Baby Bubble Skirt and Triple Rose Onesie

Earlier this year, a few of my neighbors got together for a picture of our babies.  We thought it would be fun to get a photo of all the babies that were born just last year in our little neighborhood. All FIFTEEN of them.

My boy is #7 from the left.

So now you know we have a lot of babies around here. Which means a lot of baby showers. Which means a lot of baby gifts. 

For the baby shower this week, I made an elastic waist bubble skirt and coordinating satin rosette onesie. I used this same fabric a while back to make this pillowcase top for my baby Ava. And now here it is again on this skirt.

I love tiny little baby clothes. 

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Nightstand Makeover

I usually get so excited and rushed to start a new project that I forget to take "Before" pictures, as is the case with this one. I bought this mahogany nightstand off the classifieds for $30. A little spray paint and a new handle, and this is what we have now. It's for Ava's room.

See that little ball clock on the right? That's an Ok To Wake alarm clock. It's the greatest thing ever (for toddlers). You set an alarm time on it, and when it hits that time the ball glows green, letting your toddler know that it's ok to get out of bed now. It took a few months for Ava to get the hang of it, but now it's a beautiful thing. It helps her to sleep in a little more if she gets to bed late (she used to always wake up at the same time no matter what time she went to bed). Can you tell I'm a fan?

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Halloween Costume Collection

Welcome to October! I love Halloween. I think the biggest reason I love it is because of the creativity that it unleashes in people. The costumes, the pumpkin carvings, the decor, the food... everything gets a dose of fun. So to kick off the month, I thought I'd share with you a few of my costumes from past years (all home-made).
First, easiest costume ever. White clothes with black electrical tape. Add a cardboard head, and done.

 This was last year, celebrating UP!

 This you've seen. Ava's peacock costume.

Years ago some friends and I were the alien guys from Toy Story (I've also been Jessie, but have no photos).

And since I obviously have a tendency toward Pixar film characters, let's end with Elastagirl, AKA Mrs. Incredible.

I get my love of costuming from my mother, who always made costumes for her 6 kids (though some of us sometimes got hand-me-downs) Pin It

DIY Wood Scrap Wall Art

I love the style of this piece of art and anyone can make it (from scraps of wood)! You can find the full tutorial here.

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Fabric Scrap Bowl

When I was in elementary school I remember that we once made these bowls from strips of fabric, and I've been thinking about them lately. And lo and behold, Prudent Baby posted a tutorial! Such a great way to use up that pile of scraps.

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Peacock Costume How-To

I'm posting this in response to numerous requests for instructions on how to make the peacock costume I made for Ava last year for Halloween. I know a lot of you want to get a head start on the costume making, so I'm jumping the gun and sharing this in August. I don't have a photo step-by-step, but I will do my best to share with you how I made it so that you can replicate it if you want. Please let me know if my instructions need any clarity.

So first the easy part. The orange tights I got at Gymboree in October (they were sold as a Halloween item, so you might have better luck finding them then) and the onesie I got from Old Navy. Much easier than making those things. And useable afterward too. Another great resource for colored tights is welovecolors.com.

Next I bought the peacock feathers, large teal feathers, and elastic sequin material at Hobby Lobby (craft store). The sequin elastic was used for the headband as well as to hold the feather part onto her waist and legs so it stayed up properly. I bought a shiny teal blue polyester type material at JoAnn's (I think). I was lucky that the onesie matched the fabric color so well. 

I'd recommend gluing or sewing some feathers onto the headband—it would have looked better.

I figured it would be easier to explain visually, so I drew up a really simple diagram for the rest. The peacock feathers were really long, so I was able to cut them almost in half and use the bottom part inside of the fabric "petals" as support. Better than wire because it's lighter and less risky for the kiddo. A lot of the costume I assembled with a glue gun, because it was only going to be used once or twice, so I figured it didn't need to be too heavy duty on the durability, but you could sew more if you like. The elastic bands I sewed into loops—I figured glue wouldn't hold those very well.

UPDATE: I've been spending so much time sending out emails with the diagram that I can't keep up. So I've got it listed in my Etsy shop, but it's only $3. It's an automatic PDF download so you will have right away. Here is the {LINK} to my shop. Thank you!

