Cookie Exchange Fail

I wont bore you with the details but I will share with you my latest adventure in dabbling in the domestics.
Huh...
Anyways.
Twas our annual Cookie Exchange Christmas Wrap party.
Many moons ago the party started off as a Christmas wrapping party. We would bring presents to one location and use each others wrapping paper and bows and wrap our gifts together. Later we added exchanging cookies into the mix. Then as the babes were born, one by one we stopped bringing our presents to wrap and just brought cookies. This year one person brought stuff to wrap and we just watched her wrap whilst we ate cookies. 
Looooooooooooooong story short, I wanted to make these:

I know I know...not a cookie. 

I ended up with this:

One of my "friends" was so offended she took one home in a separate container from the rest of her exchanged cookies so as not to contaminate the proper cookies. 

Eh. (Shoulder Shrug). I got to take home more cookies than everybody else. MERRY CHRISTMAS SUCKAS!!!

HO HO HO! 

DIY Headbands

So many woman nest and clean right before they deliver their baby. 

Not me...I make headbands. 

Hours before I started labor with Reagan I felt the incredible need to make some headbands. 

So here is what I did. 

I took some scrap fabric

Grabbed one of those Goody Headbands from my stash. We have a bajillion. 

 

Then I braided the fabric around the headband and hot glued the edges down. 

Wallah! Headband one completed. 

I did the same here with different fabric. 

Tad-ah! 

I even wore my new headband during labor as you can see here. 

It rolled off whilst I pushed my kid out and nobody told me. I'm so embarrassed. 

So there you have it.

I have a ton more things I wanna blog about and craft but having 2 kids is kinda kicking my butt. 

Here is some reading while you wait for my next post. :)

And if you need a place for your headbands click here. 

Happy Hawwoween

That's how Em says it, with her little fingers wiggling by her face in a sort of a whisper. She makes me laugh a lot.
This year I decided she will be dressed up as Abby Cadabby for Halloween.

I love that I get to choose her outfits right now ;)
I "made" her costume this year. Made is in quotations because I barely did anything.
Here is what I did:



1) I took one of Ems super fancy dresses that she got from her grandma.

2) Then I took one of stretchy head bands and cut some tulle and threaded and tied to the bottom row of the  headband. 

3)Then I took the tulle/headband/skirt and slipped it over the dress. 

4) Then I made some pom poms from yarn.

5) I pinned and clipped the pom poms to Ems puffy pony tails on top of her head. Put some dollar store wings on her (which we got for free from a b-day party). And Alakazam...Abby Cadabby!

During the judging Em refused to stand in line. 

This is how Em looks often. So pleasant. 

We went to a party last week and a barn party over the weekend before Sandy hit. Trick or Treating is going on today...but its kinda cold out and I have the new LO now. Hubs has to be at church, so I'm not taking Em and the baby trick or treating by myself. I will say I feel some  guilt about this.
But I tell myself this:
1) She doesnt know what she is missing
2) She cant have all that candy (mom can but shouldnt)
3) Im not sure she will have fun. She hates being made to be social. It takes her a while to warm up and relax and so walking up to several strange people might be a little overwhelming for her and us.

So BACK-OFF MOM GUILT! I will not have it!
Happy Hawwoween!

DIY Bow and Headband holder

In an effort to make space in our small apt for our new little baby, I am cleaning out drawer space and shelf space and moving things to the walls. Since I cant commit to a paint color or art work I am trying to make my bare walls functional at least.
Here is one of my "On the Wall" projects.

1.First I bought a frame from GoodWill. Now this frame was supposed to be for this project, but that changed quickly. I took the frame apart and was surprised that the flowers were just a print and not actually behind the glass!

2. I lightly sanded and spray painted the frame.
3. While at Target I found these awesome napkins and thought of my DIY bow holder. I purchased the spray adhesive there as well. 

4. I sprayed the cardboard backing of the frame and stuck two napkins to it and smoothed it out. I never used spray adhesive before but I LOVE IT...and thats not the fumes talking. 

5.  I took some yarn like ribbon I bought years ago because I thought it was cool but didnt know what to do with it and spaced it out on the board and stapled it to the back of the cardboard. 

6. Then I assembled! Here is what it looks like before the bows and headband are added. 

DIY Bow and Headband Holder naked. 

7. Lastly I added our bows and headbands and hung up our completed project.

DIY Bow and Headband holder.

Now it looks incredibly full already. This is including our little tiny infant/newborn head bands that my tot cant wear anymore and the ones she can wear. I figure Ill remove the tiny headbands and such as our new LO grows out of them.

DIY bow and headband holder.

There you go! 

Adventures in Sewing Redo

My first REAL project in sewing was this dress.

I was in a hurry to complete it and had only being sewing a couple of days. It turned out a little bit shorter than I wanted it and the sash was really bulky. But for a first time sewer I don’t think it is all that bad.

I decided I wanted to make some alterations and I made quite a few. 

First I decided to measure the dress against a maxi dress I already owned. HELLO! I wish I thought of that before.
Then I took out some fabric from the back and sides.

Then I added pockets. I got the pockets tutorial from this site.





After adding some ruffles to the bottom and a bow belt, here is my dress redone.

The ruffle tutorial came from this site.

The shirring for the ruffle came from this site.

And the bow belt came from this site.  

Although I didn't use this site at all for this dress...it is my favorite sewing site so far. 

Knowing what I know now there are still quite a few things I would have done differently. And it really helps if I take my time. The dress is FAR from perfect, but I still like it. I may make more changes to it again. Perhaps Ill see how it looks when I am not smuggling a butterball turkey anymore. 

Here is a little Before & After Pic. 

DIY Fairy Wand

Here is a little craft Em and I did last week. Well I did most of the work, but it was fun to do and turned out kinda cute...kinda bulky, but good for little toddler hands. Basically we have a lot of crafting crap leftovers and I wanted an excuse to use it/get rid of it. :)

1. We took a paper towel roll, put some dried rice in it so it makes a rattly sound.
2. Put some construction paper on the end and fastened it with a rubber band.

3. Quadruple fastened.

 4.Took some streamer and mod podged it to the roll over the construction paper and rubber bands. I was going to use Elmers but the nozzle was broken so I ended up tossing it. So Mod Podge it was.

5. Had Em paste some squares cut from tissue wrapping paper onto the roll using  a glue stick. 

6. Gluing. 

7. Gluing. 

 8. Rambo Break.

9. Then I had her add her own touch with some markers. Notice how she is using a Sharpie. I realized during this project my kid really needs her own markers so after this project I bought her some kid appropriate markers. 

10. Writing. 

11. More Writing. 

12. Took a break from writing on our wand to practice our letters. :)

 13. Then I Mod Podged the tissue paper down.

14. I made a little tissue pom-pm and tied some ribbon and tulle  to the wand to give it some magic flair. 

And here is our finished result...

Pardon the blurry pics of em playing. I had a REALLY hard time getting her to stand still long enough for a picture with the wand. There you have it!

Check out the toddler appropriate supplies :)