Happy New Year!

I can still say, "Happy New Year" right?  There are still 3 hours left of January!  Well, have you missed me over these past 4 (four!) months?  A LOT has been going on around here.  The biggest thing is that we bought a house & moved at the beginning of November.  It was, of course, crazy moving with 3 kids, but I think we are feeling pretty settled in now.  We also really enjoyed spending the holidays with our family & friends.  Every year the holidays just seem to come & go even faster.  And then we began 2013 with a round of a nasty stomach bug followed 2 weeks later by all of us passing around a yucky head cold.  Ugh!  But most of us are feeling better now & hopefully we can leave the illness behind in January & enjoy a much healthier February!  Anyway, I was scrolling around my photo library trying to see if I've done anything crafty over the last few months that I could share with you.  I did find a few things.

First, look how big my babies are getting:

Whew!  They are keeping me busy, busy lately!  But I love them so much!

So earlier in 2012 I had decided that I wanted to make my girls poodle skirts for Halloween.  In August I bought the felt & poodles & I even made Kaylee's skirt.  Then we found this house, put an offer on it, opened escrow, started packing, etc.  But since I had already started making the skirts I wanted to finish them in time for Halloween.  Luckily these skirts are so easy to make!  Honestly, a circle skirt is probably the easiest & best skirt to start with if you are a beginner to sewing.  I loved how the skirts turned out!  And my girls loved twirling around in them!

Here's Kaylee:

And Aidynn:

And Quinn:

Even though we had just moved, we hosted Christmas dinner at our house this year.  I had gotten the free download for my Silhouette machine for the holiday photo props & thought it would be really fun to have out on Christmas.  They were super easy to put together (Thank you Silhouette!) & they turned out very cute!  Everyone had a blast using the photo props & taking some pictures.

Mommy kissing Santa Claus:

My oldest girlies:

I also made some sugar cookie place cards for Christmas dinner.  I love making sugar cookies.  Growing up we made them quite often & I love making them with my girls now too.  I kept it simple for the place cards & just used a scallop circle cookie cutter & then wrote everyone's names on them.  Then we put them in a little treat bag, tied them up with some twine & set them on every plate.  They turned out pretty cute:

I cannot believe that our youngest baby just turned 1!  This past year just went by way too fast!  I made her a teeny tiny cake for her first birthday party.  It turned out pretty cute for my first time hand piping on a cake.  Luckily it was a tiny cake!  I thought I had a picture of it on my phone, but I guess I don't & I didn't feel like uploading the gazillion photos from my camera right now.  But you can sort of see it there.  

This girl did not waste any time smashing up her little cake:

 I also made a big cake for everyone else to eat & I tried that scallop technique I've seen a dozen times on Pinterest.  I love how it turned out!  I love that it looks great & it was super fast & easy to frost like this.  

Pretty & pink of course:

I also made a couple of tooth fairy pillows for my hubby's partner at work.  They have a little boy & a little girl so they wanted 2 different ones.  Having 3 girls over here I actually had a hard time picking some fabric out of my stash that was boy-ish & a decent print for this small pillow.  But I really love how it turned out.  I definitely dig the teal & green together.

Here's the boy pillow:

And the girl version:

Well, hopefully we can stay healthy over here & I can actually do a little crafting soon!  

Fingers crossed!

Updated Recipe Box

I really wish I had thought to take a "before" picture of this!  I stumbled across this old metal recipe box a couple of weeks ago & it was a dingy brown color.  But I thought it was pretty cool & very simple & I knew I could vamp it up a little.  So I just grabbed a pretty blue colored spray paint at Home Depot & gave this recipe box a few coats.  Then I used my Silhouette machine to cut out the label with some black vinyl & the word "recipes" with some white vinyl.  Then I stuck them on!  Easy & it gave this old metal recipe box a whole new look.  And it's another small way to add a little more of this pretty aqua color into my kitchen!  I {heart} spray paint!

Easter Silhouette Canvases

Last week my girls & I decided that we wanted to put away the Valentines decorations & get out some Spring ones. Well, we realized don't have any decorations for St. Patrick's Day. Maybe I can come up with some next year. And we noticed don't have much for just Spring in general. We don't even really have many decorations for Easter. Yikes! So I decided to make a quick craft for our mantle for Easter. Since we have a newborn & a crazy schedule around here I needed something fast & easy.

