I heart a fabulous deal!

As a stay at home mom, I make it my job to save as much money as I can. I love Goodwill, Deseret Industries, and places like Children's Orchard, Kid 2 Kid, etc. for saving big on kids clothes. A couple weeks ago my local Children's Orchard had a great sale. Fill a bag of select clothes for only $5! 

Score.

I ended up with 2 bags full of cute clothes for my boy. I got a total of 24 pieces for $10 plus tax. That's about 42 cents each! You cannot beat that!

 Most of the pieces were Old Navy

 with an H&M

 baby Gap and Pottery Barn Kids mixed in!

I just had to tell someone. My husband doesn't quiet understand just how awesome it feels to save big like that. Well now back to wrapping presents and other final touches for Christmas. Have a safe and Merry Christmas!!

The Circle Skirt

I love the site MADE. Dana has so many wonderful ideas and tutorials. About a month ago I made a circle skirt from the tutorial on her site. I opted for the 2" elastic and kinda think the 3" would have looked cuter, but it seemed so huge in the store. I got my fabric at none other than the D.I. (Deseret Industries- it's like Goodwill/Salvation Army, etc). The fabric is a silk-y type material. It turned out really cute despite the fact that I made it.

 And it twirls... :-D

Well there are a couple other projects I haven't posted, but they'll have to wait until after Christmas. Merry Christmas everyone! I probably won't be back until after the New Year so happy New Year 2011!

Snowflake cuteness

So here's one of the projects I haven't shared yet, well I haven't shared the update on it. When I originally shared this project a reader commented that their friend had done this project as well and had added snowflakes and ribbons to theirs. Such a fabulous idea!

I just used a $1 snowflake stencil from Walmart and white paint I had on hand. So simple, but it makes all the difference! 

Before:

 I still need some cute stockings. That probably won't happen until next year.

And here's a look at our cute little Christmas tree...The lights would have drowned the poor tree so I just put some silver mini ric-rac and some dollar store mini ornaments. The Noel ornament was left over from my wreath. Actually it broke so I left it off the wreath, but did my best to revive it for the tree.

$6 Wreath

I don't know about you, but I feel like I need a vacation to recover from my Thanksgiving weekend... 

We had a sudden change in plans and the three of us went to my parents house for Thanksgiving. My parents are flight attendants and were getting home on Thursday afternoon. We decided we'd let ourselves into their house and surprise them with Thanksgiving dinner. Anyway, since we got back it's been 4 loads of laundry, catching up on emails, recovering sleep (Andrew doesn't sleep well in new places), and folding said 4 loads of laundry, among other random to-do's.

I finished this project today, just in time for December and it was super easy. All my supplies were $1 or less.

Supplies:
Wreath
Garland
Ribbon
Christmas ornaments
other things to jazz it up ('Merry Christmas' from Walmart, other sayings from Goodwill, and the berry(?) things)

Start by wrapping the garland around the wreath. If you worry about the the wreath showing through, give the wreath a quick coat of spray paint. Mine wasn't bad and with all the other stuff that gets added you don't see any of the wreath.

Next glue the ornaments on to the wreath however you would like them.

Finish by jazzing it up however you would like. I wrapped the ribbon around, hung the Merry Christmas in the middle, glued on some berries and glued on the words.

Super easy and inexpensive wreath is just what our door needed for this time of year!

A bit over due...

At the beginning of the month, our family participated in a 5K walk to benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He and another coworker were in charge of organizing a team from his office. His coworker felt they needed a shirt for everyone to wear so they went to work creating a design. I told my husband to bring me a copy as soon as they finished so I could make one for Andrew. It took them a while but I finally got a copy a couple days before the walk. I was going to make a shirt from the 90 minute shirt tutorial over at MADE, but I didn't have the time. Luckily I went to Goodwill and there was the perfect size and perfect shade of gray shirt.

I used the same freezer paper method I've used in the past.

The back was a bit of a challenge because the cut outs were so small. I decided to not write out the whole thing and instead free-handed an abbreviated version. I was happy I finished it, but it wasn't the best quality on the back. We had a fun time and Andrew was really good the whole time. I just can't believe I forgot my camera so these are the only photos I've got of the shirt.

Hole in the Pj's Repaired

Lately, it has gotten colder here in Vegas.  I pulled out the cold weather pj's to see what I've got to work with and I found these...

