Snow Paint

So I'm really looking forward to the snow this winter after finding these pictures of some snow art from last year. I was at my Mom's house and grabbed some empty spray bottles, food coloring and water. VOILA! Snow Paint!!!  I gave one to each of my nephews and to A.R. they had a BLAST! they sprayed every bit of snow in sight (including a portion of the vinyl siding which I very quickly scrubbed off with a washcloth and some cleaner so the grandparents wouldn't flip :) ) here are a few shots of their snow masterpieces...and if you know my parents at all and how very tidy, and orderly they are, you will find the appropriate humor in these pictures...I'm sure their neighbors thought they had gone insane or gotten vandalised.

Monster Carseat Pillow

I love the blog Make it and Love it ! She has the most adorable tutorials and very practical projects for the average Momma. I followed her tutorial for a carseat pillow because A.R's poor head and neck look so uncomfortable when she falls asleep in her carseat. We tried a store bought carseat pillow years ago but the behind the head portion was so thick it just pushed her head forward more in the seat. I made my own pattern trying to follow her dimensions, but had to tweak it here and there to get it to work just right. A great tip for you when making your own pattern pieces: draw them out on file folders (they're cheap and much easier to trace around on fabric than delicate paper patterns) so here is my pattern drawn out on the file folder and the finished carseat pillow

I had to include close-ups of the flannel monster fabric I got at Joanne's for only $2.50/yd. I am so in love with it and bought extra to make a couple throw pillows for J.D's room. I covered each side of the pillow with different material b/c I couldn't decide on just one of them!

A.R loves her new monster pillow and we both decided when J.D moves into a big boy carseat I will make him his very own monster pillow too!

 Happy Crafting!

Re-upholstered children's chair

I've been meaning to get this up for a while and am excited that I am posting my very first step-by-step tutorial!!! (I guess the excitement is over the fact that I had an original idea I could post instructions for and not have to link to someone else's blog for the instructions :) )

Re-upholstering a child's chair

A.R. had a child's rocking chair given to her many yrs. ago as a gift. It has acquired many stains over the yrs. and since JD is more the right size for it now than she is, I decided to turn it into a little boys rocking chair. I purchased some inexpensive material from walmart and my dear husband bought me a staple gun (ahh...the power) and a project was born....

First I made a mental note of where all the folds and pleats were in the chair and noted where they stapled the fabric. Then I had to rip all the old material off the chair without damaging the foam cushioning or the individual pieces since they become your pattern pieces for the new fabric (you will be amazed at how many staples you pull out and continue to find days later even after careful vaccuuming...)

Lay out the individual pieces you've taken off the chair and lay them on top of your new fabric. (I chose a fabric that had no real rhyme or reason when it came to the pattern to make it easier, but if using a striped fabric you will want to make sure that the stripes are running the right way when you trace your new pattern pieces. )

I marked all the pattern pieces to keep track of what piece went where when it came time to cover the chair, and simply traced all the patterns using disappearing ink.

Once all the pieces were cut I started fitting the fabric around the chair. You will need to pull very tight when you staple, the fabric will stretch...the seat of my chair is already buckling a bit because I could not pull the material tight enough when I stapled. Keep all your pleats and folds as close to it's original pattern and staple the heck out of it...After all the pieces had been stapled we went around the chair with a mallet and tapped on the staples to make sure there were no sharp points sticking out from the staples.

The chair looked cute, but I though it was missing something still. I cut out a round piece of scrap leather and used dark T-shirt iron on transfer sheets to print out a yankees emblem (please no comments about the yankees: my husband is from upstate NY and we made a deal...he gets JD as a Yankees fan and I can have AR as a Phillies fan. So I'm merely playing by our rules here ) I stitched the patch onto the back of the seat before stapling it down and was very pleased with the results...

So here you have it...JD's birthday present from mommy and daddy and my very first tutorial hooray!

Happy Crafting!

Birthday Crowns

I always loved the cardboard party hats at kid's parties...but the elastic always breaks, or they tear apart during the party. At A.R's 3rd birthday party we threw her a princess themed party. I decided to make each girl attending a princess hat of their own...something that would last at least through the party...this is a picture of A.R's complete with a "3" for the birthday girl...

