NICU hats 2011

Here they are!

I almost punted the tradition this year because of the move, but decided about a week ago that I didn't want to, and kicked it into high gear to finish. For those of you who don't know, I crochet 12 preemie hats for NICU every year in honor of the 12 days my kids spent in NICU (10 for Hazel, 2 for Jono). In the past, Hazel and I have taken the hats to her NICU at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, on the anniversary of her discharge and coming home (June 22). This year we are late because of the move, and need to find a new NICU! I assume NOLA has one, so I just need to look it up.

This year's patterns included some newsboy caps,

some football beanies,

some butterfly beanies (my current favorite hat to whip for girls--so easy and adorable!)

and some bear beanies, because every baby looks cute with bear ears. ;)

Thanks for looking!

ABC bean bags

I participated in a swap for 5" "I-spy" fabric squares right before we moved. Yesterday, I got around to doing something with those squares. Bean bags!

Each bean bag has a picture on it from a different letter of the alphabet. The majority of them have a different picture from the same letter on the back. Like, the Ants have Airplanes on the reverse, and Karate has Kangaroos. I just chose my favorite side for the picture. Easy peasy project--the squares were already cut, so I just serged three sides, filled with lentils and then serged them closed. The kids have been having fun with them. They like to toss them around, of course, but they also like discovering the different pictures, and (sometimes) telling me what letter they go with.

arts & crafts storage

I had been wanting to give my kids access to a greater variety of art supplies. I had been keeping everything but crayons in a "no kids allowed" cabinet, requiring them to ask permission. I thought they were mature enough to handle access to more, though, so we're trying this. I put a small cafe curtain rod and hung some tin pails from the Target $1 Spot.

They hold watercolors, markers, scissors, glue sticks, and colored pencils. I want to get something smaller for crayons than the yellow tote since it's only half full. We need as much table space as week can get with three little occupants.

Hopefully by the time Halloween is over and my little tin pails from Target become out of season, I can convince someone who lives near an Ikea to pick me up some of these.

weekend crafting

I did some decorating work in the master over the long weekend and Tropical Storm Lee-enforced indoor hours. I finally sewed the pillowcases for my bed with the fabric I bought forever ago. And I did my first pinterest inspired project--Mr & Mrs letters for above the bed. I started with the big gold letters from Hobby Lobby and spray painted them. Turns out the cream is a little too similar to my wall color, which is apparently not as dark as I thought it was when I chose paint colors. Good enough, though. I'm not repainting them.

hair accessories

This was so simple that it hardly counts as a project, but it solves a problem in my house, so I thought I'd share. Hazel has tons of hair hairbands, clippies, bows, headbands, etc. They had been living in a drawer in the kids' bathroom, but it was really really full and difficult to dig through to find what you were looking for. I wanted to keep her hair stuff in her bedroom. She used to have one of those bow holders with the ribbons to clip the bows to, but it didn't work well with her hair accessory collection, since she has more rubber bands and headbands than she does bows with clips. This was my solution:

I took an empty container (that used to hold dishwasher detergent tabs) and mod podged some scrapbook paper to the outside. I added some felt stars for interest. I think putting her in red, right under the lip of the container to the left of the star would be cute, too. I dumped in her hair accessory collection and it can live on top of her dresser in her room. The yellow and red coordinate well in there, and the pattern is not too girly for a room she shares with her brother. Win-win!

Headbands and necklaces were intended to live on the exterior of the container, but it's pretty wide, and I'm afraid headbands might get too stretched out on there. I'll probably just throw them inside, too. There's plenty of room.

Thanks for looking!

wedding shadowbox

I have been meaning to do this forever, and finally got around to it. I put my wedding momentos (invitation, program, favor, candy, and a few photos) in a shadow box. It's hard to take a picture of a shadow box, so I gave you both the with flash and without versions.

I really, really, really wanted to make the entire background of the shadowbox a single layer of jelly beans and then to mount my photos, etc on top of that. But I couldnt' figure out how to make that work. This was my compromise, and I think it'll be ok. Glue is still drying, so it's not on the wall yet, but it's headed to the master bedroom in the next few days.

dolly carseat

I bought Hazel a dolly car seat at a kids' consignment shop in Sugar Land and promised myself that I would recover it on the other side of the move. The cover it had was old, stained, and sad. The little car seat came up in toy rotation this week, so I got to work making it cute again.


This was a quick and easy project. I took my seam ripper to the old cover so that I could use the pieces as a pattern. I used fusible fleece on the back of the cotton print for some padding. Otherwise, it was just sew parts together, run elastic where the original had elastic, finish with bias tape, and add a harness. Super simple. I tried to figure out how to make it a 5pt harness, but failed. Nan (my Cabbage Patch Kid from childhood) would certainly be safer in a 5 pt harness, but given that she can't suffer internal injuries, I'll try not to worry.