He wore a hole in these back when he first began crawling. I tried them on him and they fit in the body, but the legs are too short. So I figured it would be pretty easy to fix that.

 I started by cutting off the foot of the pj's.

Then I used some ribbed knit to create a cuff around the leg. 

I did that by cutting strips that were as long as the circumference of the leg, exactly. The knit will stretch so you don't need seam allowance. I got the instructions from no big dill. (click here for instructions)

One thing I messed up on is I cut the knit the wrong way. You want the knit lines to be running up and down so it stretches side to side, make sense? I hope so. I'm sure it's common sense, but I really don't know where my brain was at, it was late. I was able to make it work though and they turned out perfect.

He would not stand still or relinquish the diaper changing supplies for a picture. Silly boy.

A Christmas Craft

Yes, I know it's a little early for Christmas stuff, but I just finished a project we did for our craft club this month. I'm not sure who to give credit to for this idea. I know one of the ladies had one that we used as the example, but I don't know if she made it or bought it. 

Anyway, we made a stocking 'board' for lack of a better word. Most of us here in sunny Las Vegas don't have fireplaces in our homes and in the two years I've been married we've spent them either moving (yep, we moved on Christmas Eve) or travelling, I haven't hung stockings, in fact, I don't think we even have stockings...maybe I should work on that next. For me this was quite perfect.

We had a woman in our ward cut the vinyl for us that made the lettering really easy. The specific dimensions are 9"X30", which we had cut from a sheet of nice quality plywood. Then next step was a little sanding, painting, and weeding out the vinyl lettering. Once the paint dried and the vinyl was on, we drilled holes for the hooks and put sawtooth picture hangers on the back. 

It was super easy and I love how it turned out. One of the other women was painting hers red and white because she decorates with a peppermint theme, I can't wait to see how hers turned out!

So much for my weekend plans...

Did you know that October 31st is also Nevada day? Yup, Nevada was admitted into the union on October 31st, 1864. Good little tidbit should you ever be on Jeopardy or something. Anyway when the 31st falls on a weekend most state businesses close on the Friday before for a nice holiday. This meant my husband got Friday off! I was super excited to have him around to help with the feisty little cub.

For the past, let's say 2 weeks-ish, the little guy has been waking up in the middle of the night (multiple times a night) crying. Something he hasn't really done since he was 10 weeks old! Yeah, I have been exhausted - hence my general lack of blogging. Lately his nap times have meant my nap times. So when I remembered my husband was going to be home on Friday I was super excited that he could keep him entertained while I got some projects done...HA! didn't happen.

I did get one thing done though. I saw this cute tutorial for a fun floor cushion on Living with Punks. It was easy and it'll make for a fun story time chair or just a fun bean bag type thing for the little guy.

I have one other project in the works and I'll hopefully be able to finish it by tonight. we'll see.

Oh and the cub went as a monkey this year. Probably the cutest monkey I've ever seen, but I might be a little biased.

The Perfect Little Boy's Dress Shirt

I know, I know! A second post in the same week? It's a miracle. :-D

Anyway, I found some time to put together another project. I saw this a while ago at I am Momma- Hear Me Roar and I knew I would be needing it someday. Cheri has two adorable boys and so many cute projects for them. This project the always tucked shirt, is going to be one of my favorites, I can tell.

Church today was so great not having to tuck his shirt in! My husband (who teaches the teenage boys) says this would come in handy for them too, lol! The best part is it's super easy to make...

For more detailed instructions click here to visit Cheri's site.

Look he's waving to you

Reusable produce bags

I'm sure many out there use reusable grocery bags to do something for the environment (if you don't forget them in your car lol). But since I started using them its always been weird that I don't have some kind of produce bag because even though I'm not using plastic shopping bags I'm still taking home a bunch of plastic produce bags. And there are just too many under my kitchen sink, it's sick! When I was at Joann's on Monday (waiting an hour in line for the cutting table!) I saw that the utility fabrics were on sale, which included mosquito netting. I grabbed a yard and put together a pretty simple drawstring bag.

I'm not completely sure I like the drawstring, so I'm going to put together another one with a different closure and then post a tutorial.

