Baby Girl and Baby Boy: Gift Ideas with Printable

I have a few friends I’ve been meaning to send baby gifts to, and now their babies are getting so old!  I feel a little silly taking so long to do it, but I guess it’s better late than never! 

For the flower cards, I made a some flower clips using THIS tutorial from Craftiness is Not Optional, though I sewed parts of my flowers because the glue wasn’t holding very well.  I have an accuquilt cutter, but you could just use any flower you make and glue it to a barrette or clip to use with the card.  Just cut a small slit and clip onto the card!  The barrette shows inside the card, but it doesn’t bother me. You could always add paper inside the card to cover the barrettes up. 

 

Next I needed to think of something simple for a baby boy.

I used my silhouette machine to cut out the glasses shape (found HERE).  You could easily take the glasses clip art and use freezer paper and fabric paint (or acrylic works also as long as you heat set the paint). 

Finally, they are off to the post office today!  Just in time for the next round of babies to be born ;).

 

Downloads: 

Green and Turquoise Baby Girl

Green and Coral Baby Girl

Good Looking Kid

Baby Blankets

I have two cousins welcoming new babies in the next month, so my family had a big shin-dig of a party this past Sunday.

I used Katy of No Big Dill’s tutorial she posted on Delia Create’s Nesting Series, HERE.  Although Katy seems to be able to sew straight lines on her bias tape and I do not.  I thought mine looked close to hers, but now that I post these pictures, they make me laugh out loud!  Can I blame it on the thickness of my fabric once folded in half?  No?  Ok…I accept defeat. I never have liked competition much. Oh look, this 4” portion didn’t turn out too crooked!

 

The good news is that the mamas seemed to like them, and said the crooked stitching looked like it was on purpose.  So I went with it ;).  What sweet ladies they were.

I might have to make one for me because they are SO soft!  I’m not sure what the fabric was called.  I bought it at Joann by the minky fabric.  I bought some minky last week with their awesome sales and 20% off total purchase coupon to try using the same fabric as Katy did in her tutorial, and it is MUCH thinner, so here’s to better luck with the bias tape next time.

I ended up serging the edges on the second blanket before sewing on the bias tape because it was way too thick. 

Plus I had to sew on the bias tape this way…

because when I didn’t do that, the back looked like this:

Not pretty.  So yah, those are my tips if you are trying to use thicker cuddly fabric as I did.  I’m excited to try it on minky.  Speaking of minky, Abby from Sew Much Ado posted some great tips on sewing with minky yesterday. 

And since my favorite part about Katy’s blankets were her cute No Big Dill tags, I decided to tackle some of my own.  I used Twill Patches for them and traced a design I made on my computer.

I embroidered it and sewed it on the blanket.  I have to say I quite like them. (and yes, I can’t draw a straight line either.  It’s a curse.) 

Fabric Tray + Lego Base = A Christmas Present

So guess what?  My laundry is mostly caught up—just a couple loads from yesterday to do.  Yay!  My house is clean besides the bathrooms, which are on my list today, and I have about 10 more presents for my extended family to wrap and I then I will be all ready for Christmas! 

Today we are making gingerbread men with some friends and my kids and I will have a little movie night tonight and they will be sleeping under the Christmas tree.  I love when they don’t have school and how much more laid-back and fun it is around the house without homework and all the busy-ness that comes along with school.

My handmade gift for the boys this Christmas is a fabric tray using Anna of Noodlehead’s tutorial HERE and…

I bought a blue lego base on Amazon to fit inside.

Now my kids can transport their legos around and those pesky tiny pieces are less likely to be lost in the process.  I’m especially excited for them to use them in the car because that seems to be the place legos are lost most often!

The trays were extremely quick and easy to make as well.  Great beginner project! 

I hope your Christmas plans are coming together and you are enjoying these last few days before Christmas!

An Apron for Miss B

Confession #1:  Our Little Miss B sometimes crawls in bed with us and I am too lazy to take her back to bed. 

Truth:  I never did this with our boys. NEVER!  We diligently walked them back to their rooms and made sure they were ok before returning to our room. 

Fact:  I don’t really care that much that B sleeps in our bed.  She doesn’t do it every night and when she does, it’s often past 4:00 am so it’s not a big deal. 

Unless:  Unless I end up in the middle somehow.  It hurts my back and I must sleep with my legs curled up and that doesn’t work if she sneaked her way onto my side and pushed me over while I slept. 

Confession #2: I still have laundry to do from Hawaii. We’re talking mounds of it around here. It’s getting ridiculous.  I’ve set my alarm twice to get up and fold some before my kids woke up, but both time Little Miss B is in our bed and I don’t want to wake her up.

