Sewing Stuff

I just never get as much sewing done as I would like.  I have big dreams of fabulous sewing projects, but life just gets busy.  And my family always comes first!  I did get a few sewing projects done though & I always feel bad for the recipients of my sewing gifts because they are my guinea pigs as I practice & develop my sewing skills.  Ha ha ha!  Hopefully they like their gifts though!

I made this big tote bag for my sister-in-law for her birthday last year:

 She'd been asking for a big tote bag & this one was big!  And I love the fabric!

2013 was the year of the baby in my husband's family.  There were 4 babies born!  And it seemed to be the year of the boy as 3 of the 4 were boys!  It was fun to shop for boy fabric for a change.  I made baby quilts for the new babies & I really enjoyed making each one.  You'll see a chevron theme on most of them.  What can I say?  I {heart} chevron.  And I feel like it's a great basic pattern that goes with just about anything.  And for quilting purposes it was really easy.  I just bought the large chevron print fabric for the front of the quilt & then a patterned fabric for the back of the quilt.  Then after I layered them with the batting in between I quilted along the chevron pattern for the actual quilting.  It was easy & they turned out great!

This one was for our cousin's baby girl, Saylor:

 I just love yellow & gray together!  And after having 3 girls I really love other colors together for girls besides just pink.

This one was for our cousin's baby boy, Ethan:

 I love, love, love these bold colors together!  

And chevron & polka dots together = I die!

This last chevron quilt was for our nephew, Elliott:

I love this pop of orange with the aqua & gray!

My brother-in-law loves Star Wars & so when I saw this fabric on sale I had to get it!  I just made a simple flannel blanket:

And I love the light blue star flannel on the back.

I also made my sister-in-law one of those infant car seat canopy covers:

 I loved this pattern!  It's not a great picture of how it works as the car seat canopy, but I'm sure you've seen those out & about.

This last quilt was for my great-nephew, Hudson:

His nursery is a nautical theme & when I saw this fabric I just had to get it.  I love the bright colors!

Yay for all these babies so I could practice my quilting!  :)

Crafty Stuff

Hello blog world!  Wow.  It has been almost one year since I last posted here!  Yikes!  Time really does fly when you are having fun.  I don't have any excuses for not posting for so long other than life is busy!  Even though things have been crazy busy around here I still manage to get my craft on when I can.  I decided to do a few posts with some pics of craftiness from the past year (I have been trying to remember to take pics when I do make something).

Here are the teacher gifts I made for the girls teachers for their end of the year gift last year:  

 I had gone to Utah in May with some friends & we went to this awesome wood/craft store called The Wood Connection.  I picked these cute wood pencils up at that store.  Then I just painted them, added pink glitter to the eraser, tied some silver ribbon around them & put each teacher's name on the pencil in black vinyl.  They turned out great!

When we moved to our new house the big girls decided they wanted to have their bunk beds separate for a while.  I decided they needed something above their beds.  But I didn't want anything too heavy (hello, we have earthquakes here!) so I just painted a canvas in a pink that coordinated with their bedding, painted a wooden letter of their initials white & glued it on the painted canvas:

 The pictures are from my phone & they are horrible!  Ha ha ha!  But they look really cute in person.

Then I painted some Ikea wooden spice racks white & we hung them on the wall next to each girls bed so that they could have a little shelf to put their reading books on:

 I know you saw that idea on Pinterest too.  But it works out great!  They love their little shelves.  Oh & the cute pink reading lights are from Ikea too.

My Aidynn has always wanted long hair.  She talks about it all of the time.  So for her 4th birthday last July I made her a Rapunzel braid:

 Isn't she darling?

Here's a better view of the braid:

 This was so fast & easy to make & it was by far her favorite gift.  It has definitely gotten a lot of use!  To make it I just braided yellow yarn, tied it with some pretty lilac ribbon & then hot glued some fake flowers in different shades of purple all over it.

I made myself a necklace for our family photos:

 I just used wood beads in different sizes & painted them a pretty aqua color.  I strung them onto ribbon & that's it!  It was an easy & inexpensive way to get exactly what I wanted to go with our colors for our family photos.

Speaking of, here's our family photo from last July:

I also made Aidynn a yellow wooden bead bracelet to wear.

(Photo credit:  Shari Hanson of Shari Hanson Photography)

In September we had our annual back to school dinner the night before the new school year began.  Every year it seems I add just a little bit more to it which is fun.  I totally got the idea for the apple plates off of Pinterest.  They looked so cute on our table: 

The chalkboard we use every year on our first day photos:

We also got the easel out for the girls to color on:

And they love coloring on the table when we cover it with paper:

Also inspired by Pinterest, cupcakes decorated like apples:

The annual dinner?  Spaghetti, zucchini & garlic bread:

I made my niece some thank you cards for her nautical themed baby shower:

 Simple is always nice.

And a Christmas photo of these 3 beauties:

They keep me busy, but I love them so!

Well, that takes care of some of the random crafts from the past year.  Stay tuned for the sewing & baking adventures!

Rainbow Cake

My oldest daughter turned 7 last weekend.  Seven!  How did this happen?  How did she get to be seven years old already?  In the past few years I've started asking her what kind of cake she wants for each birthday.  I have fun attempting her requests.  Well lately she has been really into rainbows.  She is quite the artist & she draws rainbows all day.  This year she said she wanted a rainbow cake.  She also said she wanted it to have clouds, grass & a unicorn on it.  

Hmmmmm...  

Here's what I came up with & it turned out really cute:

I decided to just frost it in a light blue color to represent the sky.  Then I used the grass tip (ok, I can't remember what it's called exactly, but it's that frosting tip that has all of the little holes in it so it looks like grass when the frosting comes out) to make some bright green grass around the bottom of the cake. Then I just used my round tips to make the rainbow stripes & the clouds.

