My first Zipper Project

A few weeks ago I posted about my zipper fails, but I never posted my final project!

I am NOT going to even post a how to make a little make up bag like this!!!! If you want to make one check out Pinterest, there are lots of great ideas on there!!

Because after all remember how this was a major fail sewing in the zipper!!! 

BUT I was happy with how it turned out. I gave this to my sister for her birthday and asked for an update if it was holding up, but she said she had not used it yet. So hopefully it holds up for her!!

I love gray and yellow together and this fun yellow pattern seemed like the perfect pattern for the inside of this little chevron printed pouch!

I have to admit I am sort of excited to give the zipper a second chance.... when I every have time!!! Even though this took WAY longer than it should have, I am so happy with how it turned out!!

Two big fails in my bedroom

In my bedroom I have two major fails taking up a lot of space!

I refinished this dresser for my bedroom. BUT the drawers are stuck shut!! So my dresser is unusable!

AND that TV that sits on top of it does not work.... and is causing my lots of frustration! I just want to sit in my bed and watch TV before I fall asleep!

Two big fails in my bedroom....

I hope to fix these two problems sooner rather than later!!

Planes, Trains and Automobiles 2nd Birthday

Little Man turned 2.5 on Monday, so I guess it's about time I blog his 2nd Birthday Party, right :)

I didn't want to miss a moment of Little Man's party and wanted to make sure everything was caught by the camera, so I hired a photographer, the Fabulous Karmen Linder.

First we start with the big two year old birthday boy!!!! Playing with his train table. This picture also shows the only full picture I have showing the full sweet table with its background. See those white clouds, I actually painted those to my wall.... my brilliant idea was that I would repaint my living room right after the party so it would not matter and be incentive to make me paint it right away.... well as you can guess its been 6 months and those lovely clouds are still on my wall!!

I do have lots of fabulous pictures of all of the details of the party. The nice thing about doing a planes, trains and automobile party in primary colors is Little Man already has tons of toys that work perfect as decorations!! For example I used his Fisher Price School bus to display some red and white suckers!

Wooden train tracks and trains also worked great for decorations! Check out the Oreos I turned into Railroad crossing signs by dipping them into yellow chocolate. I used a black food marker to draw the lines on. (This didn't work so well and they ended up being very light, but they got the point across!)

More Oreo cookies, they work great as spare tires! The gift buckets I made for the guests! And I turned some basic Target party hats into fun hats that matched the theme!

More of Little Man's toys! Trucks work perfect for table center pieces, napkin and utensil holders!

The cupcakes!!! I made all of the chocolate topping pieces from various molds I found, (yes it took a LONG time) and my fabulous sister made all of the cupcakes for me!! Such a nice sister!! I LOVE how cute this display turned out on Little Man's car track!!! It worked perfect to hold all of the cupcakes!!

I kept the food pretty simple. We bought a bunch of pizzas from Papa Murphy's. The one thing we did do was fruit kabobs with Railroad crossing signs on the top. Another one of my sister's cut up all of the fruit and put these together for me!! Again I have really awesome sisters! I love how bright and colorful these are!!

 

The kids table!!!! I bought several small individual plastic orange juice bottles and used  my Silhouette to create labels for them. I made a table cloth for the kids table out of drop cloth and simply painted a road right down the middle with fabric paint.

The kids table with 9 little kids at it! Yes it was rather chaotic but it was so cute watching all of the kids sit together....

When party planning I bought several balloons that I had my dad and father in law blow up while watching a game on TV. Since I had no plan for them, they just were left all over the floor of the basement and the kids loved playing in them! 

I also make another Rail Road Crossing sign for out side of our house!

I did most of my decorating a week before the party because the entire week before the party we were in Arizona celebrating my Dad's birthday (and Little Man's!) Little Man's party was on Saturday and we took the red eye home on Friday morning and got home around 7am on Friday morning!! SOOO my Mother-in-law asked if there was anything they could help with to prepare for the party... I am not sure this is what she had in mind, but I had wanted to make a train out of cardboard for the party, so I asked if my Father-in-law would mind making this! Well he made the cutest train out of a couple cardboard boxes!!! I am so glad I asked him to help because if I had made this with my lack of time it would have NEVER turned out like this!!!

It was such a fun party but it was a lot of work. After it was over I could have used another week long vacation!!!

Slow Progress

I am slowly making progress on my to-do list. The biggest item is Little Man's big boy room!!! To make Little Man's big boy room I need to empty out everything that is in the office / craft room and move it all into the guest bedroom to make a combined craft room / office / guest bedroom. AND to make matters even more fun I need to figure out what to do with all of the stuff thats already in the guest room closet to make room for the billions of craft supplies I have.

It's been a SLOW process but I am slowly clearing out the craft room. From the picture below you can see it's almost empty.... I still need to move the computer to the new room and a bunch of odds and ends things I need to figure out what to do with. I am also making a big St. Vinny's donation with this transition!!

That also leaves the new craft room / guest room looking like a huge mess!!!! But again there is so much extra baby stuff that I don't know where to put until I get Little Man moved out of the nursery so I can hide it all in there until we need it in February.


I can't wait until I get to the fun part of decorating Little Man's big boy room!!! Almost there but still a lot of organizing and holes in the wall to fix.... blah blah blah .... so much to do!!!!

Stained Wall Art

I have had an almost empty frame in my dining room since we moved in. I have changed it out for Holidays... and all summer it held artwork I made for my son's 2nd birthday (in April) that was all about cars!!! And its been on my to-so list to make something more permanent for the space!

