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!!!)

DIY Hand Scrubs

I was in charge of Craft Club for November and I decided we would make some fun hand scrubs that we could use as Holiday gifts! We made a Candy Cane Sugar Scrub, Gingerbread Sugar Scrub and a Honey Coconut Sugar Scrub. They all smell SOOOO wonderful and are so easy to make!! Plus they make GREAT gifts!!!

You can use any kind of baking oil for these recipes when it just calls for oil. Olive Oil works fine, but it has a stronger smell than some of the other oils. Grape Seed oil works well and doesn't have a strong smell.  These all make about 16 ounces of scrub!!

My favorite is the Gingerbread Sugar Scrub because I LOVE Gingerbread!!!!

Gingerbread Sugar Scrub
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1 cup oil

I also LOVE LOVE the smell of the Honey Coconut Sugar Scrub.... this one is good enough to eat....

Honey Coconut Sugar Scrub
1 cup Coconut Oil (in the solid form)
1 cup Honey
1/2 cup white sugar
Mix together the Coconut Oil in it's solid form together with the honey until they are mixed together. Add in the sugar.

We learned from experience that you don't want to melt the coconut oil into a liquid state or it will not combine with the honey!!!

Last we made a Candy Cane Sugar Scrub.

Candy Cane Sugar Scrub
2 cups white sugar
1 cup oil
Several drops of mint (to your preference)
Split into two portions and add a VERY small amount of red coloring

The first time I made this I used food coloring. While it gave a really nice red color, it also slightly stained my hands red when I used it!! We used soap colorant and that worked better, but didn't give us a bright red color. In my opinion, I prefer this to red hands....

And I am SOOO nice :) I here are the labels I used to decorate my jars with!!!!

Sugar Scrub Printable Labels

I can't wait to give these as gifts and use some myself this Holiday season!!!

Chevron Lined Black Out Curtains

I could not find curtains I liked for Little Man's new big boy room, so I sewed my own!! AND since his room is East facing they needed to be blackout curtains!!

So here we have my first time sewing lined curtains!

I also saved some money with these curtains. Little Man's nursery is accented with Silver Sage from Restoration Hardware Baby & Child and it seemed like they were clearing out the color from their nursery lines, I did what any sane person would do!!!! I bought two 94 inch canvas curtains in Silver Sage that were lined with blackout liners for a reality inexpensive price. I planned on using the fabric for many things.... well I am pretty sure I have had the curtains for over a year and didn't touch them until I spent time seem ripping them apart for the blackout lining.....  now I just need to find the time and energy to use the silver sage canvas.....

Assembling the curtains with the liner was pretty easy, the blackout liner is just heavy so its a lot of fabric to work with!

1. Finish the bottom edge of your patterned fabric. I made mine 2 inches wide.
2. Since I was reusing blackout lining, I did not have to finish the bottom edge of my blackout lining, but if you are using new blackout fabric you should do that now! 
3. Pin the right side of the patterned curtain to the right side of the blackout curtain. Your blackout linning will be a few inches shorter than your decorative fabric.
4. Sew the first side together.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the other long side.
6. Flip your curtain so it is now right side out.
7. You should now have some over lap on the backside of your curtains of the patterned fabric. You may want to iron this edge now.
8. Sew your top edge. I made mine 3.5 inches wide.
9. Determine how you will hang your curtains, in my case I used grommets, so I then installed my grommets.
10 Hang and enjoy!!!! 

Little Man's new curtains in his room!!! Look at all of the light the grommets allow you to have when they easily open!

AND look how they actually do block out the light from outside!!!

Little Man's new big boy room is taking shape!!!! I am so excited for it to be done!

Patio Door Extra Wide Curtains

I decided I wanted to change up our dinning room patio curtains and could not find what I wanted so I sewed my own! Since it was for the patio door I wanted it to be EXTRA wide - and I wanted it to cover the entire door, so I basically sewed 3 curtain panels together into one HUGE curtain!!! It is around 150 inches wide!!!! Which let me tell you is not the easiest to pin and get all lined up when you are six months pregnant! That was a lot of on the floor time for me pinning and pinning and more pinning.

Since the pattern had to be matched perfectly I spent a lot of time pinning. A LOT!!!!

Here is the fast two second run down on what I did.

1. Sewed the left hand side of the left panel
2. Sewed the right hand side of the right panel
3. Sewed the left panel to the middle panel
4. Sewed the right panel to the middle panel/left panel
5. Sewed the bottom of the entire huge panel
6. Sewed the top edge finishing off the super large curtain panel

 Since our patio door is close to the windows in our family room I wanted to make sure they coordinated. Both fabrics are gray and white from Premier Prints, so they coordinate perfectly!!

 I do LOVE how they are still nice and full when they are pulled shut!! An advantage of using 3 panels and not 2!!! I would say it was worth the extra work!

Wedding Details

With less than two weeks left until my sister's wedding I have a few wedding details on my to-do list!

1. Programs
2. Make a Cake Topper
3. Place cards for reception
4. Place cards for rehersal dinner
5. Sew a garter
6. Sew a bow tie for little man
7. Help with table numbers
8. Collect "vintage" frames for photos
9. Create a 16x20 plus document to guide guests to their correct table
10. Gift bags for hotel guests
11. Wedding day survival kit
12. Bathroom essentials

Hopefully I am not forgetting anything...

