Adorable Christmas Outfits...

My mom and I made some outfits for Lily, my nephew Zaryk & my niece Leighton for Christmas pictures. It's the one time of year when we get professional pics of all 3 kids, so we thought we'd go for something cute and creative this year.

They each wore a long sleeved white t-shirt, which had hand made designs on them. The girls had Christmas ornaments with a bow, while Z had a candy-cane striped tie. The girls also wore hand made tulle skirts in green & red, along with white tights & sparkly shoes.  They are so stinking cute it isn't funny!

For the shirts, we bought cute colored fabric (1/4 yard each), using the same fabric for both Lily & Leighton but alternating the ornaments for a small difference. My mom traced the bottom of a small drinking glass for consistent circles and cut out the ornaments & the tie after fixing the fabric to iron on paper. She then ironed them on the shirts and used fun ribbon as string. She also made a bow with a button to embellish the girls shirts.

For Z, she measured out the length on Lily and drew a decal for the fabric to be cut from. She cut the top "knot" separately, so that we could turn the fabric and have it contrast with the length of the tie. His was definitely the easiest to make.

For the skirts, I used red ribbon and two different colors of tulle. I measured around Lily to get a general idea of how big the skirt should be. I then cut up 5 yards of red & 5 yards of green tulle in 2.5 inch wide strips. I folded a strip in half, laid it under the ribbon and pulled the ends through the loop at the opposite end.

By the way, using shiny glitter tulle will leave everything covered in glitter. We're still cleaning up glitter after almost 2 weeks!

I pulled tight and there you have it! I used Lily as my model throughout, just making sure the skirts would fit. This is a great way to make the skirt-the ribbon simply ties at the back when you've completed it, so you can tie it as tight or as loose as needed. This was helpful, considering Lily is bigger than Leighton (who wasn't around to be "fitted"), so I had to tie one a little tighter than the other.

Cute outfits for cute kids! That's our cutie of a G-pa in the background!

 

 

 

Lily modeling her outfit for Mommy. So festive!

Couldn't wait to share with everyone! Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays! :)

Disney Princess Baby Blankets...Part 2

So, I went shopping this weekend with my mom. We were shopping/buying items to make ridiculously cute Christmas outfits for Lily & my niece and nephew's Christmas pictures. That's a future post-the outfits are seriously adorable. I can't wait to post pics!

Anyway, while we were at JoAnn Fabric, I came across Little Mermaid fleece. Of course I snatched it up. After some more digging, my mom found Disney princess fleece with a nice sized picture of Belle on it. So I grabbed it and got a 1/2 yard cut in each. Now, 1/2 yard is wayy to much for a baby doll blanket, but when you have to cut the middle of the fabric to get the picture you want, you make it work. :)

This morning I sat down to put together the blankets while the girls watched. Evidently, it's very entertaining to watch someone cut down fabric...lol. Anyway, thanks to a comment on my last post (Thanks, Jessica!) I decided to try a different way to edge the blankets. Instead of tying them together, I snipped, cut & crocheted my way into a braided edge. Here's the link for those interested...

Belle's blanket was first, so the edges are a little rougher looking. If you opt to make a doll blanket, I would suggest smaller sections of fabric no wider than 1.5 inches.

Ariel's blanket was next, so it looks a little smoother. Cutting the smaller edges took me a little longer, but with this new method I finished 2 doll blankets in the time it took me to finish baby Rapunzel's blanket last week. Not bad!

 Lily absolutely loves them! The first thing she did with each blanket was cover up her princess babies with their special blankets. Here's what I found when I looked in her room just a little while ago...

What a fun, cute, easy & relatively cheap way to make special blankets for any girl's baby dolls!

I can't wait to try out the new edging on the blankets I'm making this weekend. I have 3 full size blankets to put together and I was dreading the pain that knotting each blanket would give my poor fingers. Now, I can finish them more quickly and with much less cramping in my fingers. Yay!

Disney Princess Baby Blankets...

So, originally I was supposed to knit 3 blankets for Lily's Disney princess babies (Ariel, Belle & Rapunzel). Unfortunately I was not a fan of how they were turning out. I put the needles & yarn down, walked away and haven't looked back for a few weeks. Maybe once the frustration wears off, I'll try again.

In the mean time, I found Tangled fleece at our local Wal-mart, so I bought 15 inches, hoping to make a blanket for baby Rapunzel.

For those who don't know, fleece tie blankets are kind of my thing. I love to make them (so far, my parents, brothers, nephew, niece, husband & daughter have all received one over the course of several past Christmas' as gifts) so I thought I'd try one out for baby Rapunzel. I measured it out, centered Rapunzel's picture as best I could and 30 minutes later I had a finished, albeit tiny, tie blanket.

 Don't mind baby Rapunzel's messy hair-Lily was trying to style it the other day. :) I've decided to buy Disney princess fleece to make blankets for babies Ariel & Belle as well. I don't think I'll be lucky enough to find Little Mermaid & Beauty and the Beast specific fleece, but we'll see.

Lily loves it. She has, in fact, told me to call Santa up and tell him to bring her a Rapunzel tie blanket too. Looks like I'll be making time to add one more tie blanket to my list of gifts to finish up this year!

baby Rapunzel now sleeps in Lily's bed every night, covered in her special blanket. :)

Ok, I kinda suck at this blogging thing...

But, in my defense, it is kind of hard to keep up with when you're watching an 8 month old who does nothing but scream and cry all day. Unless you happen to be holding/carrying him around 100% of the time. Which means that, in addition to the other energetic little ones running around my house, I'm mentally exhausted at the end of the day and have no energy to even attempt anything creative. I'm serious. I feel like my brain is leaking out of my ears some days.

However, on the upside, my latest DIY project was quick, easy and pretty stinking cheap.

I made my own laundry soap. Yep, laundry soap! I'm feeling pretty awesome. The first load of clothes is in the washer right now, so we'll see how it goes. :)

For those interested, I've listed the items & prices below. You can find them in the detergent aisle at Walmart.

And yes, I found this on Pinterest. Which is kind of like crack for DIY, crafty females. I find myself browsing it all. the. time. How did I ever live without it?!

Ok, ok, enough drooling for Pinterest. Onto the laundry soap!

The Ingredients:

1 4lb box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda @ $3.24
1 4lb box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda @ $2.12
1 4lb 12oz box of Borax @ $2.98
3 bars of Fels-Naptha soap @ $.97 per bar
2 containers of (or 3.5lbs) of store brand Oxyclean @ $1.98 per container

So, before taxes the cost was barely over $15. And this is supposed to last 9 months or more! Considering our laundry detergent, even with coupons, is close to $10 per bottle this is an amazing way to save.

The Process:

After grating the bars of Fels-Naptha (I used my food processor, which worked extremely well) you dump all the ingredients into a garbage bag that's stuffed inside of a 5 gallon bucket. Or in my case, a storage container since we didn't have any buckets handy.

Final Product:

This gallon jar cost me $4.97. Now, it didn't hold all of the laundry detergent, so I'm keeping the extra in a rarely used Tupperware container until we need to use it. It's currently sitting on my laundry shelf in the laundry room underneath this little guy.

Yay for saving $$!! Since both Lily and B tend to be rough on clothes, I'll be using 2 scoops per load of laundry. But there's so much that it really should last us a good long time before we run out.

Hope you all found this useful! :)