Special Easter Shirts

I made the kids special shirts to wear to their school Easter egg hunts this year.  I'd seen the idea on Pinterest, and I actually used a dish towel that I found at Target for $1.99 as the fabric for the eggs!  

KA's new shirt:

SJ's new shirt:

KA in her shirt:

SJ wasn't really into taking pictures in his new shirt, so I got a crazy smile...

 and a pouty face!

The shirts were really easy, and I thought they turned out really cute.  I'm proud of them!

Valentine's Day Fun!

We had a great Valentine's Day this year! 

Earlier in the month, I made the kids special outfits to wear to their Valentine's parties.  Here they are, modeling their cute new looks!

 Katie Anne and I had fun making valentines for friends and teachers that we'd seen on Pinterest!

SJ had some cute valentines to hand out to his friends at school, too!

Katie Anne and I also made a wax heart project that we'd seen on Pinterest.  We used the hearts we made to decorate the windows in the breakfast room.

Opening special Valentine's treats from Mommy and Daddy!

 On Valentine's Day, the kids wore their cute outfits to school for their parties.

What a handsome boy!

 What a pretty girl!

Halloween Preparations

Okay, so I know I swore off making Halloween costumes for this year, but ... when Katie Anne finally settled on the idea of Dora and Boots as the costumes for her and SJ this year, I had to do just a little crafting to make them perfect and authentic! 

The Dora costume wasn't too hard to come up with ... my parents had given Katie Anne the purple Backpack last year, so we were all set there.  We found a pink shirt and orange shorts on sale at Target at the end of the summer season, and Katie Anne had yellow socks already.  (That Dora really knows how to match her clothes!)  The only thing that we had to make was Dora's bracelet - you can't really find the classic combination of yellow beads and a big blue flower in stores.  However, we found all the needed materials at Hobby Lobby, and Katie Anne did a great job of making the bracelet!

I also grabbed some pink tights and a new teal windbreaker (sticking with the mismatched tropical colors theme that Dora rocks) in case the weather was chilly, so Katie Anne was set!

For Boots, things got a little trickier.  They do make a Boots costume that you can buy ... but it is hideous and does not look like the real Boots at all.  So, I was going to have to whip up a comfortable, authentic Boots costume for the boy.  Sewing for an infant boy isn't something that I've ever done, and I researched making a onesie with all those snaps ... and that seemed very hard and crazy.  So, I found a white romper made out of sweatshirt material online for him.  I also ordered a hat (which I wound up not using after all) and some gray dye.  When the package arrived, I was very happy with the romper, not so happy with the hat, and very nervous about the dye - which was supposed to be used in the washing machine!  

 I debated doing putting the dye in my washing machine - which is relatively new and nice - because I had visions of every load of white clothes coming out gray forever, but I finally decided to just do it.  When I saw this, I was really regretting my decision...

but everything came out fine in the next white load!

I wound up not using the little hat - it came out a different color gray and didn't fit SJ really well.  So, I made him a little fleece Boots hat, and then I bought him some red socks to serve as Boots.  I sewed a yellow patch on his gray suit for Boots' belly and made a long gray and yellow tail for the back, and he was all ready, too!  I think the costumes came out really cute ... pictures in another post!

Katie Anne in her Twirly Skirt

Katie Anne was so excited about her twirly skirt!  

She tried it on this morning and modeled it for me.

Side view (she wanted to do both sides):

 Trying out the twirly-ness:

Model walk:

She looks so cute in it and will be all ready for football season!

She loves the skirt - especially the twirly-ness - and has now requested one in pink and one in purple.  Nice!  I think I'll make it a little shorter next time - I was just guessing with the length of this one.  It hits her about mid-calf, and I think it would be so cute to have a twirly skirt that's just above the knee... and it would only take 1/2 a yard to make it!

Custom Boppy Slipcover

Today, I was able to knock another nursery project off my list - and it was so quick and fun to make!  

One of the problems with choosing a non-traditional nursery theme like UGA is that coordinating accessories aren't always available.  I've been looking for a cover for my Boppy pillow for SJ4, and I couldn't find one I really liked - and I definitely couldn't find one that was anywhere close to matching his nursery theme.  Most of the boys' Boppy covers are blue and green based - I couldn't find a single red, black, or even plain white one.  So, I thought about making one.

I found this pattern online at the blog Vanilla Joy, which was originally featured on Economical Baby (but has since been removed).  The pattern was super-easy to follow, and I loved that she had a picture of how to tape the pattern pieces together:

 I'm sure I would've gotten that step wrong without that picture.  Once I got the pattern cut out and taped together, it was smooth sailing from then on out.  