Since every post needs a picture... here is a picture of the beautiful bride at her Bachlorette party sporting her beautiful purple veil I made for her and her mustache straw (no we were not drinking wine with straws.....)

Burlap Wedding Shower

 Last weekend we hosted my sister's wedding shower. Since my sister wanted a joint shower with both sides of her future family we decided to have it at a restaurant! After the insane April we have had, it was a great decision! My youngest sister put together this cute towel wedding cake display for our sister. We used burlap circles to decorate the "cake" and a rhinestone hair pin on the top for a little extra bling.

 Since we used burlap on the invites (and I am sort of obsessed with it at the moment) I made a burlap banner. ( I wish I would have hung this a bit higher, but oh well it still looks cute!!)

This was so simple to make. I simply cut out 4 - 5.5 x 5 inch burlap squares. I then made a stencil with my Silhouette (you could easily buy something, or free hand if you like) and used my trusty black acrylic paint to fill in my stencil. Once dried I used my sewing machine to sew the squares together onto a piece of jute. So simple and so cute!!!

 Then I made the Bride and Groom initial canvas artwork for them to use as they wish! I found these great linen canvases at a local craft store. I LOVE the color and love how they are not white but already have that great linen texture!! (I bought 4 more for myself for TBD projects!!! I love them THAT much!!!)

I again used my Silhouette to create a stencil for the letters. (Again you could use other options to achieve this looks!) Again used my acrylic black paint (that's what the label said!!) and created this cute simple artwork!

The last project I created for this shower was the favor. You can't have a shower without a favor!!! I ran to Home Depot and picked up a few packages of Gladiolas bulbs. We then cut and wrapped them in burlap. (See how to cut burlap)  I used a stamp set to stamp the phrase "Let love grow" onto a piece of card stock and included basic planting directions (we didn't want anyone to think it was something to eat.....) and there we have a simple but cute favor to match our burlap themed wedding shower!

The best part about using Gladiolas bulbs is this was my grandpa's favorite flowers. He used to grow these flowers and they really remind me of him!

The whole look!!!

DIY Burlap Wedding Shower Invite

Check out these wedding shower invites I created. I saw the concept of "tying the knot" online (I am sorry I don't remember where) but took my own twist on it by using a DIY burlap ribbon. After this project I am annoyed with burlap. It's messy, smelly and very messy!!! We had a major craft fail cutting the ribbon stripes, but luckily I figured it out!! See my How to Cut Burlap post.

Chevron Curtains

I finally finished my Chevron Gray and White curtains!!! I was so intimidated for the longest time, so I was afraid to start them (sort of like the 2 chairs I have in my garage that needs to be re-upholstered.)

This is my lovely Target lamp and the shade I covered with left over material from my pouf! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the lamp and base combo! I love that mustard yellow color!!!! The curtains were not hard to sew, but they intimidated me, and once I got past that, they were easy!!!! (It's just sewing 4 straight lines with the top and bottom a bit wider than the sides) I also took great effort to make sure that if they were pulled shut the pattern would match up between the two panels.

I spray painted some black grommets I purchased on sale white since I thought the black would stick out too much. They were very easy to paint and look great!!
I love how light and flowy they are compared to the brown curtains that were there before. I am glad I finally got over the intimidation of finishing these and actually finished them!! Now to actually start those 2 chairs that are in my garage. When I actually find the time I know I can do it after my last few projects!

Little Man Car Shirt

While shopping online I found a child's shirt that held 8 little matchbox sized cars that was around $38! It was so simple and I figured with my limited sewing knowledge I could easily re-creative the look. Here is the original.

I started by making a template out of paper to make sure it would fit 4 cars across and still fit on the t-shirt I purchased from Target.

I ended up leaving 1/2 inch seam allowances on each side, and the bottom and then left 2 inches for each car, so my pocket was 9 inches long by 3 inches wide.


I then cut my fabric with extra for creating the folded behind pocket.

I sewed the top portion of the pocket twice for something different.


Once the top was finisihed I pinned the entire pocket to the size of my template card.


The first pocket I pinned I pinned the pocket on the wring side (the side that was placed on the t-shirt, so it was hard to remove the pins as I sewed, so I learned for the second pocket to pin on the right side!!)

I then pinned the pocket to the t-shirt and sewed around the sides and bottom of the pocket. Again I did a second row of sewing because I liked the look.

Then I sewed every two inches on the pocket to create the 4 smaller pockets for the car. And then repeated for the second pocket.

I then used my Silhouette Cameo and cut out "Liam's Cars" onto the Heat Transfer material. I REALLY had to iron this on and I hope it handles the wash...

The shirt is even fun to play with while not on!
Getting a two year old to pose for a picture is very difficult! I believe he was into a Curious George episode while these were taken....

Toy Storage with DIY Chalkboard Tags

In order to try and keep my son's playroom as organized as possible, I bought several canvas totes from Target that were pretty boring. So I decided to make little chalkboard (my latest obsession!!!!) labels for them. Super easy and now we have an organized (for now) toy room!


At Micheal's I bought little wooden boards meant for flags for 29 cents a piece!



I gave them 2 coats of Rustoleam Moonstruck Chalkboard paint!


Ready to attach my chalkboard tags to the canvas. My first time using Liquid Nails!!


A nice drizzle of Liquid Nails.


Just placed them on and let them dry!


The finished product.

So organized! All of my canvas totes in our IKEA LACK shelf.