Veggie Tales Magnet Friends

Next week I am very excited to show some before and after pictures of my new craft room, but for now I will just show one of the gifts I made for my 2yr old for Christmas.

My son loves Bob and Larry so when I saw this from Make It-Love it I knew Veggie Tales magnet friends would be an awesome homemade gift for my little guy and cost me very little.

I only had a few days before Christmas so even if I did find cut outs of Bob and Larry- i would not have time to get them or want to pay for shipping, so I printed out coloring pictures from the internet, colored more than I ever have in my life( I am not the coloring type), and then cut it out, used contact paper to cover, cut it out of that,cut magnet tape instead of magnet sheets because our Walmart did not have them. It turned out just as I had hoped:-) He loves them, and I decided to stick with my cheap small dollar store cookie sheet because I figured he can carry it around  if we go out, and at home he can play with them on our fridge- I am not a crazy fridge magnet/picture person so there is plenty of room. Hopefully this inspires someone to think outside the box when you see tutorials that you do not quite have the items for or alter to your liking!
 

Easy/ Low Budget Christmas Ideas

I am sure you could probably just do a google search and come up with a ton of great low budget ideas for gifts for Christmas, however whenever I try to do that I end up going from site to site and spending way too much time trying to put together something. So I thought i would add a few of what I have done this holiday season. Including a sewing flaw, that I again, never took a picture of the end result- I suppose it is because whenever I decide to do a blog post on a project, I decide about half way through, and only give myself 20 minutes before I need to walk out the door to wherever I am going. Trying to get the kids ready also can take away quite a bit of time-so long the days of grabbing your jacket and purse and walking out the door-those days are loonnng gone. I do not expect to see them again for years and years*sniff* I love my kids though, regardless of the incredible amount of dishes and laundry-no seriously, I have two kids and you would think I must have at least 4, we constantly have a diaper that leaks, and toddler that has an accident, haha " accident", or like today when the baby thought he would crawl over and stick his hand in his brothers full potty-gross right? I am still nauseous. Oh, don't go acting like it never happened to you! Anyone else? can I get a AMEN? haha, yeah no- you guys never had that happen to you, righhhttt ;-) you are all great housewives who empty that little potty right away, mmhmm. Alright enough of my spaghetti brain... have you read men are waffles,women are spaghetti? Awesome book-ahh, did it again :-).

I had a secret sister social to go to at church. We were a bit tight on money, esp after my husbands car swallowed another huge chunk of money. So I needed something nice to bring that cost-well, nothing. I knew at a salon I used to work at, my boss made her own foot scrub and I though- well I could do that. So I made a sugar scrub. I used baby oil, sugar, vitamin E ointment,vanilla, and Caribbean mist lotion (you know those people who bug you at the mall). I would however recommend you not use baby oil, unless you have something to cover the smell a little better- I wanted it to be vanilla scrub,but ended having about a teaspoon.That is why I used the lotion. Smelled a little like your grandmas perfume- but it was for a older lady so it was fine-but not quite what I had intended. I then put it in a mason jar, used a scrap piece of fabric and a blue satin ribbon, added a little note that said ingredients (just in case someone is allergic). I also did a regular chocolate cookie dough recipe one, but added white chocolate chips with the milk ones for a little more variety for your eyes. Her favorite colors are blue and yellow, so why not give her yellowish fabric and blue ribbon. I enjoy getting things in my favorite color, so I would assume others do to, so think to find out these kinds of things-really helps with finding or making gifts.

Sugar Scrub Recipes

Since I did not get a finished product picture,I thought Id show the presentation at least

My secret sister also happens to read a ton. So instead of buying her a bookmark, like I had intended- i made one out of scrap fabric, ribbon, and fusible interfacing.Again, no finished product picture-but I have a few pictures to demonstrate.

After interfacing put right sides together with ribbon in between.

My scrap fabric was cut too big, so I just sewed the seam allowance to the size I wanted.

Tip: Make sure your ribbons are nowhere near your side seams, in my rushing around, i ended up with one caught,and since I had no time, made it into a mini book mark- oops:-)!

You want to leave about a 3 inch opening, or leave the whole bottom open to pull it right side out, then iron the bottom with raw edges turned inside and stitch.(sorry no pictures)


make it- love it has so, so many projects you can do. Of course, if you do have little babies and you want something homemade,but you do not sew...my Etsy link is on the right hand side;-) I do custom orders.

Here is another one I have decided to do, a family movie night basket. You can find those little boxes of candy at the super market for a dollar a piece, or there are a few packs at the dollar store for 79cents. You can get everyone's favorite candy that way, open up a box of popcorn bags( I used some kettle corn, some extra butter), lay them around, If you got a few more bucks you can search through the Walmart 5 dollar movies for a decent family movie, or if you are doing a Pollyanna and you have a decent budget you can upgrade it with movie tickets or a more expensive movie. My aunt did something like this for our family one year-great idea. I gave pictures with mine, since it is for my Dad and stepmother.


I am part of a mom2mom group, which is very similar to MOPS (moms of preschoolers) and we were very blessed to have someone share easy gift ideas with us this past month,here are some links we were sent.
Gift Basket Ideas
Cleaning recipes (gift a basket of natural cleaning supplies)
Jar Recipes - soups, cocoa, cookies etc.