I was so surprised by how easy and quick this project was to complete.  I'm usually scared of sewing projects that involve a lot of curves ... and this Boppy cover is all curves.  However, it was not difficult at all!  It didn't take hardly any time to complete this project, and (in my opinion) it looks really good and professional.  For those of you who watch Food Network, I started cutting the fabric after I watched the first few minutes of Barefoot Contessa, and I had the whole project finished before Paula Deen could finish her pie - the Neelys came in between.  So, that means it took me right around one hour.

Here's my finished UGA Boppy Cover!

Front:

Back with zipper:

I let Katie Anne choose the fabric from Hobby Lobby's collegiate selection - they had about 5 UGA fabrics to choose from, and she choose the second most expensive one, but it was on sale for half off.  The two yards cost $8.00 (normally would've been $16.00).  Plus, the 24" zipper cost a little more - it was $3.80.  So, I had about $12.00 in this Boppy Cover ... not a bad price considering Boppy Covers run from $9.99 - $24.99.  I definitely could make one a lot cheaper - easily around $5.00 - if I wasn't so particular about the fabric.  

Also, you don't need two yards - I think 1.5 yards could easily do it.  I even had enough fabric left over to make big sister an easy twirly skirt!

(Not that she necessarily wants to coordinate with her brother's Boppy, but Katie Anne will need something cute to wear this fall when football season starts.)  I'll take a picture of her wearing the twirly skirt tomorrow!

Nursery Projects!

This week, I've finished two of the projects I needed to complete for the nursery ... one big project and one small.  It is almost complete!

First, for the small project, I did a little redesign of a lamp shade.  This lamp was the one I'd had in college, and I'd spray-painted it for use in Katie Anne's nursery.  I had bought a white shade with pink rick-rack for her nursery, but that obviously wouldn't work for SJ4.  So, my mom had the good idea to try to pick the rick-rack off and see if we could reuse it.  The pink rick-rack came off really easily, so I just hot glued some jumbo red rick-rack around the top and bottom where the pink had been and - voila!  A girl's lamp becomes a boy's lamp in about 15 minutes' time and - best of all - for only $1.38!

Also in that picture are two glass jars I bought for supplies for his changing table/dresser.  I had two small containers in Katie Anne's nursery in the same spot, but I always hated them because they were too tiny and wouldn't really hold anything.  So, I picked up these two at Hobby Lobby for 50% off each one.  The big one is for cotton balls, and I've got to get some gauze squares to go in the little one.  

Now, for the big project - curtains for SJ4's windows.  When I made the curtains and things for KA's nursery, it was really my first adult foray into sewing.  I'd sewn a bit with my mom and grandmother as a child/teen, but making the curtains, table skirt, rocking chair pad, etc. for KA's nursery was my first sewing go-round alone.  So, her curtains now seem very simple to me - just two hot pink panels with one row of medium-sized green rick-rack at the top.  Since I'm a more experienced sewer this time (and I'm not sewing nearly as much for his room), I thought I'd jazz up the curtains in the new nursery.

I think they definitely look more professional and visually interesting than the ones in KA's room, but ... they were a lot more time consuming!  They really weren't hard to do - most of the work was cosmetic, and it was all just straight stitching - but they're so freaking long that they're hard to iron, keep straight while sewing, and not drag all over the floor while I'm working on them.  Also, the gingham had a lot more give than the Kona cotton, so it was tough not to over-stretch the gingham while stitching it.  They generally just became a pain in the rear, and it annoyed me that none of this hard work was for any practical purpose - even though that was exactly my intention in the beginning.  Crazy, I know.  

My goal was to finish them two weeks ago, but I got really tired of working on them the week before vacation, so I had to put them aside for a while.  This week, I've been motivated to complete them - and I was able to find the jumbo black rick-rack that I needed to finish them.  I worked hard on them for the past two days, and they're finally finished!  I bowed on my knees and cried holy when this project was done.  I was so relieved to finish it!  So, his curtains are finally up!  Here are some pictures of them.

Room with curtains open:

Room with curtains closed:

I still need to find tie backs.  The one window (pictured) is so close to the closet wall that the original tie backs I'd bought wouldn't fit.  So, I'm on the hunt.  For now, I'll just push them over to open them.

Same curtain closed:

At the top of the curtains, I did a black polka dot ribbon and edged that with two rows of jumbo white rick-rack:

At the bottom of the curtains, I did a ten inch panel of black and white gingham with red polka dot ribbon edged with two rows of jumbo black rick-rack:

Now, I'm ready to work on SJ4's blanket and Boppy cover!