Pillow x 8 = Comfy!

I have been a pillow making machine lately! A friend of mine is redoing her son's bedroom...going from a kids room to one that is more pleasing to a teenager.

His request...

an O.U. bedroom.

So for this one I had to briefly put aside my love for all things Texas and embrace my growing love for Oklahoma (the state & people...not so much the football team...don't panic Dad...always and forever a Longhorns fan!)

Well...I got a bit carried away...she only asked for four or five pillows...and I made...


8...

EIGHT....

Ocho!!!!

After making the five she wanted, I still had enough fabric and stuffing left for a couple more...and I just couldn't bear to let it go to waste!

So here they are...the EIGHT pillows...


Did I mention that they are made out of fleece...yup...that is going to be one comfy bed!!!

Baby Food Jars & Formula Cans

As you all know I love re-purposing! Since Jack has started eating baby food, I now have a ton of baby food jars every where. It really bothered me to throw them away at first, so I finally decided to start washing them out and saving them until I could find a new purpose for them.

So now that my shelf is over flowing with baby food jars, (Jack is a hungry little hippo after all!) I finally got the motivation to figure out what to do with them!

I grabbed a few jars and my handy dandy glue gun and got to work....and the picture to the left is what I ended up with...tea light candle stick holders!

I simply took off the lids and hot glued the jars end to end. You could definitely see the hot glue -it was not so pretty- so I hot glued some green ribbon on to hide the ugliness put a tea light in the top...and called it good :-)
I was even thinking if you didn't like the glass look of it (which I love right now) you could always spray paint them...not sure how it would work out...I have never tried to spray paint glass before...just a thought.

I have a bunch of lids left over from the jars I used for the candle sticks...so I am going to make them into a memory matching game for when Jack gets a little older. (more on this idea at a later date)

Now most of my crafting supplies have been stored in ziploc baggies...my bobbins, buttons, needles, etc. Not the cutest way to store and organize my supplies but it worked for a time.

I finally decided that the baggie thing was becoming a little annoying and that I would really like to be able to look at my craft shelf and just see what I needed, instead of having to sift through baggies to find the right one.

So here was my solution to that little problem...


I am now using the baby food jars to store most of my craft/sewing supplies. I also decided to save a couple of the formula cans to use as pencil and scissor holders. For the formula cans I simply took the label off and modge podged whatever paper I liked best to the outside to make it prettier :-)

This project has really got me thinking...
What else can I do with baby food jars???

So I got online and found quite a few awesome ideas...so here are some of
the creative things you can do to re-purpose your baby food jars...

-A few places I found the ideas below...here.... and here

• Great for storing buttons, nails, screws or beads.
• Fill halfway with water with a few drops of food colouring, fill the rest of the way with baby oil and add a few sparkles if you want. This amazes kids!
• Punch holes in the top. Instant house for a bug or other critter! Kids can look at them and learn, without hurting their new friends.
• Punch holes in the top and fill with cornstarch or powder for baby’s bum.
• Good for holding finger paints and glues!
• Paint the lid or cross stitch a cover with the words “first tooth” or “first haircut” on it. Makes a great keep sake.
• Paint for the holidays! You can make a Santa, Jack-o’-lantern or Easter basket!
• Use for starting seedlings indoors.
• Make into a musical instrument. Just put some coins, rice or beans in them. Glue the lid on!
• Make into a pin cushion...cute idea found here
• Use them to store home made play dough
• Here is where you can find some great ideas to re-purpose formula cans...such as jack-o-lanterns, play house, and holiday storage.
  

It seems like you can do just about anything with these jars! So get to thinking and creating and never throw away another baby food jar again!!!

"Mini" Idea Board

So today's craft was one out necessity...okay more like want ;-)

I am constantly looking for new ideas on the computer. When I find an idea I love I usually go to the top of the page and bookmark it. This has resulted in a TON of pages being bookmarked.

The other day my hubby was looking through the bookmarks trying to find a page he had found earlier. Needless to say he had a difficult time finding it due to the fact that there were too many to look through. He then "kindly" asked me to stop bookmarking SO many pages. So I went through and wrote down the concept of a few in a note book and deleted a bunch of book marks.

So I now have my "idea notebook" but I also wanted something pretty that I could tack ideas and sources I have found to (hopefully this will help me get my bookmarks down to just a few).

I found a post for an "Idea Board" a while back...and of course bookmarked it. While purging my bookmarks the original source for the idea board was lost :-( so sadly I don't have the original source that this craft came from today.