Baby Doll Swaddle Blanket From Fitted Crib Sheet

First off, check out my new items in my etsy shop here, here, and here. Great ideas for if you have a baby or new mom on your Christmas list!

A few weeks ago I went to a 3 yr old birthday party for a little girl. I wanted to make her something personal,but only had about 30 minutes and came across this fitted sheet her mom had given me and asked if I thought i could make anything out of it. I had nothing in mind at the time,but it was cute material, so I took it. I had a little Velcro for another project I had yet to start. I decided to make a swaddle blanket from a corner of the sheet for her baby dolls. I unfortunately forgot to take a picture with it around, must have gotten distracted when my toddler woke up. But I can still show and tell what I have and maybe you will make one for your little girl, or the one down the street, or maybe it will inspire you to create other things from old crib sheets. Please feel free to comment with any ideas or projects you have done! This blog has been acting up the last few entries and only allowing me to put all the pictures either at the top, or all together without writing in between- so bare with me as all the pictures are together with directions at the bottom. If you know how to fix this, do me a favor and let me in on the secret:-)!

Alright here we go...

And you find your corner, take a baby doll, or stuffed animal and set it inside that little corner pouch to see how high you need to cut. As you can see, I was in a rush and my fabric scissors are less than ideal for sure( another thing to add to my business wish list). But it does not have to be perfect we are going to fold it nice and pretty:-). Next you want to fold over that upper edge and iron. If you are an ideal sewer, you will take out your ruler and measure this to a 1/4 or 1/2 inch. But if you have about 30 minutes, like me.. you will use your amazing, wait for it.... God given eyeballs. Then to make it nice and pretty, you are going to do the same thing again so you have a finished edge, so just fold over that nice fold you did, pin and  iron and sew the seam. Make sure to make the corners nice so no raw edges are showing as shown in picture 10. Then wrap it around and decide where you want your velcro pieces. I really liked working with fusible velcro, just take off the tab,stick it on, and turn the fabric over(so that you are ironing on the fabric over top of the velcro) I believe mine said to do it for 90 seconds. You need to move the iron back and forth as well as have the iron on steam. Then thats it! Mine turned out a bit small, because I did not plan enough for seam allowance(since we rolled for a finished edge), so think about that. Let me know if you try it out!

A Few Creations

 I promised to show off a few items that I have made for other people. Here is a crinkle square, burp cloths, and jingle block I made for my friend Holly's baby shower.

This skirt, I still love. It is a strip work skirt that I made out of left over material from my own strip work, pleated skirt. It is about size 3T for my friend Carolyn's daughter.

These fabrics I chose for another similar strip work skirt to sell on Etsy. As of right now I will be waiting to see if anyone wants a certain size (not posted on Etsy yet). If no one contacts me, when I get around to it I will probably make another about size 2-3 T. If anyone is interested message me on Etsy, or Facebook, links are on the right hand side under favorite things. The pink and green matching ones have tiny flowers, and the solid pink and white have sparkles/glitter.



This next one was a custom order, it is a crinkle square with fleece on one side, flannel on the other and two squeaker toys.

Fabric Friday, Oh Yeah!

What,You say it is black Friday? No way, I had no idea. I do not like crowds, going out with babies for a long time, sitting in traffic- especially sitting in traffic with a baby. No, thank you. I will stay home.... 

Are you kidding me? There was NO way I was going to miss Jo Ann's huge sale on flannel, no way. Unless that is of course, I had no way to get there.

Driving home from thanksgiving dinner, I saw a deer on the right side of the road and decided to be very alert, staring in front of me all directions. If I was just careful enough, nothing would happen. About a minute later.... BAMMMMM. uh, yes a deer just ran INTO the side of my car-but I still did not see it (remember i was focusing on the road and sides-in front of me, and it was pitch black on the left side of the road). Maybe God had me see that other deer, so i would watch the road, so I would not swerve. Whether or not I know there is a reason I saw that deer and got that feeling like something was about to happen. God is Good. So we are down a car, and a couple hundred dollars-could be worse and thankfully I have a separate account for my business that had a little in it.

So, there I was without a car- when my very generous friend Laura decided to drive 40 minutes and take me to Jo Ann's! So we got out this morning and got some great deals, it was crazy-pretty much no traffic the entire time we were out, best black Friday ever! Now we did have to wait forever and a day to get our fabric cut out. There was a woman there with an entire cart full of already CUT fabric, yes that would mean she must have had at least 3-4 cart fulls of bolts before it was cut. Luckily Jo Ann's had plenty of fabric-they were stocked up! Nothing to worry about there, just the very long line. It was not so bad though, we walked around while we waited for them to go from number 80 to number 10( almost everyone's cart was as filled as ours). As we were getting our fabric cut,the next persons number was 78-ouch. Now seems like a good time to show off what I got, plenty of time to order for Christmas.

^ For baby jingle blocks and crinkle squares.

^ For baby jingle blocks as well.

Some of these I already had, most of them are new. This page is acting up and will not continue to let me put pictures below this, so I will be making a new post showing off a few things I have made recently.In the meantime, let me know what fabrics are your favorites!