Simple Succulent Diaper Cake

My sister chose to accent her baby girl's nursery with succulents and cactus. So for her baby shower, we hopped on that theme and made her a simple diaper cake with accents she could use in the nursery. I made a simple diaper cake and accented it with fake succulents I found at Target. So very simple, but so very cute!!! 

And don't you LOVE the cupcakes my mom and sister made!!!!

DIY Sew Your Own Baby Moccasins!

One of my absolute favorite go-to Baby Shower Gifts are Handmade Baby Moccasins!

They are so adorable and actually not all that hard to make. They are a bit time consuming because you have to sew slowly, but the end result is SO worth it!

These three pairs I made for my niece! I tried a free pattern I found online, but ended up buying a pattern from Etsy. For your first pair, you might want to try using Suede first. It's a lot easier to work with than the leather. The leather I used, is also from Etsy!

Geranium Dress

Look at me!! Two posts back to back!! And two sewing projects back to back! That's because last weeks class on the 241 Tote Bag motivated me to start something else. So as soon as I finished my tote bag I immediately started on a Geranium Dress by Made by Rae.

This is at least the third dress I have made with this pattern and it is by far my favorite little girl dress! It is so simple but so cute! 

I used a great Chambray fabric I bought at the Sewcial Lounge.  

For some reason I had such a hard time getting the buttons holes to work on this dress. I did a few test runs and all of my test runs worked perfectly, but when it came to the actual dress every time I tried my machine would jam. SOOOO I decided I wanted to finish the dress so instead I sewed in snaps (REALLY MESSILY) and then sewed the cute orange buttons I intended on using on the back instead. It works. I might go back and make actual button holes, but we will see!

 My little model! I love this dress! I can't wait to start on another one (and hopefully have better lick with my buttons!)

Pink and Gold Winter Wonderland First Birthday Party

Back in February we celebrated our daughter's first birthday with a Pink and Gold Winter Wonder Land Party.

Since her birthday was early February a Winter Wonderland Party seemed appropriate, and being obsessed with gold and pink it was an obvious choice. I decided very early in January this was going to be our theme, so I was able to find a few after Christmas deals that completed the theme.

What's a long winter without a hot chocolate bar!!?? The hot chocolate bar was such a hit!

I decorated with a large gold "A" surrounded by several pictures of Ava's first year. We used our Keurig to warm up the water and displayed powdered hot chocolate mix in a glass jar with directions for those who might have needed them.

Our toppings of course included marshmallows, butterscotch chips, white chocolate chips, peppermint chips, and caramel pieces. I made marshmallow pops covered with pink and white chocolate and white chocolate covered spoons for mixing up this yummy treat. See how I made these in the past.

I had a lot of fun with the sweet table! 

I borrowed several gold and white Christmas trees from family members and made a couple pink feather trees by using a pink feather boa and wrapping it around a Styrofoam cone. I had a lot of fun making pom pom garland. I used various shapes of glass jars and modge podged gold glitter to the bottom half. I made a "Happy Birthday" sign with my Silhouette Cameo. 

Pink, gold and white sweets consisted of TONS of gold Rolos, white M&Ms, pink Hersey Kisses (a plus of a February party - Valentines Day candy!!!), pink marshmallows and white rock candy.

I also hand dipped Oreos in white chocolate and drizzled pink chocolate and gold sprinkles on top.

And then of course we have the pink smash cake!! It was not so obvious in person, but you can sort of see in the pictures I was going for an ombre effect in my frosting of the cake.

I spent so much time trying to brain storm a party favor for this party and I also procrastinated making party hats. The day before the party I had the brilliant idea of using a winter hat to cover both! Some how, I have no clue how I got so lucky, Target had the perfect winter hat on Clearance! Problem solved!

Most importantly, the Birthday Girl had a fabulous birthday!! She loved her cake! And loved all of the attention she got at her party! It also didn't hurt that she got like 5 baby dolls as gifts, her absolute favorite!!

I can't believe my baby girl is almost a year and a half!!! Where does the time go???