AND I wanted something different!

I had some left over wood veneer from another project and thought this would be the perfect place to start! I stained the veneer the same color as my dinning room table (since it was going to be in the same room....)

Once my stained dried, I cut out a design with my Silhouette Cameo.

I was a little nervous with painting over the stain, because if there was bleeding I would not really be able to fix it.... BUT it turned out perfect!! I did use a wet paper towel to clear a little smudge

I am really happy with how it turned out!!! (And I can cross another item off my to-do list!!!! YEAH!!!)

How NOT to sew a zipper

3 hours before I was supposed to be at my parent's house for my sister's birthday get together I decided I should start sewing the little zipper pouch I was going to give her. (I would have started earlier but was dealing with a toddler who did not want to sleep in his new big boy bed....) This was my first time sewing a zipper EVER!!! I figured how hard could it be, I could figure it out by myself.....

My how NOT to sew a zipper!!!!

1. Don't try to teach yourself how to sew a zipper 3 hours before you need the item finished.

2. Don't try and teach yourself how to sew a zipper when you are already slightly stressed.... (taking 3 hours to get a toddler to take a nap....)

3. READ the directions on your sewing machine, the instructions that came with your zipper and maybe a few tutorials online!!!!

Don't ignore these directions!!! They are ACTUALLY useful!

4. Maybe an Invisible Zipper is not the place to start? It's were I started and it was a PAIN in the a$$!!!! Having only sewed one zipper I don't know if a regular zipper is easier, but it would have to be!!!!

5. When sewing an invisible zipper and using your invisible zipper foot, UNZIP the zipper. If you put the zipped up zipper through the foot bad things will happen.... (broken needle, jammed machine, lots of extra thread and just a whole big mess) Worst part, I think I tried this like 5 times and could not figure out why it would not work!!! Then I had a DUH moment.... I unzipped the zipper and it worked a whole lot better!!!!

Unzip your zipper!!! Or you will have a mess!!

Opps, I broke a needle, because I didn't unzip the zipper!

6. Even though at this point it might look pretty, when you have one side of your zipper sewed in place, its probably a good idea to test the zipper and make sure it zips... or you will be back at step 3 like I was.

Looks good, but does it work? NOPE!

7. READ the directions or you will be using your seam ripper a lot!! This was the first time I ripped the seam out on what I thought was a completed side only to have to get out my iron. I failed to read the step on the zipper directions telling me to iron my zipper..... 

My seam ripper was my friend.... or enemy, either way it was used too much!

Started over again!

8. Re-pin and PRAY PRAY PRAY that this time it will work!!!! And again test the side to make sure it actually zips!!! When it does, do a happy dance!!!!!! Sewing a zipper is easy right???

Sewed over the zipper, this time the seam ripper fixed it!

9. NOPE! Side two does not cooperate, and then its time to trouble shoot again.... 

I finally sewed my zipper, and man was in a pain!!! I wasted so much thread, broke one needle, had the needle pop out several times, used my seam ripper way too many times.... but I did it!!!

My mess!

I am confidant the next time can't be as bad!!!! BUT if I had read the directions and not just tried to figure it out myself I think I might have saved myself a bit of stress, (plus the unrealistic timeline for how long it would take and already being stressed)

I would love to share an actual tutorial on how to sew a zipper, but trust me Google it and find an expert on the subject :) 

And my finished product ACTUALLY looks pretty good!!! I will save that post for another day!! And with all of my hard work I kind of don't want to give it away... or I could make myself a second one, for practice of course!

Fishy 3rd Birthday

When my friend asked me to help her with her son's 3rd Birthday party I jumped at the chance! I love party planning and was very excited with the opportunity. It was also a good challenge since I am not great about that little B word.... Budget!! She gave me a $100 budget and I was actually able to stay within the budget!!

The theme was blue and green fish! I am so happy how it turned out and I hope Collin and his mommy are just as happy with it! 

I started with a back drop of streamers. So easy and I really like the look!!! I then cut out a TON (seriously no clue how many I cut out) of circles in paper of white and blue. And sewed and sewed and sewed them together into four strands of garland and attached it to the streamers. I then used my Silhouette Cameo and cut out green fish spelling out "Happy Birthday Collin" I repeated the process for making garland to line the shelf. I have to say I am really happy with how this turned out and this was really just paper, streamers, ribbon and lots of time sewing!!

I bought these cute but boring blue buckets from the Target dollar isle. But a little vinyl and they look like cute custom party favors!

Inside each party favor bucket was a custom made wrapper for Gold Fish, a sucker with a vinyl sticker cut from the Cameo and a small container of bubbles (because what kid does not LOVE bubbles!!!)

The birthday boy's mommy made this fabulously cute cake!!! And it was surrounded by more green and blue candy!! (Do you realize how hard it is to find blue and green candy :) ) I used my Cameo and some ribbon to decorate the glass jars.

Don't you love the cupcakes the birthday boy's mommy also made!! I tried one, they tasted as good as they looked!!

I also made some candy fish. I sort of have this strange obsession with liking to make these chocolate candies.... even though I don't actually like the taste of this chocolate.... but I find them fun to make... and I love how cute they turned out!!!

More circles sewed together and hung from the ceiling.

I made the pendant banner from scrapbook paper and washi tape. So easy to make! We added some cute blue and white striped straws (with a little fish attached of course) to some simple kids cups from Target.

I also made water bottle labels, but I didn't take a close up picture of them! I seriously love these little cups with the fish straws!!

Happy Birthday Collin! I hope you enjoyed your fish party!!