I can't wait to show Hazel when she wakes up in the morning!

One more note: I only endorse recovering dolly car seats. It makes me cringe when people make new covers for their own infant's seats. Not safe, people, not safe! Please only use covers and accessories made for your child's car seat by the manufacturer. Anything else could change the seat's performance in the event of an accident.

Even better with a throw pillow and back in the babies' room! I forgot to mention in my last post that I used this tutorial to make the skirt. Easy to follow, and relatively easy to execute. Still can't decide if the skirt is an inch too long. Should I shorten it?

skirt

My husband has a hand-me-down rocking chair that was his grandmother's (?), and frankly, it's not attractive. It's got a nice shape, and it could be cute, with a full scale refinish and reupholster, but I'm simply not up for such tasks. I decided this week to slipcover it, and failed at the full slip attempt. I downgraded to a skirt for the seat, and I have to admit that it turned out quite cute! It's certainly a TON better than the nasty stained and faded turquoise corduroy seat of old.

before:

after:

The rocking chair skirt was re-fashioned from the white slipcover that I bought dirt cheap on uglysofa.com for my living room. I didn't like stark white in my living room and replaced it with an identical dirt cheap but off-white version. The one that became the skirt looked like this one, except it was couch sized, not love seat sized. The love seat lives in my bedroom.

Woo hoo for being able to recycle a slipcover that the potty trainers got to before I could return it!

I do still plan to have the rocking chair refinished and reupholstered in the near future. But at least I won't have to cringe at that nasty seat fabric every time I walk past it until then.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We love Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar in this house, and I thought the bright primary colors in the book would make an excellent choice for a shared room for my three year old boy/girl twins. With a little bit of help from my sewing machine, and a lot of help from Target and Ikea, I proudly present Hazel and Charlie's new room!

"In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf."

"One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and--pop!--out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar."



General info: the leaf, sun, red chairs, and red L-shaped shelf came from Ikea. The red and blue solid quilts, the yellow sheets, and the lime green black-out panels came from Target. I made the valance and the pillowcases, along with the "art" from the hungry caterpillar line of fabric, purchased from fabric.com. I love the rain gutter bookshelves. We had one in the old dining room playroom when they were baby-babies and I've wanted another one ever since. I think all it needs now is a cute plush caterpillar to throw in that rocking chair. Maybe a crocheted one like this would fit the bill (photo from pattern on Ravelry).

first craft in the new house!

You may have noticed a lack of crafting the past 3 months. We moved! Turns out getting and keeping a house ready to show, packing, and moving is not a set of circumstances conducive to crafting. We are slowly getting settled into our new house in the NOLA suburbs, and I expect a lot more craft projects will be gracing these pages in the days to come.

The first craft project in the new house was this little paint chip garland for Fourth of July. I saw it here this morning, and had to do it. Adorable!

paint complete!

I am SO pleased with how the dollhouse looks painted! Interior and exterior are finished, awaiting window molding, decor, and furniture.

bedding fix

Some of you may remember that I posted on Facebook asking for ideas on a bedding fix. My bedding problems were manifold. First, my bed really needs a fun, funky quilt. Like this. See? Drool, right? Someday. When I have time. Now is not the time to tackle such projects. Second, because the bed-making fairy is on strike at our house, shams and throw pillows had taken up permanent residence on the floor. They were no longer pretty things for they bed. They were clutter. I needed a solution that would both rid me of the sham clutter and help me live with the dull red quilt until I have the time and energy to tackle a project like a monstrous king-sized quilt. Wouldn't you know that I found the answer on my favorite crafty blog, Prudent Baby? Turns out Jacinda feels the same way about pillow clutter. She solved the problem with sleep-on-able shams. Brilliant. So that was the plan.

BUT...

I didn't order enough fabric. Darn, darn, big darn.

The concept was still a good one, though. Make three pillow cases from a fun fabric that livens up the red quilt, throw them up there, sleep on them, make the bed or don't make it. No matter. No pillow clutter will reside in the floor.


I'll spare you the list of problems that plagued this project. Ordering too little fabric was only the beginning. Suffice it to say that there was a headache lurking around every corner, and I'm just grateful it all turned out OK in the end.

Would my bed look more pulled together if I stood the pillows up with a trio of euro shams behind them? Sure. But only if I was willing to make the bed every day. Which I'm not. I have a feeling this is going to work out great for me!

the mother of invention

My friend Morgan had a toddler break through a door for the first time today and asked if I could make her a crocheted door knob cover. I can, but not quickly enough to solve her problems today. When my friend Christina, who was also involved in this conversation, suggested a sock and duct tape (which would probably also work beautifully), I had this idea for a stop-gap measure. It's not pretty, but I think it has the potential to work just as well as my beloved crocheted covers. Ready to try?