Thanks to the fabulous Danielle at First Moment's Photography for the fabulous photos from her first birthday party!!! Danielle does a fabulous job and it was so nice not to have to worry about taking pictures. I could just sit back and enjoy!!! If you are in Wisconsin, you should check her out! First Moment's Photography

Quilts from Baby Clothes

After I finished my first quilt in the fall, the wheels were turning for my next quilt.  When my daughter was born my sister-in-law gave me a bunch of special outfits her girls wore when they were babies and instead of handing these special outfits to someone else I knew I needed to do something with them for my sister-in-law. That's when I decided to be an over-achiever and sew TWO baby clothes quilts for my nieces for Christmas.

Since I only had about ten outfits, coming up with my design took me a while. I eventually decided to use the babies outfits and create a bunch of hearts! Once my design was determined, I then procrastinated about cutting up adorable, perfectly fine baby clothes!!! Once I started I was very happy I did. I love how it turned out and more importantly my nieces and sister-in-law loved them!

How I created them:
After getting over cutting up baby clothes, I cut the clothes so I could add fusible interfacing to the back of the clothes. Then I traced various sizes of hearts onto the interfacing and cut out my hearts.

I than laid out my washed purple piece of flannel and determined my design with the hearts and pinned them in place. Next I carefully zig-zag stitched around each heart with a darker purple thread.

Then I pinned together my batting and another piece of flannel for the back and quilted with long lines with the same dark purple thread - avoiding the hearts. Lastly I binded it and I had two fabulous quilts for my nieces for Christmas!

I did a few test runs of appliqueing the hearts onto flannel first to figure out what worked best. I did a couple without the fusible interfacing and it works SO much better with it! This is my 2nd and 3rd ever quilt, so this was pretty simple!

When adding my hearts I also added an initial for each of the girls, so they could tell their quilts apart!

I can't wait to some day make these for my kids with their baby clothes, but we all know that won't happen until my kids are at least 20!

Monogrammed Burp Cloth

One of the baby projects I made in preparation for my daughter's birth in February was to sew some girly burp cloths! Since these were so fun to make (and SO fast!!) I have since given several out as gifts! There are so many blogs with directions on how to sew these, so I won't reinvent the wheel, but these seriously take less than ten minutes to sew! Fast sewing projects are my ABSOLUTE favorite! 

These are made with fleece, so they are extra soft! I was even lazier on this project by not measuring any of my fabric, I just eyeballed it and trimmed at the end if needed. None of the pre-folded diapers were really the same size anyway, so you can't tell. (Plus they are cloths meant to wipe up baby spit up.....)

After making a few cloths, I had a lot of scrap fabric left over, so I got fancy and monogrammed a burp cloth for my daughter (and it would work for my niece too!) I simply cut out an A and traced it onto the fleece and cut it out. I then sewed my design on before attaching to the pre-folded diaper. Still very easy! And now no one will try and steal her burp cloth.... except maybe her baby cousin who also is an "A" baby!

Not So Pink Baby Girl's Nursery

I loved the bedding and colors I used for Little Man's nursery 3 years back and (to much surprise to MANY people) I decided to use the same bedding and color scheme for our little girl. So baby girl's room doesn't look all that different from her big brother's nursery, but I just added in the right amount of pink accents! I LOVE pink, but didn't want an overwhelmingly pink room for our little girl.

So here is our not so pink little girl's room!

I spent a while trying to find the perfect letters for her name because I wanted them to be lower case letters and I wanted them to be HUGE! So I ended up ordering them from Craft Cuts and painted them a light pink.

Since I bought this bedding set in 2010, it came with a bumper. I only used the bumpers for the pictures and not while she sleeps in the crib.

I modified this plaque from a Restoration Hardware wall hanging by making an A with fabric and adhering it to the wood. 

Our comfy Pottery Barn Kids rocker, that we spend a lot of time in! I think a comfy chair in a nursery is a must!! I whipped together a pink pillow for her chair!

I created some bird artwork for her room using my silhouette.

 I modified the mobile I made by painting it pink and replacing the blue ribbon with pink ribbon.

Here is a close up of the animals hanging on the mobile. This is still one of my favorite parts of this room.

I love her nursery and how calming it is. We like spending time in it, and she loves sleeping in her crib! Here is how little man's nursery look! It's really not all that different, but I do think it has the perfect amount of pink!

Gray and Purple Owl Diaper Cake

Last weekend I hosted a baby shower for my sister. I am so excited as she is expecting a little girl in about a month, so our little girls will be about 5 months apart! And hopefully very soon they will be best friends!

My sister is putting together a purple and gray nursery for her little girl, so we used that as a starting point for the baby shower.