Here's what I came up with:

Easter Silhouette Canvases

These were so, so easy! I just bought some 5x7 sized blank canvases & some Spring-colored acrylic paints at JoAnn's. I painted the canvases, I used about 3 coats on each one so they're nice & bright. Then I used my Silhouette machine to cut out the four different Easter silhouettes with some white adhesive vinyl. Then after the paint on my canvases was dry I stuck the vinyl silhouettes on them. And then I set them out on my mantle. They stand up really well by themselves which is perfect.

I love how bright & cheery these make our mantle! And now we have a little Easter decor!

I'm still here...& I'm still pregnant!

Yes, friends that's right. I am still with child. Remember how we were being induced last Wednesday? Well, really it's a long story, but to make it short for the blog, we went for it, but my body & the baby just weren't responding. I only dilated to 3cm & then nothing else all day. It got to the point where if we kept pushing the pitocin I most likely would have ended up having a c-section. So we decided to stop for the day & to wait & see if my body will start things naturally. Well my due date came & passed on Friday, which I have to say is probably not what any pregnant woman ever wants to happen. {Especially since this is baby #3 & the other 2 came early!} But hopefully this little girl will come soon...please!!!

So I decided to get my Silhouette out & my heat transfer vinyl & make some shirts for my 3 girls. The older girls' shirts are old ones that I grabbed to use, so hopefully they still fit them! And then I thought I had a plain white long-sleeved onesie for the baby, but I couldn't find one. And I love that this project took less than an hour to finish!

I think they turned out pretty cute too:

I can't wait to see these sweet sisters all dressed in their matching shirts!

Daisy Tote Bags

My daughter is in a Daisy Troop this year. It has been so much fun so far. For their meeting this month I was in charge of getting some tote bags for the girls to keep their Daisy books in or anything else they might need to bring to meetings. I had to order these ready-to-decorate canvas totes online since I couldn't find enough in my local stores (I needed 17!). Then I used my Silhouette to cut out each girl's name in the blue & a cute little daisy from the yellow vinyl. I had a bit of a hard time at first getting the heat transfer vinyl to adhere well to the canvas totes. But I used a few tricks that seemed to help: I put a large, thick book inside of the bag before I started so it would be nice & firm to iron on, I heated the canvas bag itself first for a few seconds with the iron, I also used a very thin cloth to lay over the vinyl when ironing it on & then held my iron down firmly for about a minute. Hopefully all of the decals stay on the totes!

I also added some bling to the center of the daisy for a little fun:

They turned out pretty cute, I hope the girls like them!

Handmade Christmas 2011: Alphabet Bean Bags

Do you remember my Handmade Christmas 2010 projects from last year? Oh it was so much fun! I love making people gifts & being able to really customize things for them. I am not going to be making as many handmade gifts this year as I did last year, but I thought it would still be fun to post them for you all to see. Maybe inspire you to make some handmade holiday gifts of your own? So here's hoping that I have the time & energy to get all of the projects made that I have planned!

Anyway, here is the very first handmade Christmas gift for 2011-alphabet bean bags.

I made these as a gift for my 2-year-old this year. One of her favorite things to do during her gymnastics class was to play with the bean bags. And since she follows right along with her big sister & is already starting to learn a few letters, I thought I would make them alphabet bean bags. Well, really she just knows A for her name, but soon enough she'll be ready to learn the others too.

Do you want to make some for yourself? Here's what I did:

They were a little time consuming to make, but very easy. I used my 5-1/2" x 5-1/2" square acrylic ruler to cut 52 squares from the fabric. I so love this fabric, by the way. It's from the Michael Miller Ta Dot collection. So bright & fun! I had first lined the fabric with some fusible interfacing just so that they'd be a little stronger since I know they will get tossed around a lot. Then I used my Silhouette machine to cut out the letters from white heat transfer vinyl. I liked this large chunky font too. I ironed the letters onto half of the squares of fabric. Then I sewed two squares of the same color together, one letter square & one plain square, with the right sides together, leaving a 2 inch opening. Then I clipped the corners & turned each square inside out. I ironed them nice & flat. Then I filled each one with pinto beans. Tons of beans! For this size bean bag I measured out 3/4 cup of beans for each one. (I needed 8 16 oz bags of pinto beans, which I got for $0.38 each at Target.) Then I top stitched around the entire bag, just shifting the beans around inside as I sewed around the entire square, closing up the opening as I did this. And that's it!

They turned out super cute! Much better than I had hoped for & they feel pretty sturdy too. I know they will provide a lot of fun for my girls & will be educational too!