Good luck and happy Halloweening a few months in advance!

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DIY Fringe Chandelier

I'm too scared to attempt any lighting project that includes an electrical wire, or removing my current light cover, because I think I might burn my house down. But here's something I can make for Ava's new room that I could just mount right around the existing flush-mount light fixture. I'm loving this idea!

You can find the full instructions at The Sweetest Occasion, but I'll give you a quick summary.

Buy 2 embroidery hoops, paint them, tie them together with fishing line, use a hot glue gun to glue fringe trim (4 yards) to hoops (wrapping around twice), hang up and admire. Easy peasy, right? I can't wait to try it.

These would also be fun for party decor. Pin It

More Bathroom Goodness

I'm a fan of framed bathroom mirrors. Where I live, in houses that I can afford, builders tend to just put in plain borderless mirrors in every bathroom. So framing the mirrors is something I've wanted to learn how to do. Of course I could pay someone else five times as much to do it for me, but why do that when I know is totally do-able myself? (Or at least do-able for my hubby, if I can convince him to do it).

I found a great tutorial at Show & Tell on custom framing your bathroom mirrors. Basically, you take some crown molding and/or baseboard trim, measure it, miter cut it, paint the back, and glue it on with liquid nail. Then fill in the gaps with dry-dex and caulk, paint it, and you're done! But there's a more thorough explanation and details over at Show & Tell.

I won't be able to get to this project myself for a little while still, but I can hardly wait to give it a try. It looks pretty simple, and the results are so great!

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Oh, Wouldn't It Be Lovely?

Today I spotted these lovely framed decorations over at Curbly. And I have to agree, the DIY light bulb in me totally went off. It would be so fun to recreate these. Even more fun than buying them (for $65 a pop). They are lovely by themselves...

 Or with objects!

If she wasn't on the other side of the country, I'd give them to my mom, whose house has been referred to before as "the white house". She likes things light and airy, which I suppose is right on trend these days. They would be fun in an entryway. Or at least in my entryway. Pin It

Painted Frames

I've been spray painting a lot lately.
I like to have a family calendar out where all can see it so that we can more easily coordinate our schedules (all 3 of us, you know). And to remind me when bills are due. And you just always need a corkboard for miscellaneous items. What I really want is this, but I just can't bring myself to spend the $160 to get what I want. So in the mean time, this will have to do. A thrifted frame ($3) painted blue, and a new frame ($2) painted green. I wish I'd seen the green frame sooner, I would have just bought 2 of them. But my white board won't fill the opening now. But not too shabby for $5, right? And they go nicely with my Orla Keily tablecloth.

By the way, I got the green frame (originally white) at Tai Pan Trading on clearance. What a deal! Pin It

DIY Thrifty Baby Art

Found this cute idea on Ohdeedoh, one of my favorite kid sites. How fun would it be to make a project like this? You can find the link to the tutorial here. Pin It

Celebrating Handmade

My sister-in-law made this cute onesie for a baby shower and I wanted to share. She decided to skip the sewing machine and stitch it all by hand. She cut out her pieces and roughed up the fabric and then hand stitched it on. Idn't it sweet?

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Textured T-shirt Tutorial

Now that's a lot of T's.

I've been wanting a white or cream shirt that has texture, that I can just layer under cardi's and jackets. Most of what I've been seeing has been more expensive than I like, so I decided to make my own. I ordered 2 of the same shirt from Forever 21 ($6 each) and in 2 different sizes, since their sizing is somewhat inconsistent for me (not to mention my growing pregnant belly). I like the material of this shirt--it's a soft somewhat dressier jersey knit and a scoop neck that is not to low for bending over and picking up a toddler. Not to mention it's long enough to cover my enlarge abdomen for at least another month or two!

Here's how to do the rest:

1. Using an erasable fabric marker (the kind that disappears with water) and a ruler, mark down the sides of shirt #1 where you want your edges. In the last 2 photos you can see that the texture is a panel down the middle, doesn't go all the way accross. You can also see that I skipped this important step myself and tried to eyeball it.