And NO baby shower is complete without a diaper cake. My mom and I put together this cute purple and gray owl diaper cake. It was REALLY easy, especially since we have a huge supply of diapers in my house right now!

Three years back, when my sister's made me a diaper cake for my son's baby shower, they tediously wrapped each diaper with a rubber band..... well as a mom of two, I don't have that sort of time!!! We folded each diaper in half loosely following these directions on how to make a diaper cake. It maybe took us 30 minutes to assemble the general structure of the cake, it was SO fast and SO much easier!!!

I easily decorated the cake with purple and gray ribbon and a cute little owl I made! I decorated the top of the cake with fabric flowers headbands that her little girl can wear!!!! These directions are all over Pinterest, but here are the headbands I made for my little girl.

Pink Nursery

Here is a sneak peak of our pink nursery and what I have been up too lately! I have been a bit busy..... but its so worth it!

DIY Baby Headband Holder

With all of the headbands I made for Baby Girl, I had to also make something that we could display them on!! There are a lot of different ideas on Pinterest, but I decided to modify and make my own version.

I took a beautiful framed picture I bought at Goodwill MONTHS ago and painted it pink. I then lined it will some cute brown chevron fabric and used some pink drawer pulls I bought at Target. 

I then used my favorite Command Adhesive strips and attached it to the inside of her closet door! It works for now, but it maybe should have been a little bigger! Since little girls love their hair accessories! 

Linked up at: DOG DAYS OF WINTER “ORGANIZE IT” LINKY PARTYhttp://www.craftyscrappyhappy.net/

Baby Girl Headbands

In a few (hopefully short days we are expecting a sweet little baby girl. So I just had to make some cute little headbands for her to wear! Since our son was basically balk until he was two, I figure our little girl will probably have similar hair and instead of telling people she is a girl, I figured the headbands will MAYBE give people a clue to not ask!! 

These were so easy to make!!! And they are all interchangeable! The flowers are attached to the elastic bands with Velcro! There are a lot of different tutorials for these around Pinterest, but this is one version I used. The only difference is I sewed the circles onto the felt, and used Velcro instead of pins!

I can't wait to see these headbands on our new little girl!!!

Easy Baby Blankets

Before my son was born I spent months knitting him a baby blanket. Now since I don't have that much time on my hands, I decided I should be fair and make my daughter a blanket too.... well I ended up making her 3 but I spent WAY WAY WAY less time on her three combined than on that single one for my son.

The most time consuming blanket I made I started with the pieces wrong side to wrong side and sewed two pieces of soft fabric together. Once almost all sewed together I flipped it right side out and then sewed a second time around the blanket with about a half an inch seam allowance.

My second and third blankets were the same concept, different cute fabric! I carefully pinned the two pieces of fabric together wrong side to wrong side so my alignment was correct on them. I then pinned double fold bias tape around the entire blanket and sewed it in place.

My careful pinning!!!

My third blanket!

I was so intimidated to actually start this project and like most projects I don't know why. This was a REALLY easy sewing project. Just a bunch of straight lines (and some might not be 100% straight!!! - I am pretty sure she isn't going to care!!!)

Little Man's Last Nursery

When Little Man was born we rented an apartment in Michigan while Casey finished Law School. The awesome thing about our apartment was we were able to paint (not so awesome when we had to prime it back to white when we moved out!!!) Little Man had a really nice sized room for an apartment, not that he EVER slept in there!!! So this is his first nursery.

I was never a fan of the glider we bought for Little Man's room (and trust me I spent HOUR and HOURS in it trying to get Little Man to sleep!!!!) so I sold it before we moved to Wisconsin (why move something I didn't have too!!) We lived with my parents for about 5 months after moving to Wisconsin and because we did a lot of traveling back and forth with him when we lived in Michigan, they bought a crib and he had his own room. So while living there I helped my mom decorate his room there.

Then we have Little Man's nursery in our new house.

About 6 months in our new house I decided I wanted another glider in his room.  So we have our final and last version of Little Man's nursery. Soon we will move him into a toddler bed and in the not so near future he will be moved down the hall to his big boy room.

So I give you Little Man's last nursery!

I love how it turned out!! And I will be very sad when Little Man moves out of this room. But I am so excited to start working on his Big Boy room and all of the fun that will bring!

Here is how I made the alphabet canvas artwork.