Diaper Stacker

If you want a tutorial for this stacker, refer to my previous "T-Shirt Stacker" post for a link. I did the same thing with this one as I did for the first, except it's smaller (for diapers) and I put bows on the top to attch it rather than a hanger.

Re-fashioning

Okay, I don't know about you guys but, though fun, shopping can be a bit frusterating for me. I get ideas in my head of how I want an outfit to look, what exact outfit I would want (without ever actually seeing it somewhere), then of course, I can't find anything close to it, when I go shopping. So I decided to start making over clothes myself. This is the first of many more projects to come like this. It will be done by buying cheap clothes that have basic lines, or a basic shape that I am looking for, and I will be using extra pieces of fabric either from the same garmet, or from a duplicate that I buy.

This one was my first; very easy, and very pleased with the outcome.

I bought this shirt at Ross for 4 bucks.


Then I cut the entire turtle-neck off (to be used as my extra fabric).
I then cut 3 1 1/2 inch thick strips from the spread out turtle neck fabric, then folded and pinned them to the neckline in this pattern (if you're looking down at the edge of the strips)


I then just sewed one straight line through the middle, at the neckline, and voila!

Are Those Pants...or a Skirt???

They're Gaucho pants! I decided to make some for my little Sienna Buggeroo. She was lacking in the pants department, and since I think gauchos are pretty much the most comfy pants in the entire world, I decided to introduce her into their lovely world! I got this idea from another site, but forgive, me, I can't remember where, I happened to be craft-blog-surfing, and forgot where I was at, but if any of you know where these are from, please let me know! Anyway, the great thing about these gauchos, is that you make them from an old shirt that you don't wear anymore! You'll need some measurments of your little girl; you'll need the waist, the hips WITH the diaper (if not potty trained), the distance from croch to waist, and the inseam to where you want the pants to hit at on her leg. So here we go:

1. Get your measurments
2. Find an old t-shirt (with enough material to cover your measurements), and lay it flat, smooth, and all the seems where they should be.
3. Cut the shirt (through both sides) as pictured below. Make sure the part that will hit her hips is 1/4 the measurement of the diapered-hip measurement. Each top cut should measure 1/4 of the waist. The curved line should be the croch/waist measurement, and from the tip of the curve down to the bottom should be the inseam measurement.


4. Unfold each piece and place together, wrong sides out.
5. Sew together at the curves only
6. Now re-position the pieces so that the curved seems are both in the middle of the front and the back.
7. From this point you should be able to see the pants shape, so then you sew each leg up to the croch, or curved seems.
8. Flip it back so that the right side is out, and you pretty much have it, except for the top.
9. What I did for the top was, I sewed elastic (cut to about an inch smaller than the waist measurement) to the top of the waist in a smocking fashion. Then I cut out some more of the shirt to make a "binding" to cover the top of the waist.
10. There you have it! Now put them on your little girl and admire!



The Top Binding

Kreative Blogger Award

The Rules:
1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.
2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
3. Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
5. Nominate 7 Kreativ Blogger.
6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs, letting them know they have been nominated.

Thanks to Suzi from "Suzi Homemaker" for this lovely award!

Okay, for the 7 things... I'm not very interesting, so this should be... uh, interesting...?

1. I'm on an anti-hair dye spree. I'll likely start dying again at some point, but for now I'm determined to have my natural hair color (and not DYED to my natural color) the only color on my head, for the first time since 6th grade. Which means right now I'm a half-head, with roots down below my eye-balls, but hey, I read an article about celebs purposly getting their hair dyed with roots... so I write it off like I'm just REALLY in style! Seriously though, I'm lately all for anything natural looking.

2. I can get my 1 year-old daughter's hair into a messy bun with no clips! She's amazing.

3. I'm crazy about food!!! It's no wonder I am going into nutrtion! Nothing makes me more mad than diets! (And by diets I mean fad diets, or celebrity diets, not the sort of diet , or meal-plan a doctor puts you on because of a health issue) Food is NOT an enemy! Food is our firend, and can do marvelous and amazing things if we know how to use it properly. Too much of ANYTHING is bad, so of course over-indulgence on certain types of foods can have a negative effect, but when we know how to use different foods in the right portions, they can strengthen us, give us more energy, keep us from getting sick, and even in some cases, fight diseases! Food is so amazing, and I love learning about it so much!