2. Cut shirt #2 up the side seams so that you can attack the front and back of the shirt separately. Using a solid cutting edge (metal ruler) and rotary blade, cut shirt #2 into horizontal strips about 3/4 of an inch in height.

3. Measure the width of your proposed panel on shirt #2 and trim all your fabric strips to that length.

4. Pin one fabric strip onto shirt #1 at the top. You will quickly see how the jersey knit curls up at the edges. I used about 6 pins per fabric strip. Line up your next fabric strip so that the edges touch the first strip of fabric (and you can even slightly overlap them since they will curl). Repeat again and again and again.

5. Sew two lengths of stitches parallel all the way across the shirt on each strip of fabric. Trim all your threads. Repeat again and again and again.

6. Using water, erase you guide lines and then congratulate yourself on a job well done!

p.s. I think this would also be cute if you only took the texture 1/3 of the way down the shirt for a tuxedo effect.

p.p.s. You could use another matching material besides jersey knit, like layers of matching colored linen, or chiffon, or cotton, etc. Something that won't fray though.

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DIY Paper Cup Wreath

I see a lot of crafts in the blogosphere that I think, "That looks okay in the photo but in real life I think it would look cheap." But here is one craft that is cheap but I think real life (and in the photo) would actually look pretty darn cool. What do you think?

A DIY paper cup wreath! Modern and elegant. Twig and Thistle does it again. Pin It

My Paper Heart

I recently shared these awesome framed hearts from Sarah & Bendrix. Since there wasn't time for me to order one before Valentines Day, I decided to make one of my own to give to my hubby. I didn't go back and look at theirs, I just loosely had the image in my mind and made my own version of it.

If you want details on how I did it, keep reading.
I used a frame from IKEA and used some strips of corrugated cardboard under the mat to give it enough room for the dimension needed by the folded paper hearts. A simpler solution would be to just buy a shadow box frame, but apparently I can't do anything the easy way.

I gridded out my paper into equal size squares (and apparently I can't count, I should have had another row or two!) Then I cut out anything red from my magazines (strawberries, bike jerseys, shoes, swimsuits, etc.) and used spray glue to back them on another sheet of paper for more sturdiness. I used my mini heart punch to punch out the hearts, and scored each of them down the center. I folded them to give dimension. I put a dot of plain old Elmer's glue in the center of each of my grid squares and carefully placed each heart using needle-nose pliers and an Exacto knife. I felt like an entomologist (bug scientist). Let dry and erase grid lines. Then I wrote in my love note and put in in the frame. Total time commitment: about 2 hours. And he loved it.

(grid lines)

p.s. I have to say, this day is a lot more fun when I'm planning special things for someone else. Pin It

Made It: Tea-Dyed Eyelet Baby Skirt

A few months ago I saw some darling skirts on Zulily's website. {EDIT: Guess who showed up again on Zulily today! This very skirt! The company that makes it is Hazel, and for the next few days you can buy one on sale for $28.99 at Zulily. Or you can make one, for like $7 ish. But you really should check out their other clothes because they are sooooo darling, all of them!}

From the baby blessing dress I just made, I had some leftover eyelet that was the bottom section of the fabric that was unused. But it was white. White white. So I got this little idea in my head to try something I've been hearing about. Tea dyeing. I had a boxful of lemon-ginger tea that I didn't care for, so here was a great opportunity to use it up.
I found some instructions here, and loosely followed them. My tea gave me a satisfactory ivory color.
(Sorry, most of my photos are at night--the only time I can do much is after little {A} goes to bed).


I dyed the eyelet fabric as well as a lining material:

Then into the dryer it went, to help set the color.
Next, I measured the elastic and sewed it together:

Then I measured and cut my fabrics (about double the width of the waist band). Hemmed the bottom of the lining fabric:

And sewed a basting stitch along the top of each of the 2 layers.

Gathered each layer, sewed the side seams.

Finally, pinned the 2 layers upside down and inside out to the elastic band.

And sewed it on, using a zig-zag stitch to allow for stretching of the waistband.

Flip it over, and Ta-da!

I tried to get Ava to model it for me, but had little cooperation. It's still a tad big on her anyway.

Now you try one and send me a photo! Pin It