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!

Quilt Number 7!

Quilt number SEVEN, was a Christmas gift for my new baby niece. It was finished about a day before Christmas, so I wrapped it and never took a picture of it! For this quilt I used two Jelly Rolls, but only about half from each pack. I had a really hard time finding only a pink and grey Jelly Roll, so I had to remove the blue!

I used 6.5 inch strips for this quilt and ended up making 80 - 6.5 by 6.5 inch squares. For my back I used super soft matching flannel!! It was so cozy, I wanted to take a nap with it!

Originally quilt number 7 was going to be a quilt for me. But that quilt was set aside to finish this one first. I might have finally finished that quilt a few months too late.

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!

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.

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!!!)

Baby Girl Name Plaque

Over the weekend we went to a Baptism for an adorable 9 week old. I didn't know what to get her and since I didn't get her anything when she was born I decided to make her a wall hanging for her bedroom with her name on it.

A while back I purchased these awesome wall plaques from Restoration Hardware Baby and Child. They are thick 17x17 inches of wood. I had to prime the board to cover up what was there, which meant I only needed two thing coats of pink paint!

I made the stencil with my Cameo Silhouette. I forgot to grab my transfer paper so I improvised and used wide painters tape. It worked in a pinch!

I am loving this plaque and so happy with how it turned out!! 

The boards come with the ribbon attached and I actually removed it before gifting it because the ribbon is brown and the paint is gray (pretend you don't notice that in my picture :) )

Baby Monthly Onesies with Printable

This is a really old project for me since Little Man is 2! But these monthly baby onesies are all over the web, so I thought I would share my version! Now that little man is 2, it is so awesome to look back at these pictures and these really cute baby bodysuits! My awesome fabulous friend put my vision of these shirts to life by creating the graphics for me. Using the iron on transfer printer paper these are so easy to make (just make sure you print them in reverse!!!!) Besides that a piece of cake!

Look at how cute little man looks! And how much he changed from 1 month to 3 months and then 7! If I have a suggestion for creating these for your self... make them all before baby comes. I did not, and it felt like each month I was scrambling on his month birthday or a few days later to create that month's birthday onesie!

I love the simple green and brown colors. Since little man's nursery was done in Restoration Hardware's Silver Sage this green color is based on Silver Sage! ( I still LOVE LOVE LOVE this color!!!) So because they are green and brown, they could go for either a boy or a girl!!!!

Download the PDF files that I used to create my month onesie here!!! Feel free to use them to create your own month onesie or for a friend. Please make sure to give credit back to my blog!

Baby month bodysuit 1 - 6
Baby month bodysuit 7-8
Baby month bodysuit 9-10
Baby month bodysuit 11 - 12

St. Patrick's Day Onesie Vest and Bow Tie

I am on my 3rd try on this project! And it's going to work this time, right? My fails first!!

My first try! I made my vest sides - even sewed a nice white liner on the back! BUT my template was way off and these don't fit on a onesie. I am still trying to figure out something to do with these. I could try and turn them into an actual vest...

V2, I again lined my vest and this time we made it past the is it going to fit the onesie. It did! BUT I had a major fail on the sewing it to the onesie phase.... It was looking SO horrible!!

I even made a fake pocket for this one!
And THIS is what happens to a onesie when you try and remove the stitching. (Or at least what happens to me when I try and remove the stitching!!!)

So 3rd time is the charm, right? So this time I did NOT line my vest. I spent a significant amount of time creating my template for my vest. I used the onesies as a pattern. This time I used my new favorite friend - Wonder Under. I ironed the material using the directions on the package and then traced my template and cut it out!

My two sides of the vest....
The most important part.... is it going to fit on the onesie.... IT DOES!!! V1 passed!
Then I ironed the pieces together. And it still all fit together so well!!

I then debated for a while if I should attempt to sew the outline of this again.... Since it was working out, I did not want to ruin yet another....

I ended up sewing around the boarder of the vest. I took my time and was very slow and it worked this time!! You can't REALLY see this in the picture, but its there!! And it looks fabulous. I started to sew on 3 buttons, but decided that since this was for a newborn, I did not want to risk the button falling off...... so no buttons!

I then made and attached a Little Man Bow Tie to the top of the onesies.

Seriously can you believe it took my THAT long to make this onesie!!! But I love it and am so happy with how it turned out!!! This one is actually a gift, so I do still have to figure out if I am going to make my little man one like this or try and fix / use version 1!!

Orange and Blue Baby Shower

Before Christmas I hosted a baby shower for my husband's cousin's wife who is expecting their first little boy any day now!! We are very excited since this will be a little boy for our little man to play with since all of his cousin's that live close to us are girls! So we are excited for a boy cousin!

I put together an orange and blue baby shower for her with elephants here and there. Of course I did not get a lot of great shots of all of my work for the party! I was frantically cleaning at the last minute!! So I had to take pictures once the guests arrived....

I made my first cake balls. They were very good, but very sweet! I wrote "baby e" with dark chocolate on the plate.

I love making cupcakes! And these have lots of frosting on them! I did not get a good picture, but I made the little orange candies on the top of the cupcakes which are in the shape of elephants!!
Instead of a guest book, I bought a Horton Hears a Who Dr. Seuss book and had the guests sign it for the mommy to be to read to little baby e!
A wreath I made for decorations! I LOVE these colors!! I hope to use them again soon!
I made a cute banner with an elephants and hung it on the mantle! I also decorated three paper cones with fabric, felt roses and ribbon.
I made the mommy to be 3 tie onesies. I love the little man look and nothing is cuter than a little newborn baby boy wearing a tie!! I hung these cute little onesies from blue clothes hangers I painted on orange string!
I love the orange and blue combination and need to use this combination again very soon for a party...