Grab a men's athletic sock--the newer and thicker, the better. Cut about 3" off the toe. Take a needle and thread (double the thread for strength) and sew a long running stitch along the raw edge. I sewed my row about 1/4" away from the edge. If I were making another, I'd move in a little more, to 1/2" or 3/4" away from the edge. Cut the needle off leaving two long tails of thread at each end of your row of stitches.

Using the thread ends, tie the sock onto the doorknob. Tie it tightly enough so that it can't be pulled off, but not so tightly that it won't turn.

Trim your ends, and voila! This works on the same principle as the crocheted cover. The sock will slide on the doorknob, and little hands won't have the strength to squeeze it and get enough traction to turn the knob. How cheap and easy is that?!

If you try it, you'll have to let me know how it works.

dollhouse update, paint!

I've got one coat of paint on the dollhouse! Unfortunately, everything could use another, so the painting stage is far from over. You can get a good idea of how it will look, though.

It pretty much looks like a pastel rainbow attacked the house, but I think it will look very little girl (and very cute!) when it's all said and done. I have some seriously adorable decor plans up my sleeve that I cannot WAIT to get started on.

keepsake

I was going through outgrown kid clothes today and was feeling nostalgic about this little sweatshirt.

My mom bought it for Jono the winter that he was 18ish months old. He was able to wear it that year and then again the next winter when he was 2.5 (I swear all of that boy's growth has been in his LEGS since he was 9 months old!). Charlie wore it this past winter. No one in my house will fit into it next year. Cue the mama tears. After some nostalgic-ness, I almost tossed it into the hand-me-down pile for my nephew Sam, but decided to do something fun with it instead.

Ten minutes with my sewing machine later, I had turned it into a small football-shaped pillow. Adorable!

How it was constructed, for those of you who care:

I turned it inside out and drew a football-ish shape around the applique with an inch of shirt as border. I sewed on my line, leaving turning/stuffing space, cut off the excess shirt, stuffed, and hand closed with needle and thread.

If you asked me, I would tell you that I'm not very sentimental, and that I am perfectly OK with my babies growing up and not being babies anymore. But I would be lying.

dollhouse reno update

The dollhouse is sanded and scrubbed, and recently got its hardwood floors refinished!
Next on the list? Priming the interior and exterior for painting!!

We have a little friend turning three next week. This Princess and the Pea playset is her gift from us.

I am thrilled with how it came out. My favorite parts:
1. The bed is a recycled clementine (orange) crate! Recycling is always a bonus.
2. Her party is rainbow themed, so the mattresses are on-theme!
3. I didn't buy a shred of fabric or batting--all came from my stash.
4. I got to practice with my serger.

I printed this adorable little Princess and the Pea story booklet to include with the gift. It's a really cute telling of the story! I also plan to crochet this pea in the pod set. One small pea is too much a choking hazard with the 14 month old brother of our little gift recipient, otherwise I'd just throw a green bead in there.

I hope our little friend enjoys giving her dollies and stuffies turns sleeping on the bed and discovers that many of them are princesses in disguise. :D

last post on Jono's room, I promise

I had to show off the new art on the wall. I think it's so cute with his "roads" quilt, and I love the yellow. I think it was Dana, on the Made blog, that said she thought yellow should be utilized more in little boy's rooms, and I couldn't agree more. I'd been thinking about how to put some yellow in that primary colored room of his, and this was the perfect chance!
I also ordered this vinyl wall decal on Etsy. It's adorable, but I'm not very happy with how it installed. My laundry room vinyl just melted onto the wall and looks like I painted it on. It's so secure and happy. This decal looks like it desperately wants to jump back off. I'm not sure what the difference is. I did order it from a different shop, so maybe she used cheap vinyl? Dunno. At least it looks cute in the photo, since you can't see the peely edges like you can in real life.

And finally, on his dresser, in case you're one of the few people who haven't heard me sing its praises, is my FAVORITE toddler product EVER. No kidding. I have a stoplight clock in both kids' rooms and it is seriously brilliant. We set the "alarm" at bedtime, and the red light goes on. They stay in their rooms until the green light comes on in the morning (7:05 am in our house). No early wake ups for us! This thing seriously rocks. Amazon. Check it out.

vroom!

new art for Jono's racecar room!

Painted the canvas yellow and then used the little to paint tracks in primary colors. Then for fun, hot glued the car to the canvas. Anyone want to place bets on how long he leaves that car on there? I'm thinking not long.