My version of the UNO shirt

When I first started getting into and reading blogs, one of the first things I bookmarked was Dana's UNO shirt that she made for her son's first birthday. I knew I wanted something like this for my cub when the time came. Well Wednesday was the day and I still hadn't started it so I got rushed but he got to wear it for a bit on his birthday. My version is a little different. I did mine in red and black to look like this picture I found...

I did the same basic freezer paper stenciling technique, but I had to do it in a couple layers (sorry no pictures, I was scrambling to get it done and dry in time). I started by stenciling the black then red and lastly the letters. When the letters were on I didn't like them and almost scrapped the whole thing. I gave it one last shot and hand painted around the letters to give it an outline and I liked it so much better.

Ignore the frosting smudges on this one...I forgot, of course, to get a close up before he had cake, but at least it wasn't chocolate.

Yeah, I was apparently a 'mean mommy' for not making him a chocolate cake to make a huge mess in our apartment with light carpeting. :-P I made him an apple/banana cake instead and he seemed to like it just fine. I found the recipe here and the frosting recipe here, if anyone else dares to be a 'mean mommy'.... ;-D

A quick and easy project - Kid's Car pillow

I actually did this one last week, but I'm just now getting around to telling you about it. So a couple weeks ago I went and found a "big boy" car seat for my son. I got it installed a early last week, but realized that even though it was reclined all the way for rear-facing, his poor head still drooped when he fell asleep. Luckily the blog world has a remedy for almost every crafting itch. I found this great tutorial at Make It and Love It for a neck pillow (click here). It was so quick and easy and I had everything on hand. The fabric was a remnant from Joann's and the stuffing was from that lion I gutted a while back.

It turned out great and the little guys loves it, playing with it at least. He puts it on and pulls it off like it's a necklace.

A Glider Recovered...

 I've had the material for about two weeks, but kinda dreaded recovering my glider. Once I jumped into it though, it took off and I was done before I knew it.

I started with the upright cushion for your back. I laid out my fabric, left about 2 inches for the sides and seam allowance. I cut out a piece, flipped it over and cut out the second piece.

Next I started pinning the fabric with wrong sides out around the cushion itself. I did this because I wanted a nice snug fit. To get the cushion out I folded the cushion in half and pulled it out. On a stiffer cushion, this can be a bit more difficult. 

I sewed the fabric together and then had to cover the straps that secure the cushion to the chair. 

I marked where to open a hole for the strap

I quickly made a tube out of scrap fabric that would fit around the strap and it turned out the perfect size. I slipped the strap in the tube once it was turned right side out.

I opened up the fabric with a seam ripper and scissors where the snap is.

I actually sewed this strap back onto the original cushion and not the cover because I wanted it to be more secure.

After opening holes for the straps to come through, slipping the cover on and sewing the holes closed around the strap, the last step is to close the bottom. I just folded the excess in and sewed it together.

I followed about the same process for the seat cushion. For the ottoman I detached the top from the gliding parts (sorry no step by step pictures - it was end of nap time and I just wanted to get it done.) I laid the top on the fabric and cut it with about 2 inches on each side, enough to pull up and staple. I stapled it one long side, then the opposite side. Finally the short sides and folded the corner in all nice and neat to finish it off. Screw the top back on and its done!

I'm thinking I'm going to paint the wood, probably a dark brown/black. Kinda like that table. Although it photographs as black it is a dark brown color. 

Well I have some cleaning to catch up on now that the little guys is asleep so gotta run!

Dollar Store Skirt

Well I think I figured out why it's so hard to get projects done...

okay, so I already knew that, but seriously this kid is getting to be a mover. He has started walking pretty well over the last couple weeks. 

Well with the BYU fabric I got at Hancock, I made a simple highchair drop cloth. All I did was hem the edges, nice and simple. 

Mostly what I did this week was making a skirt out of a dollar store shirt. I found a 2XL men's shirt and followed a tutorial I found at My Blonde Ambition. I kinda had to do my own spin on it because my shirt wasn't as big as in the tutorial. I didn't quite have enough fabric to do the ruffle on the bottom (plus this shirt must have been a lot thinner than normal, the knit kept curling on itself - so annoying).

I decided to make the waist with a drawstring so it would be a little more secure.

So it turned out pretty good, although a little plain. I'll probably stencil something on it to add a little more pizazz. It's a nice casual skirt for those hot days we get here in Vegas and it only cost a dollar!!!