So instead I am going to give you a little tutorial on how I made my "mini idea board"

Thankfully I had most of my supplies on hand...but here is what you will need:

Round cork board -sold in a pack of 6- can be found at Hobby Lobby
Fabric
Pen
Ribbon
Modge Podge
Paint Brush
Hot Glue Gun & additional glue sticks
Push Pins

1). Here is what the round cork boards look like that you will want to get...



2). Next you will want to lay your cork board on your fabric and trace...leaving about 1 1/2" around the edges (that way you have enough to wrap around to the back)

I cut out three different patterns to make it a little brighter...but you could use the same fabric on all six for a more unified look.


3). Next put a nice thick coat of Modge Podge on the cork boar.


4). Place your fabric wrong side down on the cork board and put another coat of modge podge on top of the fabric.


5). Next get out your handy dandy hot glue gun...
(I had originally used Modge Podge for this part but it was way too messy and didn't stick that well so I switched to hot glue- much easier)

Put a thin strip of hot glue around the edges, fold your fabric over onto the hot glue.


6). Once all of the backs are secure keep the cork boards laying face down.
Lay them all out like so....


put a nice thick layer of hot glue where each of the boards come together


let dry completely.

7). Flip the board over and put an additional thick layer of hot glue on the front where the boards meet.

Now it may look a little messy right now...but we will fix that.

8). Once the hot glue has dried completely, grab your ribbon. I used hot pink for mine (there are all boys in this house there is not enough pink in my life!).

Around each of the edges where you have a big ugly glob of hot glue...cut out a strip of ribbon, place it over the glob and secure it on the back with some more wonderful hot glue (sorry no pic for this step) Hopefully you are a skilled hot glue expert and can avoid burning yourself a dozen times...like I did :-(

Now those ugly globs should be hidden :-)

9). Next I decided that the board still looked pretty blah...so I added some more ribbon to my two cork boards that were plain.

I cut out four pieces of ribbon and measured them so they would be long enough to fit around the board and reach to the back.

I laid them on the board one by one in a "basket weave" kind of pattern and hot glued them to the back to secure them.

10). Next I chose some pretty lavender ribbon (since I ran out of hot pink) , and secured it to the top with hot glue so I would have something to hang the board with.

11). Lastly hang it up, add a few push pins and start filling it with your brilliant ideas!!!!


The board measures about 7" wide x 12" long...definitely a mini board....it is great though for people like me who only have a small space beside their computer, or sewing desk!!!

Things I would do differently next time:

-the cork board is pretty thin...so if I was going to do this project over again I probably would have bought two packages and hot glued them together so it would double the thickness.

-use just hot glue instead of Modge Podge...the Modge Podge seemed to change the color of the fabric. (although I am not sure if the hot glue would look clumpy?)

Sneak Peek

So today I am going to give you a quick sneak peek at my latest project: A Quiet Book for Jack.

What is a quiet book you ask?
It is an interactive book that helps a child to learn, discover, and play :-)

I first stumbled upon the idea of a quiet book when I found this blog. The momma on this site even provides you with some templates in order to make them. Since we do not have a printer right now I just free handed the shapes.

Since finding this idea for a quiet book I have found many other versions that I am definitely going to make in the future! Some of these books have zippers, buttons, and latches for kids to learn and practice on. One page even had the shape of a tennis shoe with laces tied for a child to practice tying shoes with.

What is my quiet book made of:
Each page of the book is made of white cotton fabric; while the accents and designs are made of felt.

These are not all of the pages that are going into my quiet book, just a couple of my favorites...

The Vegetable Garden
This is the garden page. I actually got my inspiration for this page from the same blog but a different project. This design is actually one that is on the side of a felt playhouse that she made for her son (this project is definitely on my list of HAVE TO MAKE!!)

On this page Jack can pick the carrots out of the dirt bed, pick the corn from the stalks, and pick the lettuce. (the lettuce leaf is attached with velcro) I am thinking about adding an earth worm to the page somewhere...after all what little boy doesn't like worms :-)

The Barn

On this page Jack can open the doors to find a cow, chicken, and pig finger puppet. He can also match the animal to the sound it makes on the page. I am also thinking about adding a duck to his little farm friends!

I still have a few finishing touches to put on a couple more pages and to assemble the book (the pages also look like they desperately need to be ironed!) I will post the finished product when it is all assembled. I can't wait to let my little man get his hands on this book!