Baby Monthly Onesies

I first saw this idea on BabySteals.com a while back. They had these cute iron-on vinyl circles with month ages on it that you could simply adhere to a onesie & then take a photo of your little one every month to document their growth over that first year. What a great idea! Since I've seen them there, I've come across many other crafters in blogland & on Pinterest creating their own baby monthly onesies. I knew that I wanted to do this for Baby #3 as well. My plan is to take a photo every month of this baby girl on the quilt that I'm making for her so I decided to use some of the leftover fabrics from the quilt to make the circles for the onesies with so that it all coordinates.

Thanks to my wonderful Silhouette machine this project was super easy! I just drew a circle the size I wanted in the Silhouette program & then cut out 12 of them with the 12 different pieces of fabric. Before I cut the fabric I had ironed some sewable Heat n Bond onto the back so that I could then easily iron the circles right onto the onesies. There are great directions online for cutting fabric with your Silhouette if you need more details. After the circles were ironed on then I sewed each one down with a tight zig zag stitch on my sewing machine. Then I used my Silhouette once again to cut out the month ages in some white heat transfer vinyl & just ironed those onto the center of each circle. Done!

So the hardest part of the whole project for me was picking out which size onesies to use for each month. My babies tend to be on the smaller size, so their age doesn't usually match up with the clothing size. Especially with these Carter's onesies, they always seem to run a little big to me. So I just guessed the best I could & hopefully they will all fit this little girl on the right month.

Isn't it amazing how much babies grow over their first year? Here's the size difference between 1 month & 12 months (which are actually a newborn size onesie & a 9 month size onesie since my babies rarely even hit the 12 month size onesies):

And a close-up of one of the monthly circles:

I have about a million things to do & I have quite a few sewing projects I want to make for Christmas presents, but all I seem to want to work on are the baby projects! I am so glad I got these all done & ready for baby. I can't wait to see her wear one each month! This would make such a cute baby shower gift too!

Baby Boy Tie Onesies

I see people making these super cute onesies with little ties on them all over the place & I just love them! I have been waiting for someone to have a baby boy so I could try them out! Luckily my good friend from church just had a baby boy so I finally got my chance. I dug through my scraps for some boy-ish looking fabric. Sadly, I didn't have many options as most of my scraps are pink & girly! Note-look for some boy fabrics in the remnant bin to have on hand!

Well, these were just so easy to make. I used my Silhouette to create a tie shape in the size that I wanted. Then I used the Silhouette Sewable Fabric Interfacing & cut the tie shape out with my machine. It's so great because it cuts the shape out of the fabric & the interfacing all at once! Then I ironed the little ties onto the onesies & then finished them up by sewing around the entire tie. These are so simple, but adorable. They would be so cute with some little pants for baby boy to wear to church! I just love onesies for babies! They just seem so cozy!

Here's a close-up of one of the ties:

Yay for babies!

Easter T-shirts

I meant to post these last week, but it didn't happen. But I still wanted to show them even though Easter is now over.

I used my Silhouette to make them & it was so fast & easy!

I used the white flocked heat transfer vinyl, cut out the bunny shape with the Silhouette & then ironed them onto the shirts. After that I attached a small yellow gingham bow.

I love how they turned out!

I only wish I had a good photo of my girls wearing their shirts, they looked adorable!

Princess/Arts & Crafts Birthday Party

I know, where have I been? Well, I had been planning & preparing for a fabulous princess/arts & crafts party! My first-born turned 5 yesterday & we celebrated with a birthday party for her last Saturday. This was the first year that she really wanted to have a party with some of her friends. And what better way to celebrate than to combine two of her favorite things-princesses & arts & crafts! What I loved about this party was that it was really easy to put together & a lot of the stuff we already had at home.

{Beware-this post is a long one!}

To start I made the invitations through Shutterfly. I had an awesome coupon code for 10 FREE cards & I needed 9 invitations so it worked out perfectly!

And they even had this darling princess crown design:

(Don't mind the smudges, I just blurred out our address & phone number!)

We were hoping for nice weather because we wanted to do the party in the backyard & it couldn't have been a more beautiful day-warm, but not too hot!