Story:  This week B climbed into bed at who knows what time.  I didn’t even realize it until she started to kick my curled up legs at about 6:00 am and say, “Mom!  Mom!  Move your legs.  MOVE!”  (This 3 year old has attitude).  So I tried to move around and she kept scooting over so I squished more and more to Dillon’s side and was actually doing what she told me because I wasn’t awake all the way!  Seriously, as soon as I realized what was happening, I sat up in bed and looked at that impossible little girl and said, “This is MY bed!  Not yours!  If you aren’t comfortable, go back to your bed!”  I know, I’m such a good mom.  She refused, and rather than wake up my husband and her at 6 in the morning I just got out of bed and started to address our Christmas cards. 

Moral:  If you ever decide setting your alarm to fold laundry is a good idea, you are too ambitious.  It’s better to be a lazy bum and sleep in as long as your kids will let you.  Lesson. learned.

What does this have to do with an apron for my beloved little three year old?  Mostly the fact that if I still have laundry from when we went to Hawaii, and my house is a disaster and I’m still getting Christmas gifts ready and wrapped, I was NOT going to be able to find time to enjoy making her two princess dresses like I had planned.  I had even bought all the fabric before we left for Hawaii.  Bummer.  I really wanted to but the thought of it really stressed me out.  I was so happy to be at Walmart one day and find princess dresses for $10.00!  Hallelujah!  

I still love to make at least one special thing from me for my kids, and I’ll show you tomorrow what I made my boys, but this was it for B since she’s getting a play kitchen from Santa this year.  So fast and easy, and I finally got to use this cute lemon fabric I’ve had for quite a long time. 

The green is from a $2.00 shirt I snagged at Old Navy over a year ago.  I traced an existing Dollar Tree child apron for the pattern.

I think the flower took just as long to make as the whole apron! 

I can’t wait to see her playing kitchen with this on! 

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Great Idea for a Neighbor Gift

You’ve seen the glass etching you can do with etching cream and vinyl. You’ve seen how people label their dishes with it.  But what if you don’t have the supplies and it’s really not practical to buy those supplies only to do a couple projects with them?  What if you have the supplies and know a lot of people who don’t, but you can’t spend a lot of money on dishes to etch for them? 

My brilliant friend Michelle gave us the cutest gift this year!  I asked if I could share because I knew you guys would appreciate it.  I sure do! 

She made glass etching DIY “kits”.  See that grid on the right?  That’s our last name in vinyl.  The glass etching cream is in a little bead jar she found at Joann.  Type up the instructions, bag it all up, and ta-da!  A great gift for pretty inexpensive.  I’m not sure where she got her etching cream, but I bought mine at Michael’s—just be sure to bring a coupon!

Anyway, I just thought it was such a great gift and especially for those people you know who would love to do this, but have no use for a lot of vinyl or etching cream!

P.S.  I’ve been so lucky to get to know the women married to the band members of my hubby’s band.  They are all great and I’m so happy to know them all!  Michelle is the wife of one of the band members and a friend I hope to have forever!

A Stick Horse Named Dunderhead

I made this horse for B when she turned 3 in September, but it’s a great present so I thought I’d post it finally.  When I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she said a horse.  Once upon a time we lucked out and found a stick horse at the Dollar Tree, but they didn’t have them anymore and hers broke.

So the night before her birthday, I found these two stick horse tutorials on Pinterest and combined the two:

Stick Horse Tutorial:  Light Blue Grey

and How to Make a Stick Horse:  ikatbag

An hour later I had this cutie.

She LOVES it!  So much.  She’s a cowgirl at heart, this one. Maybe it’s because her grandparents are. 

Making the horse give us kisses.

I think I love his big grin the best.

Now, over two months later, she still loves it!  And by the way, searching on Pinterest for things like this is so much better than on any other search engine, because it’s pretty much the best of the best.  What other people truly liked and something you can SEE!  You can follow me HERE if you’d like! 

Ten Gift Wrapping Ideas

In case you missed me over at jame, here are 10 really easy gift wrapping ideas.

Almost all of the items I used are just from the dollar section at Target, and a couple items used are from Walmart and Joann.  I’m not going to really do any tutorial-ish type of thing, since I’m pretty sure you are all smart enough to figure out how I did them!  Just get out your supplies, some tape, and some glue to hold your finishing touches in place!

This yarn is fabulous, and can be found in the yarn section at Walmart for under $2.00 I believe.  I love it because it looks like bakers twine. 

Ornaments from Target’s Dollar Section.

Glitter trees from Target’s dollar section.

Yarn from Walmart, beads for a dollar at Joann.

Berries from Target, twine I already had.

The next two would be fun for kids.  Stickers all from Target section.

These reindeer stickers are also from Target.  It would be cute to draw little speech bubbles that said the TO: and FROM: bit. 

Doily’s from the wedding section at Walmart.  I used a glue stick to glue them on the paper.

Ric-rac is the cutest, and I have some vintage ric-rac given to me from my mother-in-law.  This one was perfect!
Tinsel from Target’s Christmas section.  $2.00. 

And there you have it!  Ten super simple, inexpensive ways to spice up your gift wrapping this Christmas!