Baby Life Quilt

I saw this baby life quilt over 2 years ago and knew I had to make it for someone.  My sister gave me the perfect opportunity when she decided to not find out the gender of baby #3.  Since I couldn't make her anything gender specific, and she already has a lot of the basics, I decided to make her a quilt.  She uses basically the same colors for a boy or a girl, so it wasn't tough to make a gender neutral quilt for her.

I backed it with flannel so it's nice and soft.

Hopefully Kelsey doesn't mind, but I'm stealing a picture from her blog of my cute baby nephew on his quilt:

Look how he matches the quilt!  I told you my sister likes those colors!

Pillow Mattress {handmade Christmas gift}

I made both girls a pillow mattress for Christmas. They were based off of this tutorial.

1. The pillow mattress.
2. One pillow folded under to prop up the head--good for sleeping (you don't need another pillow!) or for lounging.
3. Stacked.

Lauren likes her pillow mattress fine, but Kaylin loves hers. She sleeps on it every night. For a week or so she slept with it on top of her bed. Now she just sleeps on it on the floor. She plays on it during the day. She took it to a friend's house when we were going to be over late and she needed to go to bed. It will also be great for camping.

Crafty Details:

It's made from half of a twin duvet cover from Ikea ($17) and four pillows ($1 each). Since one duvet can make two mattresses, it was easy to make one for each girl. The total cost was $25 or $12.50 each.

Basically, you cut the duvet in half, finish the raw edges, and then sew pockets for the pillows. You can see the tutorial I {mostly} followed for more details if you're interested.

Kaylin lost her first tooth!

I didn't think Kaylin was quite old enough to lose teeth. But apparently she is. She lost her first tooth at 4 years and 9 months old. She knows older kids who have lost teeth, she's seen a TV show or two about kids losing teeth, but it scared her when she discovered that she had a loose tooth.

Here's the timeline:

Saturday 8:30 pm: Kaylin gets out of bed to tell us that she has a loose tooth. This thing looks like it's about to fall out.

Saturday 9:00 pm: I do a quick search on Pinterest for a tooth fairy pillow and find the perfect one. Thankfully I have all of the supplies since JoAnn's is now closed and this tooth is seriously ready to fall out. I start working on it.

Sunday 8:00 am: Kaylin and I watch a couple of PBS Kids cartoon clips about the tooth fairy.

Sunday 10:00 am: I finish the tooth fairy pillow.

Sunday 12:15 pm: Kaylin is eating a sandwich. She says, "Mom, what's this red thing on my sandwich?" I look at it and ask her to open her mouth. The tooth is gone. We look around for the tooth, but it's not there. She must have swallowed it. So now we have a 4 year old who is not only scared to lose her tooth, but now she doesn't have her tooth to leave for the tooth fairy. Plus she isn't liking the idea that there is a tooth in her stomach. I quickly explain that she can write a note to the tooth fairy and she will still leave her a prize.

She refused to let me take a picture.

What???? We've known about this loose tooth for 16 hours, most of that time was spent sleeping. The tooth fairy brings a special present when you lose your first tooth, in case you didn't know. In case you weren't paying attention, she lost her tooth on SUNDAY. I'm Mormon and we don't shop on Sunday. Thankfully I'm somewhat of a planner and I had a present I was planning to give her for her birthday that would be perfect. She wanted the tooth fairy to bring her a tooth brush, I didn't have one of those. But I did have princess toothpaste, which proved to be quite exciting.

We went to Grammy and Grandpa's for my birthday dinner and Grammy helped Kaylin write a note to the tooth fairy explaining her situation.

That night we left the note in her new tooth fairy pillow.

Monday morning Kaylin was so excited when she woke up and found what the tooth fairy left her. And she finally let me take a picture of her missing tooth.

Pet Shops and princess toothpaste! The tooth fairy also left a dollar bill, but that wasn't as exciting.

She played with the pet shops and toothpaste ALL DAY. We did leave the house a time or two, so she took a couple of breaks. But the pet shops were a hit.

Here's her tooth fairy pillow:

The tooth is a pocket.

Tutorial and tooth template found here.

New pillows for the family room

We bought our couch and red chairs in the family room about 3 1/2 years ago. When we were at the furniture store something came up about the pillows and I said, "I don't care what the pillows look like, I'm going to recover them anyway." Since the red in the pillows matched the red chairs, they still looked like this until a few days ago:

I finally got sick enough of them to make covers. After lots of searching, I finally found the perfect fabric.

The third pillow is from one of the red chairs, I got over my love of symmetry and put the blue flower pillow on the couch too because I love how it looks with the floral.

Our living and dining rooms are red and gold (as seen here), and so was our family room. The kitchen has blue and white, which is what we've always had. I have been wanting to tie the kitchen and family room together better since they are one big room--thus the red, gold, and blue in the new pillows. I am so happy to have blue in the family room now!

Crafty details:
All three pillows have invisible zippers and are fully lined. I got to use my serger which made me happy. Tutorial here. The flower pillow was made using felt and this tutorial.

Smocked top dress

Kaylin is VERY picky about her clothes. She will only wear dresses. A few months ago she would wear leggings with her dresses, but not anymore. Now she wears shorts underneath, but only because we require her to wear either shorts or leggings.

Her favorite dress is a smocked top sundress that didn't look like it would be too hard to replicate. I took Kaylin to the fabric store, because she needed to pick the fabrics to ensure she will wear the dresses. She picked out three fabrics.

Here is the first dress:

She loves it so much that she doesn't even mind wearing a t-shirt underneath.

And why is her head chopped off in the above picture? Because of this...