Here is how we set it up:

We used some paper from our Ikea easel & painted a birthday banner:

I just covered the ugly folding tables with some cheap plastic {pink!} tablecloths. I only wish I had something I could have covered the ugly folding chairs with, but oh well! I had bought a large generic princess coloring book (11" x 14") months ago & thought this was the perfect time to use some of those coloring pages. We put one at each seat to serve as a placemat, plus the girls could color on it while we were waiting for all of our guests to arrive. We did put a little piece of masking tape on the back of each corner to hold them in place on the tablecloth. Sometimes we get a little breeze in the afternoons. We also put some crayons in paper cups for them to use on their placemats:

A close-up of one of the spots:

We got some clothesline rope & used our staple gun to attach it to different areas of the fence & put a bunch of clothespins on it so that the girls could hang their finished paintings up to dry:

It also made for some really cute decorations when they started hanging them up there:

{Painting was, by far, the favorite activity for all of the girls & I love seeing their creativity in each painting!}

I also made each party guest an apron. This was the first craft we did. The girls colored on the apron using fabric markers (which I bought using my coupons for JoAnn's which saved $$). The fabric markers were great because they were easy for the girls to use & they dried really fast. We hung them up on some clothesline too until we were ready to use them:

I bought a pack of these canvas aprons at my local teacher supply store which was much cheaper than buying them individually. Then I used my {awesome} Silhouette machine to cut out the crowns & the names in some heat transfer vinyl which I then ironed onto the aprons. So easy & they looked really cute:

The next craft the girls did was to decorate a princess hat. I used a princess hat we already had in our dress-up bin as an example & made the princess hats out of felt, interfacing, ric rac, tulle & some elastic for the strap:

Then the girls used foam shapes & rhinestones to decorate them how they wanted. The foam shapes were adhesive & stuck really well, but we did have to use a little glue to attach the rhinestones. Luckily we had plenty of adult supervisors to help with that & it wasn't as messy as I had feared!

The next craft they did was to make some beaded necklaces. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of them doing that!

Here is the birthday girl in her decorated princess hat & apron:

{She just had so much fun!}

We also set up our easel with some sheets of paper & paint so that the girls could paint pictures whenever they wanted:

Like I said, that was probably their favorite activity! And when the paintings were dry, we rolled them up & put them in their goody baskets for them to take home.

Here are the goody baskets:

I found these cute baskets at Target in the $1 bin a while back & I knew they would be perfect to act as little artist bins for the girls to take all of their goodies home in. I was going to use my Silhouette to cut some princess crowns out of chalkboard vinyl (which is really reasonably priced through Expressions Vinyl), but then I found these already made at Michaels for super cheap! I just punched holes in them, tied them onto the baskets with some white yarn & then wrote each girl's name on it with my chalkboard markers:

My first thought for some party decorations was to do some kind of cute paper lanterns, but they are a little pricy! Much more than I had thought they would be! So I have been seeing these tissue paper pom-poms all over the internet lately & they seemed easy enough:

My mom & I made them & they really didn't take much time at all! Plus with the colored tissue paper they looked so great! We used white yarn to hang them everywhere!

We hung on the lights outside, off of the shade cover, off of the ceiling fan in the kitchen over the dessert table, on the umbrella outside:

On the big tree:

They looked so nice!

My daughter wanted a pinata as well, so we found a princess crown pinata at Target that we hung from the tree:

We also had a little "guess how many jellybeans in the jar" game. The chalkboard crown & the small plastic paint jar also came from Michaels:

I just stamped a crown, put some bling on it & punched it out with my circle punch to put on the top of the lid of the jar. I also stamped a crown on the notecards for each girl to use to write down how many jellybeans they thought were in the jar.

Here's a close-up:

{There were 712 jellybeans in that jar! Yep, my hubby counted every single one!}

I'm really bummed that I forgot to get a photo of the whole dessert table all together, but at least I got some photos of the desserts. I made an artist's palette cake:

Some princess crown sugar cookies:

And some princess crown {pink} chocolate lollipops:

I also used my Silhouette to make a little subway art for the dessert table. I wrote words that describe my daughter, nicknames, things she loves, etc. & cut it out in some bright pink vinyl. I already had the flat canvas so I stuck it on that. Then I covered it with a couple of layers of Mod Podge. The canvas was bigger than I had thought it was so I added a pink bow at the top to fill up some of the extra white space.

I really like how it turned out:

And now that the party is over, we can put it up in my daughter's room!

Of course, I had to make a little birthday shirt for the birthday girl too:

I love those $5 t-shirts from Target (sometimes they go on sale too) & then I used my Silhouette once again to cut out the crown & the little heart from some heat transfer vinyl & just ironed them onto the shirt. Sorry for the glare from my flash, but the silver heat transfer looks awesome in person!

The birthday girl all dolled up for her party:

{Oh how we love her!}

And she loved her pretty pettiskirt that I bought her from Fairy Flowers Boutique:

Their stuff is very reasonably priced, super cute & ships really fast!

Whew! Typing up this post may have made me as tired as I was after the actual party! But it was all worth it!