Best Date Night EVER

So last night my hubby and I got a special treat...a date night :-) What did our date consist of...coffee and a trip to Hancock's where I could shop till my hearts content. And the icing on top of the cake...they were having an amazing sale!!! I have the most wonderful hubby ever! The pic to the right are some of the goodies I got!

More Re-purposing Fun!

Once again I have been inspired by the art of re-purposing! There are so many great ideas and endless options for those who want to re-purpose.

Jack Jack is sporting a new shirt thanks to some great inspiration I got from this momma. It has been Celebrate the Boy month over there and I have been LOVING it! It is so hard to find really cute stuff to make for my little man and she has tons of ideas. So using her oh so easy tutorial on the envelope shirt I whipped up three new, adorable shirts for my Jack Jack.

As I have said before my hubby has put on a couple extra pounds (it is a good thing! he NEEDS the extra padding!). Therefore, I have tons of extra t-shirts, jeans, and pants to breathe new life into. I grabbed three t-shirts from that stash- a black and gray baseball style shirt, a plain red one, and a plain green one.

Next I found an old onesie that still fit Jack but had an ugly painted owl on the front of it (one of those trial and error kind of projects!) so he wasn't going to wear it ever again. I cut it up and used it as my pattern for the shirts. I had to adjust my pattern several times so each of the three shirts fits a little different, but overall each fits pretty well. I am still working on getting the pattern just right- it needs just a couple more tweaks and it will be perfect :-)

I loved using Chad's old t-shirts for this project! Mainly because I lined the bottom of my pattern up with the bottom of the t-shirt and cut the sleeves out of the existing sleeves. By doing this I did not have to hem anything! Wonderful!

Since the t-shirts we're very plain I decided to applique some cute little things to the front, a tractor, a fire truck, and an airplane. I found the patterns for the designs at this website...and guess what...they are free! (I love that word!) You can print the stencils off...or like me you can just cut out the shapes free hand. Next I used some heat-n-bond to attach them to the t-shirt and sewed around the edges to make sure they didn't come off in the wash.

I do have to say I was pretty intimidated by this project! It took me a lot to work up the courage to try it...but surprisingly it was...easy. Now easy doesn't mean that I didn't have to re-attach the sleeves about a dozen times (to make matters worse I lost my seam ripper right before this project!) and re-do the pattern a couple more times just to get the fit right, or that it came out perfect; what easy does mean is that I finished it!!! Completion not perfection my friends, that is the key to a sane sewing experience :-)

Jack's New Outfit

So I have seen a ton of posts lately on re-purposing old clothes and objects into something new. I LOVE the idea! Well this is one of my first (and favorite) attempts at re-purposing.


Since I got pregnant with Jack my hubby has also been gaining weight :-) He has gone up at least one if not two sizes in just about everything. So....I now have a ton of t-shirts, jeans, dress pants, etc to re-fashion into something for my littlest man!


So as I was digging through hubby's clothes I found a pair of dress pants...I have been wanting to make Jack a nice outfit for church and he has been growing so fast that I didn't want to buy a new outfit when he probably will only get to wear it one or two times! (I'm sure most mom's out there can relate to this problem!)

I grabbed up the pants and went to my kitchen table(i.e. my "craft room"...wish I actually had one!) Then I found a pair of pants that currently fit my growing little man and a vest I found at the thrift store. Next I made patterns. There are tons of post out there on how to make patterns for pants...if you Google it I promise you will find it :-) (not really sure how to post the links on here yet, it is on my list to figure out!). The pants were the easiest part of this outfit I just lined up the pattern with the bottom of my hubby's pants so I didn't even have to hem the bottom! The waist band is just an elastic waist band -much easier to put on baby that way! I also cut the belt loops off my hubby's pants and attached them to Jack's.


Since I cut the pants out of the bottom of hubby's pants I had the whole top part left over...so I used that part to make the vest. These particular dress pants were lined, so I used that lining to line the vest. The vest is made up of three parts: the back, front left side, and the front right side. I think next time I need to make the vest pattern a little bigger since I sewed the outside and lining right sides together, then turned it right side out, then sewed the seams together (it fits pretty snugly right now!) Definitely need to make those adjustments...but altogether not too bad for a first try!


I am planning on making another outfit for Jack for Easter out of a pair of gray stripped dress pants...maybe I will try and do a step by step "tutorial" to post on here when I tackle that one. Now all I need to do is figure out how to make that bow tie he is wearing! (which is actually his daddy's...that would be the reason it is so big on him...but it was just to cute to resist!)