4. I had serious pride issues when learning how to knit. I had crocheted for 8 years, so going again through the process of uneven rows, loose stitches, dropped stitches, added stitches, etc. really threw me for one. I'm just not used to not knowing what I'm doing when it comes to yarn crafts, so I had some major pride issues to get over. Luckily, I overcame, and I'm now secure in my sloppy knitting!

5. I still get so giggly everytime one of my kids toots.

6. I LOVE LOVE LOVE to read!!!! I go through cycles of the kind of stuff I like to read. I love reading religious and political non-fiction, religious fiction, historical fiction, and romantic ficiton (not the trashy romance novels though). Thanks to my mother-in-law, I am currently on a Jane Austen spree, which I can't seem to get enough of! I'm such a library junkie!

7. I've seriously had Breck's 3rd birthday party planned since before his 2nd birthday party. I know. I'm insane.


And now for the nominees:

(I don't know too many creative people who have blogs for their crafts AND who haven't already recieved this award, so I will probably nominate people who don't have craft blogs, and maybe some who don't even have any blog!)

1. Chelsea Peterson from Chelsea's Crafts

2. Lindy Walker and Alise Wrigley from Lindy Lou and Baby Too!

3. Alyssa Stevens, she doesn't have a craft blog, and her regular blog is private, but let me tell you, she makes amazing bows!!!

4. My Sisters-inLaw, Shasta Baisden, and Shawnte' Morton. They don't have craft blogs at all, but if they did, you'd be blown away at their amazing skills!

5. My Mother-in-law Sherry is an amazing seemstress. She made her own wedding dress, not to mention tons of dresses, diaper bags, etc. for all of us, our weddings, and babies!

6. Erika Allred at Red's Vinyl Lettering. She makes some awesome decorations with her vinyl lettering!

7.Okay, I'm actually going to just tell you to visit the blogs of anyone in my ward in Moscow, which you can find by going onto my family's blog and clicking under any of the "moscow Friends" because they are ALL so creative, and they all SHOULD have blogs for the stuff they make!

Sienna's Crib Bedding... FINALLY done!!!!

You may have noticed that it's been awhile since I have posted. Here is my excuse.. I've been working on THIS baby for awhile! I wanted to take my time with it, so it wouldn't stress me out, and so I could pay attention to detail. Well, I finally put the finishing touches on this morning, so I'm happy to announce, this bedding is DONE!

I did it a bit differently than I did Mary's crib bedding. The bumper I sewed, then stuffed like a pillow with normal "stuffing", then I tufted it in the middle to give it a more flat appearance. I used ribbons to tuft it.

The crib skirt I scallopped at the edges of the tan. I have a scallopping option on my sewing machiene, so I used it along the edge, then cut in a scallopped shape around it.

The blanket is pretty self-explanitory, but I did reinforce the smaller squares by sewing over the top edges as well, before attaching to other side and batting.

All of the measurements are the same as the bedding for Mary.

This was a lot more fun to do because I was not rushing myself, and probably because I was more familiar with what I was doing. I have been in full force re-doing Sienna's room, so stay tuned for other projects that I am doing for it.


The Ribbon-Tufting

The Blanket

The Skirt with scallop detail... I'm obSESSED with scalloping!

Changing Station Pad Cover

The time has come to start conquering the list of tasks for the kids' rooms! My goal is to be done by late fall with both rooms, so we shall see. Here is one of the first projects for Sienna's room (Besides ones I've had done for awhile), the changing pad cover. I just measured around the pad for the top of it, then for the bottom, I used the same measurments for the lengths of the sides, but I cut 4 strips (about 6-8 inches thick), 2 of the strips being the length of the long sides of the pad, the other 2 being the length of the short sides. I sewed the together with the corners coming to a 45 degree angle, then I sewed elastic to the inside of it. Then I sewed that whole piece to the top piece, and then I had my cover. Super easy. If you're wanting to do this project, and those instruction weren't clear enough, let me know, and I'll be a little more specific with everything!