To give her the unicorn she wanted I just put a small My Little Pony unicorn on the top of the cake.  And 7 bright pink candles, of course:

Make a wish Kaylee-girl:

For the inside I did this:

If a rainbow cake is what she wanted, then that is definitely what she got!  If you are on Pinterest, then you have seen this idea for a rainbow layer cake I am sure.  I decided to try it out for this cake & it was super cute!  And easy!  Vanilla cake batter, divide into 6 equal parts, tint each part with a different rainbow color, bake, level, layer-done!

And it was so yummy too, we hardly had any left after her celebration:

Happy birthday to my beautiful girl!

(7!)

Random Craft

Did you notice the new header on my blog?  Yes, after having my little blog for 6 years I have decided to change its name.  So long to "One Crazy Stampin' Mama" & hello to "Random Craft."  Why the name change?  Well, I've been thinking about it for a couple of years now actually.  I no longer sell Stampin' Up! products, my crafting has become so much more than stamping & I hardly ever really stamp anymore so I decided to change it up.  I like the name "Random Craft" because that's what I feel I do.  I make random crafts.  I like to craft in general & so you will see a lot of random things on my blog.  Hopefully no one else is already using this title for a blog, I tried looking & it didn't seem like it.  Anyway, I'm trying it out.

So...on to my random crafts of late.

A few weeks ago I decided to make a cushion for the bench in our entryway:

We have had this bench FOREVER.  And it has taken lots of abuse from my children.  There are sticker remnants on the top, crayon marks, pencil marks, etc.  I wanted to make a cushion to cover up all of the markings & to add some color into our family room.  And I didn't want to sew a cushion cover.  So, thanks to some ideas on Pinterest, I made this really fast & easy cushion.  I bought the fabric at JoAnn's & then I bought some thick foam there too.  (Use your coupons for JoAnn's!)  Then I had my hubby get a piece of plywood for me one day when he was at Home Depot.  They cut it to the exact size we needed for the top of the bench.  I used the plywood as a guide to trim the foam to the same size just using a serrated knife.  Then I just laid the fabric out upside down, laid the foam on top of that, laid the plywood onto that & then started stapling the fabric down with my handy staple gun.  Of course, I went slowly, making sure the fabric was pulled tight & that the corners were folded nicely.  Took me maybe 10 minutes & it was on my bench!

I love it:

Now just as soon as little Quinn (14 month) stops eating shoes we can move our tan show bins back into those cubbies in the bench & it will be much more functional again.

We also spruced up the girls' bathroom a little bit:

Gosh.  Sorry my photos are so dark.  Anyway, thanks again Pinterest for these great ideas!  My hubby hung a wood strip along the entire wall of our bathroom where the old towel bar was.  Then we added 5 simple hooks.  Now we can hang 5 towels up instead of just 2.  It is so great!  Especially when we have visitors staying at our house, everyone has a place to hang their towel to dry.  And I love the shower curtain too!  It nicely covers up our outdated tub/shower combo until we can afford to re-do it.  Thank you Home Goods!  

I also printed out these bathroom printables that I found on Pinterest & stuck them in cheap white frames:

They look cute!  And I love the pops of color they bring into our very tan bathroom.  Just search "bathroom printables" on Pinterest & they pop right up.  I'm still trying to decide what color I want to paint that bathroom...

Also a few weeks ago I managed to find some time on a rainy day to make a few more coloring purses.  I made one for my daughter & then 2 others for her cousins.  They all turned out really cute:

These things are so handy & get a lot of use from my girls.

Here's the crayon side:

And then a simple ruffle on the other side:

I made these ones slightly larger than I usually do so that they can hold a full-size coloring book.  

I have to say it was so nice to have my sewing machine out again.  I just love sewing.  It is so fun creating things from just some simple supplies like fabric & thread.  And it is a great stress-reliever!  Well, as long as the kids are asleep!  

14 Days of Love

You've probably seen these ideas all over online too just like me, but this year I decided to do it for my husband.  The 14 days of love!  A little countdown to Valentine's Day.  I actually used the free printable labels from Six Sister's Stuff so this is a super easy project.  They have some pre-made labels with sayings already written on them that you can use, but I just printed out all of the plain ones so that I could customize them to things that my hubby likes.  It was pretty fun to go to the store & pick out some of his favorite treats & snacks.  It may be a little cheesy, but who cares!  He seems to be enjoying them so far too.

So here's the one I left out for him on the first day:

"You are one Hot Tamale"

Cheesy, but true!

Love him so much!

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!

Look what arrived on my doorstep last Friday...

 The new cookbook from the girls of Our Best Bites!  Probably my favorite cooking website of all time!  Honestly, they have such great recipes on their site.  I have tried a lot of their recipes & we've liked them all.  Plus the recipes are pretty easy & they explain everything for you which is helpful.  I pretty much go to there site whenever I'm not sure what to make for dinner or I am wanting to try something new.  I have their first cookbook too & it is definitely the most-used cookbook in my kitchen.  I scored a great pre-order deal with free shipping too through Barnes & Noble on their new cookbook & I was so excited when it showed up on Friday.  I like how this cookbook is divided into seasons with recipes for each one.  So fun!  There are so many yummy looking things in there too!  I really can't wait for the weather to cool down a little so I can try the Tortellini Sausage Soup:

And I think this Glazed Lemon Cake looks divine:

You may be wondering:  Why buy the cookbooks when they have so many recipes right online?  Well, because there are so many great recipes in the cookbooks that they don't post online!  If you are looking for some new cooking inspiration I definitely recommend you check out Our Best Bites or buy one of their cookbooks!