Bumper Pads

Well, progress has been made on my custom order for Nicki.  I was going to move to the curtains, but then did an about face and switched to the bumpers so I could see how much spare fabric I had for the curtains.  Nicki opted for some nice solid navy bumpers to go with her striped crib skirt.  I think it will go very nicely together and will keep the crib from becoming overwhelming with patterns.  :)  Good pick, Nicki!

Anyway...here is the finished product:

Please pardon the pink crib sheet.   And my daughter was very excited to be included in the picture.

Now I move on to the final phase. The curtains.  On a side note...I had ordered fabric labels to include on my projects to make them look more professional.  Only when I used one it frayed like CRAZY on the sides.  I have e-mailed the creator of the labels to ask about this as it wasn't mentioned in the description of the labels.  Basically I'm really disappointed in that.  It's an easy fix for the future, but an extra step I don't think I should have to take when it's not mentioned that I should need to fray check them.

9 Month Flower Headband

You may remember that I made my daughter a corker bow for her 6 month photo shoot.  Well, believe it or not she is turning 9 months old in 6 days!!!  She has her photos tomorrow so I whipped together this darling little fabric flower for her headband using a tutorial from The House of Smiths.  She's wearing a little sailor dress so I think it's going to look darling!  I need to work on floofing it up a bit though.  (Yeah...floofing is a word...that I just made up.)

When not taking a mini 10 minute break to bust out a fabric flower I am a busy bee working on a custom order for a darling little baby boy's room.  Loving these fabrics.  The crib skirt is complete.  Time to move on to the curtains!  :)

Rainy Day Play: Car Chutes

It never fails that when another rainy day comes around you begin to feel claustrophobic in your house.  But, when you have more than one little one the thought of attempting to drag everyone out is horribly unappealing, and thus I decide to become creative.  On this day I had finished up a bolt of decor fabric for curtains, so my son and I decided to make a car chute out of it (you could use the tube from wrapping paper though):

Favorite Things

I was wasting time on the internet one day, looking at food blogs, when I came across this contraption:

 

What is it, you ask?  It's a Butter Bell.  You bring a stick of good ol' butter to room temperature, put it in this little bowl that sits in cup of sorts.  In the cup you put some cool water, and voila!  Your butter stays fresh, but at a nice spreadable room temperature consistency!!!  It is AMAZING!  No more cold non-spreadable butter, or butter with added canola oil for spreadability.

 I'm also always looking for bits of inspiration and I am enjoying perusing the book Doodle Stitching: The Motif Collection, by: Aimee Ray.  Lots of fun little ideas in here, and it comes with a CD that allows you to manipulate the images/templates for the embroidery.  Lots of fun to be had here.

 Local honey!  We're hoping it will help my husband with his horrible allergies.

 And while buying honey, I happened upon this sinfully delicious chocolate bar:

An Act of Progress

 Hi there!  Sorry it's been so long, but we've been busy!  The husband's new job has him traveling a lot which leaves me beyond busy not only all day, but at night as well.  I did get a brief break to celebrate Mother's Day.  My kids got crafty and made me some giant cards.  :)  From my 8 month old:

From my 2 year old (with help from Daddy):

 I'm also flitting from project to project.  This one is top secret for now, but intriguing no?

 I have a good sized play quilt/crib quilt in the works.  It was going to be twin sized, but I changed my mind.  But, this will have to take a break for a bit as I have a fabulous custom order that just came in.  More on that in a later post.

 And in the midst of working on things for the shop, and for custom orders, I am attempting to also get curtains done for my house.  Needless to say it's slow going.  Here is the fabric for my master bedroom.  :)

So just know that less posting means lots of progress on multitudes of projects.  And man am I tired!

Reuse rolls of craft paper

What do you do with those giant rolls of butcher paper after your child colors all over one side.  It seems like such a waste to me to just throw it away.  And while some scribbles may be fridge worthy (or even wall worthy...we'll get to that in a post soon!) it doesn't mean everything is.

And so, I decided we would paint on ours.  Why not?  Toddlers LOVE to have giant spaces to work on, and are better at large gross motor skills.

So, I laid down a plastic lady bug covering (3 yards on sale at Hobby Lobby).  This protected the floor from spills and gave my son a "zone" in which he could run around on:

 Then I went and cut off the used paper from his art easel and unrolled it across the plastic cover:

 I used painters tape to tape it down, and even put two layers across so he had more room to work.  I put out some paper plates (I plan to use pie plates in the future but I wanted to use up these paper plates we had laying around) with non-toxic (and washable) tempra paint on them, and broke out some of those poofy bath things that I picked up in the dollar section of Target.  He had a great time stamping and swirling those things around, and then when that got boring (which surprisingly took about 30 min.!!!) he ran around the on the paper making footprints with excess paint.

Be warned...your child will get paint on them so undress them to the point where you feel comfortable laundry wise and your kiddo is comfortable as far as the temperature in your house.

He had such a fun time, and he was begging to do it again the next day.  Seriously...he drug out the plastic and brought me paper.  lol

Explore other avenues of painting as well...maybe some small paint rollers or stamping with bubble wrap?  :)  It's all fun.  Just find things around the house.  :)  Happy painting!