My Little Sweetheart

I'd like to introduce you to one of my best creations ever. My little Ivory was born last Thursday and she has been filling my life with joy ever since. She's also been filling all the baby clothes and gear that had been waiting for her.

The Boppy pillow is so much cuter with her on it:

And my childhood American Girl doll looks nothing in the Stella Pixie hat knockoff compared to my real baby doll:

Here's a closeup of the little munchkin:

Here she is cuddled up on the blanket from her brother:

And, just to show that she can open her eyes:

Have a sweet day! Okay, one more picture:

Bibs and Bias Tape

You might be wondering if I went into labor since I haven't posted in awhile after posting so often for a couple weeks. Well, I haven't had the baby yet. I'm not really expecting her to come until the end of this week at the earliest. I still have so much to do!

Anyway, here are some more bibs I made for a friend of mine. She is having her first boy and I'm having my first girl, so we had a combined shower. I really should have made some girl bibs for me at the same time, but that is just how it goes. I suppose soon I'll do another bib post with girly bibs! I like how this bias tape turned out, especially when the polka dots happened to line up right in the middle.

I was thinking I might do a tutorial on making bias tape, since I mentioned it in the post of Sawyer's bibs. Of course, as soon as I had that thought, lo and behold I saw two different tutorials on making bias tape! It's probably better this way. Dana does such thorough and fun-to-read tutorials, so I'll link to hers. She also has another tutorial on applying bias tape. I didn't realize there was more than one way to do this!


From MADE:



Wish me luck with the birth (and on finishing all my projects before then)!

New Cover, Old Boppy

With just over two weeks left 'til my due date I'm going into serious nesting mode. Can you tell? Taking all my baby boy things and making them look new and girly! Latest project: Freshen up the Boppy pillow.

One of my sisters commented to me recently that I have a strange baby girl style. I guess she meant that I use green, blue, and brown just as much (or more!) than pink and purple. I have nothing against the more traditional baby girl colors. I just happen to really like green, blue and brown! And who can resist this beautiful floral pattern?

The minky dots on the other side are so soft. I got the idea from a Boppy cover that another sister of mine recently purchased (below). In fact, I used her new Boppy as inspiration for most of this. Aren't the tulips cute?

 Her cover has a zipper straight across the top (or bottom?) of the pillow, but I decided to put mine around the back where it wouldn't be seen as much. Also this way it doesn't look upside-down when I choose one side over the other.

You know I love my rick rack! I sewed the rick rack just on one side of the zipper flap, taking care not to sew over the zipper itself. I also added a little handle for easy carrying, as I imagine I will be carrying the pillow up and down the stairs a bit for feeding time.

Just for kicks, let me show you the old Boppy cover I made before my oldest was born. This is the same Boppy pillow! Way back then I covered all my indoor baby gear with this white and blue checked fabric so everything would match in our crowded one-bedroom apartment. This was actually cute for boys' fabric back in 2004! Fabric has come a long way since then. Or maybe now I just know where to shop!  (By the way, throwing the Boppy in the washer and dryer does wonders for the fluff level of the pillow, as well as the dust mites.)

I can't wait to see my baby girl sleeping like that!

Kids' Personalized Valentines

It's February! The lovely month of valentine cards, hearts, chocolate (oh wait, that's every month), and when my boys' favorite colors temporarily change from blue and green to red and pink (and more pink this year than ever!).

When I was growing up my family had a tradition of making valentine cards for each other. I still try to carry on that tradition, and I've even started getting the boys involved. But I quickly tire of the commercial cartoony valetines from the stores. Yes, they're inexpensive and easy, and even fun. But every now and then it's nice to do something more personal. With the baby due in a couple weeks I'm not making any promises about fancy cards this year. But I was quite pleased with what we did last year. I've been saving them to share with you:

Last year we made our own cards to print and send. First we started with a photo shoot. Five-year-old Alexander was great at doing all sorts of funny (and scary) poses, as well as sweet ones. Lincoln's pictures just came from photos we already had.

I made a letter-size template in Photoshop, and let Alexander go wild. At the same time I made it a learning experience, as he had to do the typing himself. He "drew" the hearts how he wanted and chose the sayings, pictures, and colors. He got quite creative. I made sure we had some sweet and normal ones to send to the grandparents, and let him send the silly ones to his cousins. (One of them asks, "What do you want for Christmas?" Yes, crazy and nonsensical, but it shows his personality.)

Lincoln's template was fairly uniform, but I did switch it up with four different pictures.

I had the valentines printed on cardstock, then I cut them up with my handy paper slicer. In the meantime I had also made a spreadsheet list of all the relatives and friends to send cards to (with Alexander's input, of course).

Alexander did almost all the hand writing himself using the list I had printed for him. He checked off each name after he wrote it. I was proud of him for doing such a big project.

Lincoln, not even two years old at the time, just scribbled on most of his cards while I wrote the names in for him. I had to make sure to place a new card in front of him every couple seconds, and even then we didn't get his cute scribbles on each card. But we got pretty close.

And now... I'm going to share a simple template with you. This is the one I used for Lincoln. Save it, print it, and paste your own pictures on top.

Pink Valentine Template - Here
Blue Valentine Template - Here

Enjoy!

Or, if you plan on making your own, here are some additional ideas:
-To save time: Have the child design just one card and duplicate it, making them all uniform.
-To save time: Make your own templates without involving the kids. They might still enjoy signing their names and addressing them, especially with their own picture on it.
-To save money: I don't have a color printer, and so the 8.5x11" color copies can get expensive when printing a lot. Try making the templates in 4x6" format and get them printed as photos for cheaper (Although the photos might be harder to write on).
-Just for fun: Make a space for drawing pictures. Or do what my friend did a few years ago and have the kids simply draw a picture, then duplicate and print that as the card.

By just modifying our existing template, my kids might send out valentines this year, after all.
Happy crafting!

P.S. I just added the "You might also like:" widget with hopes that it would link to related posts i.e. for this post have links to other valentine posts. But it seems more random than that, at least right now. So here's just an additional direct link to all my posts labeled "Valentines".

Links to more cute Valentine ideas and printables:

Candy bag toppers from I Am Mamma Hear Me Roar

Heartbreaker printable on MADE

Love Mail Valentines by Noodlehead

Love, Lily Lollipop holder valentine on Grosgrain