separate pillows for each holiday - just make the envelope closure so it's removable.

Tulle Wreath

There are tulle wreaths out all over blogland, and they are all a bit different - from where they position the knot (on the edge, or in the front), to what the wreath is out of (wire or styrofoam) and how long they cut the strips of tulle.

I liked a couple different looks, but none explained what they did.  So I decided to just go for it.  My wreath is a styrofoam wreath form, and I cut my tulle to 16"x4" strips, folded them in half and pulled the loose ends around the wreath and through the loop in the folded end of the tulle.  I centered my knots near the front edge.  I can't remember how many yards of tulle I bought, but I think it was either 3 or 4, and I used all of it - no waste!

I'm still trying to decide if I want to add a pop of color (possibly orange) to it, but I just love the houndstooth ribbon.  I'll probably leave it alone this year and then try a pop of color next year.

**the little spider taped to the door is a glitter spider from Michaels  in case anyone wanted to know.  They look awesome taped up to the wall or fireplace pillars.

Autumn or Thanksgiving Stacker

I made another stacker.  This time, it is an autumn/Thanksgiving themed one.  I love how it turned out.

I cut the blocks at 4", 5.5", and 7"

Fonts:
Harvest:  Impact (can't remember where I found it)
Falling Leaves:  Waterfalls
Pumpkin Pie:  Smiley Monster

2x4 Candy Corn

I saw something like this last year, but I couldn't remember where.  Then I saw this post at Someday Crafts for 2x4 candy corn and it was definitely something I wanted to make right away.  Problem was, I'm still a bit scared to use the miter saw since I almost snapped off my finger earlier this year, so I had to wait until my husband got home to cut them out. 

I ended up making a bunch - some for the ladies I visit teach, my mom, sister, and mother-in-law.  And I had a craft/play date with a friend where we made some projects while the kids played.  I also ended up keeping a couple for myself.

It was easy to paint several during the kiddos nap times as well.  I always think it looks weird to put yellow on the bottom for candy corn- it seems like it should be orange, but I looked up pics of the candy online to double check.  But I think they look cute either way.

Halloween Stacker

I've always liked the stackers tied with ribbon, but I never made one before.  Here's my first attempt at one - and just in time for Halloween

I cut 2x2's into 4", 5", and 6" lengths, painted them and mod podged paper down.

I always like it when people list the fonts they used so I can try and recreate things... so here they are:

Spiders - FrankenDork
Candy Corn - Mail Ray Stuff
Pumpkins - Harrington

My favorite free font site is http://www.dafont.com/.  I like that you can type what your sample text into the text field so that as your searching for fonts, it will display your words in the selected text as they would look on your project.

Head on over to this Shabby Apple Giveaway!

My wonderful Sister-in-law, Kari, is hosting a Shabby Apple Giveaway on her blog!  If you haven't checked out her blog before, head on over.  She has a writing style that keeps you entertained and will tie you up in reading back posts.  And her list of 100 things she wants to do before she turns 100 in the sidebar is fun to read too.

Anyway, she's hosting a giveaway where you could win this green dress from Shabby Apple.

 
Giveaway closes Wednesday, Sept. 28th - so hurry up and enter!

Pumpkin and Ghost bottles

I found this on Pinterest . . . but one problem - I don't drink wine.  So I called around and found some people I know that do or have neighbors that do and they saved me some for this project.

I had to use baby oil to get all the labels off (since I don't have Goo Gone - I know, who doesn't have goo gone?)  And then I spray painted the green bottle orange (after taping off the top for the stem).  And I didn't want a clear ghost, so I used Rustoleum's Frosted Glass spray to foggy it up a bit.

I cut the faces out of vinyl.  Still not sure if I am liking the ghost faces, but it's tricky to get a ghost face to not just look like 3 circles/ovals.  I wanted a smaller ghost, so I cleaned out our soy sauce for that one.  But the neck of the bottle isn't as pretty as the wine bottle was.