Josten's Birthday Present

Well, I wasn't the most creative in my idea for Josten's present this year, but he liked it so that's what matters right? I crocheted him a beanie, one that looks like one of the little boy ones I made for my first week of farmers market. I thought it looked studly on Breck, and as predicted, it was the first one to sell. I hadn't made another one like it since though, so I decided to make it for Josten.

T-Shirt Stacker

Okay, so this isn't the most flawless or thorough project I've ever done, I kind of just slapped it together, but I wanted to do it for two reasons:

1. I'm making a diaper stacker for Sienna's room, and I wanted the practice
and
2. Josten has very little closet space, and needed a place to put his million t-shirts.

Thus I created The T-Shirt Stacker.

I didn't use a pattern for this, and sometimes when I do that, it's a little hard for me to describe what I did without showing you in person. I did find a great tutorial, however, that you can look at here.

This one uses a clothes hanger, though for Sienna's I will do it with ties on the top to tie to the changing table.

Breck's 4th of July Shorts!

Instructions for these shorts might get a little lengthy, as I did not use a pattern, so if you would like instructions, just let me know and I'll be glad to post it. For now, I'll just say there was a lot of measuring, and comparing with Breck's existing shorts. It was fun though. I pieced all the patchwork pieces together too, so it was a little tedious, but simple.

Front

Back

Sienna's 4th of July Smocked Dress!

I made this dress for Sienna for the 4th of July. The smocked dress that I made a few months ago was in preparation for this dress. So with that said, if you want to know how I did this dress, follow the instructions below for my first smocked dress. The only difference with this dress is the trim along the bottom. I did that by cutting a piece of elastic to the length of the bottom of the dress. I then cut a piece of the trim fabric to 1 1/2 to twice that length, hemmed it, then sewed it just like you would for the elastic in the dress. (see below instructions).


The flower is a hair-clip that my friend Alyssa made. I just thought it would look cute on there too!

Mom's Birthday Gift

For those of you who know how to crochet, you could pretty much figure this out, but here is a tutorial anyway.

I made the towel, just two simple pieces of fabric sewn together, with ribbon and patterned fabric trim. Pretty easy!




The Card

Father's Day Cards

Here are the cards I made for the special Daddys in my life!

Sienna's Artsy Birthday Party!

Wow, this was a fun and inexpensive party to plan! Since it's a theme all around being creative, it worked that I really had to be creative to pull it together! So here's some of the things I did:

First off, as posted before, here are the invites


Sienna's Artist's Beret
I made it without a pattern, but I basically just measured a radius of 2-3 inches bigger than her head, Then cut a 2-3"Xthe end circumfrance of the big circle length of a strip, sewed elastic to one of the long ends of the strip, then sewed the other end to the cricle, wrong sides out, then turned it inside out to reveal the simple beret!

Here are some random pics of the food and decor

Click Here for a tutorial on the Pom Poms.

Ribbon garland on the table

The cheese and grape skewers were made by using cookie cutters. Make sure the cheese is thick enough, they tend to break apart if they are too thin.

Here is the pallet cake I made (two round cakes stacked, then carved out and frosted to look like a pallet.

The table cloth, I splatter-painted myself. You could use a variety of paints, but I used watered-down acryllic paints, and a sylicone baster.

The activities:

Play dough station (homemade)Click Here for the recipe, with a handprint station next to it


Drawing on the wall (Freezer Paper on the wall with crayons so kids could draw on it)

Noodle and Fruit Loops Necklaces (Penne Pasta painted with watercolors)

And of course, The party favors... A Do-it-Yourself Sock Puppet kit!

Karen's "Kim Anderson" Baby Shower

I know I've posted quite a bit about this already, but I just wanted to post how it all turned out and came together. As I said before, the theme was the Kim Anderson photos of little kids with roses and adult clothes. It was a fun theme to do, because we had to stretch our minds to think up different things that we could do for it. As posted before, I did the Invites, the party favors, and I made a fun little dish. Shawnte', my sister-in-law, did the cake, and Shasta, my other sister-in-law did the games. It was a lot of fun, and I think it was a success! Here's some pictures of the event:




This is the cake Shawnte' made. It's a little newsies cap, to go along with the theme!