Well now it's J.D's 1st birthday and I have been wanting to make him a felt birthday crown for his birthday party. There are a lot of different tutorials on the web for felt birthday crowns...I blended a few different ones together until I got what I wanted... It was surprisingly easy and he really seems to like it!

Happy Crafting!

Hooray for Ice Skating and Leather!

Okay so the title of this post may have really thrown you for a loop...unless of course you're figure skater Johnny Weir. But, for the sake of this post we're going to separate the two :)

We signed A.R. up for ice skating lessons this yr. She is only 3, but we decided the younger she learns the better she'll get. Plus, she is in desperate need of a structured learning environment so we thought some type of lessons would do her good. She's doing really well, and has only had two lessons so far. So I had to share this sweet photo of her on the ice all by herself!

Ok....so now to the crafting aspect of this post :)

My crafting budget is $0.00 except once in awhile when I can sneak some craft supplies from walmart in with the groceries (shhh!) So I have to rely mostly on other people's unwanted stuff, which is just fine with me. My mother just gave me an old black leather coat of hers...I've never worked with leather and I have to admit I'm a little intimidated.

Cathe Holden over at http://justsomthingimade.blogspot.com/ has worked with leather though, and she has made some incredible things with it. Here is a picture of a leather, monogrammed Ipod holder she made...I'm seriously considering giving this project a try (if I can gather the courage to cut apart this jacket)

 Here is the link to her tutorial on this project: http://justsomethingimade.blogspot.com/2009/12/simple-leather-ipod-touchiphone-case.html

Happy Crafting!

Love Food Hate Waste

I have found the ultimate website for tips and ideas on being frugal with groceries and food, http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/.  As many of you know I am a big fan of canning and freezing foods to preserve them, but this website has taught me so many other cool tricks to reducing the food waste we create. It is sickening to think of the garbage dumps all across the country and how much food waste those heaps represents. I'm a firm believer that we not only eat too much as Americans but because our portion sizes are so out of wack we prepare too much food to be consumed at any one given time. When was the last time you walked away from a holiday dinner, office party, or catered event and there weren't mounds of food left over and eventually trashed? Not to mention the trashed leftovers from the meals we prepare every day for our own families. So this is my challenge to you: try to reduce the portion of food you cook for your family this week. Even if it doesn't look like its going to be enough food for your family's dinner - fight the urge to prepare more and just see how far the food spreads at the dinner table. Worse case scenario your family has room leftover for a healthy dessert of fresh fruit. There are so many benefits to planning meals like this :
1. Nutritional : When there are unhealthy portion sizes present, many people will continue eating past the point of being full
2. Financial : I have found that I can serve 1/2 the portion of meat at dinner than I was, and my family is still satisfied after the meal. The only difference is I'm not throwing away the extra 1/2 portion after it has gotten old in the fridge as leftovers. I have significantly cut down on grocery expenses!
3. Environmental : Whenever we can reduce unnecessary waste in landfills, it is a good thing!

 Leave any helpful tips in the comment section and lets see if we can do something to reduce food waste within our individual families.

Part II, Re-purposing Clothes: Baby Dress to Big Girl Skirt

When we found out our second (and final) child was going to be a boy I spent a lot of time going through all our stored baby girl clothes and dresses. I found so many summer dresses that brought back the sweetest memories of my little girl as a baby I knew I wasn't ready to give them up...but the idea of refashioning them into something she could wear now was very appealing to me...so even though there is no picture tutorial, I will walk you through what I did so you can see your little girl's once again in their sweet baby girl prints. I had a size 18 mo. halter dress. it was not this exact one (because I didn't think to take a picture of the dress before) but a very similar style to the pictured one here:

You can see where I 'm going with this, right? I cut the top portion off of the dress, leaving enough of at the top to fold over and run elastic through as a waistband. I usually deduct 2 inches from my child's waist measurement for the elastic to get a good snug fitting skirt. Fold over and sew a "tunnel" for the elastic leaving a small opening to thread the elastic through. Once the elastic is through I like to sew up bothes sides of the waist to keep it in place. Hem if needed. And Voila your little girls new skirt already full of old memories!

Happy Crafting!