She wasn't in the modeling mood. Also, she pretty much only wears boots. Usually it's her pink with purple hearts rain boots that are falling apart, but to church she wears the ones pictured above.

She loves the dress. What a relief.

To make the dress I loosely followed this tutorial.

Kaylin's Room: Pictures and Pillows

I FINALLY finished a set of three pictures for Kaylin's room. I'm not sure when I started them, but it's been a long time. Kaylin saw me working on the last one (the flower) one day and then kept asking for her flower picture. That was just the motivation I needed to get them finished. Here's a peek:

I appliqued the shapes onto the backing fabric. Then Eric (with help from the fabulous Brandon!) made the frames. After that I stapled the fabric with a layer of batting to the back of the frames and attached a picture hanger.

For the butterfly and lady bug I used a pattern for pillows from Amy Butler's Little Stitches for Little Ones. I made a template for the flower petals.

I also made a lady bug and butterfly pillow from the Bed Bugs pattern in the Amy Butler book. I finished these quite awhile ago, but hadn't taken pictures until today.

Original quilt post here.

Original curtain post here.

New curtains

Eric and I decided that our living and dining rooms needed curtains. I looked online for curtains and had a hard time finding the length I need in a style and color I liked. I didn't want to make them. So I compromised. While at Target alone one day (it was supposed to be a quick trip, Eric and the girls were in the car), I stopped to look at the curtains and found 4 panels in a color I liked that were on clearance! They were the only 4 left in their longest length, while they were only 30% off, I didn't want to risk waiting for 50%.

The longest length available at Target is too short for our windows. Enter the compromise.

I bought some special order fabric and after lots of seam ripping, measuring, cutting, ironing, and sewing... we have curtains!

dining room

another view of the dining room (do you see the snow?!)

living room

the best shot I could get of both rooms with the new curtains

I'm really happy with how they turned out. I think they tie the two rooms together nicely and warm the rooms up a bit.

Casserole Carrier

After struggling to take a hot casserole dish to the monthly church potluck numerous times, I finally made myself a casserole carrier. I tried to ask for one for Christmas, but I think they're hard to find and I guess no one wanted to make me one. I even emailed my mom the tutorial :-).

I used the tutorial from 2 Little Hooligans using the tips from Homemade By Jill. It has insulbrite inside, so it's just like a hot pad. It should keep hot dishes hot, cold dishes cold, and make my life easier when taking a hot 9x13 straight from the oven to my car. It also has a spoon holder on top.

Super cute and practical. Now I just need to wait for the next pot luck so I can try it out.

Gathered clutch

I have been wanting to make this gathered clutch for awhile. I have been using a lame-o plastic make-up pouch (I'm guessing it's from the early 90s based on the pattern) to carry gum, chapstick, a pen, pain killers, etc. in my purse. This makes it easy for me to switch between purses. I don't have to look through all of the pockets to pull out what I might need. Or I can just grab the pouch, my wallet, phone, and keys and go. Hmmmm... that still sounds like a lot.

I finally decided that the lame-o plastic pouch would no longer do. I started it yesterday and finished it today. It was very easy... except I didn't get the side seams correct by the zipper covers and had to hand stitch a tiny area. I don't know what it is about me and the ends of zippers. I stink at them.

My photography skills are always lacking, but I couldn't wait until daylight to take pictures, so some of these are especially awful. Besides, there's not much daylight in the NW these days anyway, so I doubt it really would have made a difference.

The gathers didn't show up as well as I'd like, but you get the idea. Check out the tutorial for better pictures.

I love when I can find fabric lines that go together at JoAnn's. I refuse to pay the prices at the quilting stores, so I was happy to find these three fabrics.

If you look at the tutorial--
I didn't do the divider pocket or any of the card holders.
I used fusible fleece on the back and medium weight interfacing on the front. I just used what I had. I think it turned out well.

Ruffle butt onesie and baby legs

I finally broke down and bought a cute set of onesies at Target to make ruffle butt onesies. I made two for Lauren. I still have three more onesies and fabric for the ruffles. If you're having a girl soon, maybe you'll get one :-).

I bought a coordinating pair of socks to make baby legs. I don't have a tutorial to link to, because I took a tutorial and changed it. I don't know where the link to the original tutorial is, plus the tutorial was hard to follow. If you want my tutorial, let me know. I took pictures just in case :-).

Lauren modeling her new ruffle butt onesie and baby legs. Cute! And perfect for the hot weather we've been having.

Handmade Christmas Gifts

Since Christmas was nearly a month ago, I figured I'd better post the gifts I made.

Remember that craft night I had with some of my friends back in October? We ordered vinyl kits from Windmill Lettering. They were easy to work with and the kits were great. I definitely recommend them.

Picture board and magnets. I added a picture of Alyssa (my niece) and Lauren from when they visited us at the hospital.

Same as above.

Christmas Countdown blocks. I made three of these, one for me, one for Kelsey, and one for Shaunna (my brother's wife).

Picture board for for Eric's mom. I added pictures of the girls.

This one was for my mom.

Now for the sewing:

Luggage tags (based off this tutorial) for Kelsey, my mom, Eric's mom, and Shaunna.

Pillow for Macey (niece). Ryanne (niece) got a similar one with an "R".

The back of Macey's pillow. Ryanne's had different fabric.

Tag blanket for Miles (nephew). Jack (nephew) got one with a "j".

Birth information block. Jack got one too. The other three sides have the birth city, birth date, and last initial.

Scrunchy scarves for Mom, Kelsey, and Shaunna.

This next one is actually a birthday present for our friend, Evie.

Tutu and wand.

Crafty friends: If you want more information about any of the crafts, let me know.