I made the dish in the middle, they are snails made from refrigerated breadstick dough, and rolled up like a snail. Before you roll it up, you brush marinara sauce over the breadstick lightly. You have to roll a little bit in front under for the head too. Then you poke holes in the head once they are cooked, and put carot slivers in them. It helps when you cook it, if you put a couple of toothpicks in the "shell" to avoid tip-overs.

Sienna's Birthday Party Invites

Here they are in all their glory. Pretty simple and straight forward. I splatter painted them, and took her picture myself. The rest is probably easy to figure out.


Below is the the picture under the vellum:

Mosquito Net

This one I've been done with for quite some time, but I realized it was on my "to-do" list on this blog, and that I hadn't posted about it yet! It was really pretty simple. This project was for Sienna's "room". Right now she's still in a corner of the office, but this summer she'll have her own room, so I've been starting a line of projects in preparation for this. I've always loved the look of mosquito nets in little girls rooms, but unfortunately they are really expensive even for plain white ones. So I decided to make one myself. This saves TONS of money, and you get it just the way you want! I used 6 yards of tulle for this, ribbon of choice, and an embroidery hoop. First, you need to cut your tulle. It will already be folded in half length-wise, so fold the height in half, so it is now 3 yards tall. Cut along that fold, then cut along the length-wise folds on each 3 yard peice. You should have 4 9-foot peices. Next, loosen the embroidery hoop to where you can easily place fabric between the 2 circles. Place the 4 peices of tulle in the embroidery hoop, around the edge. There should be one piece of tulle per quarter of the hoop. You should have about 2 feet above the hoop and the majority left hanging below the hoop. Fold over the top in half, and tuck tuck that edge into the hoop, so you have about one foot above the hoop. Then, you get some ribbon or string, and string it through the fold that you just made at the top. Sinch it together and tie it together in a bow, so you can hang it from it's loops. You may want to double knot it. Straighten out the cone at the top, so it's to your desired tightness. Also, since the embroidery hoop has the bigger part on the back, you will need to make sure you tighten the top so that the knot is closer to the back as shown in the picture below, so that the balance is even. Then, trim the hoop with ribbon however you like!

Party Favors!!!

As promised, here are the party favors for Karen's shower. To my dismay, they don't even make the tradition candy bars anymore... the kind that have foil wrappers with a paper wrapper over it. I made due with what I had though. I used Kit Kat Bars, wrapped them with paper with the little saying, "Thank you for sharing this special occasion with us!" on it. Then I cut several squares of plain white fabric for the diaper (after measuring how much it would take to cover the Kit Kat Bar, they're about 6 inch squares) which I put on just like you would a cloth diaper. Something that made it easier was glueing the corners down onto the front BEFORE pinning them, then just putting the safety pin on for garnish. The roses were from 2 mini rose wreaths from the dollar store. When I pulled them off of the wreath, I was left with only the buds, but I wanted a full stem. So I pulled off the fake baby's breath and cut the tops off of them, and I used their stems to hot-glue to the rose buds. Then I just slipped the roses into the diapers. And that was that!

Karen's Baby Shower Invites

My Sister-in-law, Karen, is expecting a baby boy in August. Together, this is her and her husband's 7th child. But it's been awhile since they've had a child, and of course, now have gotten rid of all of their baby gear. So, of course we found it necessary to throw her a shower! The theme Karen wanted was the Kim Anderson photography, the black and white pictures of the little kids in big-people clothes. I was in charge of the invites and favors (I'll post about the favors later). I really wanted to incorporate the pictures in the invites, and not just the color scheme we were going for (Black, White and Red), so that when people got the invitations, they knew what to expect. I couldn't think of a way to do this, since I'm pretty sure it's illegal to just print them off of your computer and use them, plus I thought that wouldn't look great anyway. I also thought about just getting a bunch of the pictures, but that would get kind of spendy, plus probably a lot of time to wait for them to be delivered. After studying the pictures for awhile online, I figured out what I would do. I figured, "Hey, I've got a little boy, why don't I just re-create these pictures?" So after narrowing it down to two that I liked, I decided to sort of mix them into one for the shot I would take of Breck.

Here are the two pictures that I chose, first of all:


And here's what I came up with:


And here are what the invites turned out like:



It was pretty fun, and now I have a super-cute picture of Breck from it!