3 little dollies for 3 little cuties

Say hello to 3 of my favorite little people- my adorable niece and my charming little nephews

For Christmas i wanted to make them something special. So i created a "mini-me" doll for each of them.

This was my first time making boy dolls...i have to say, their little red strip underpants are my favorite part. ;)

Light brown hair, silvery blue eyes and blue overalls for Elias. 

Brown hair, brown eyes and green overalls for Gideon.

And a little blonde hair, blue eyed dollie for sweet Calliope. And a dress, of course, because Calliope is always a lady. ;)

Now, i had a hunch that the little kiddos would probably be fascinated by the novelty of the dolls for a bit but i was determined to "wow" them and i knew the way to their heart was through Angry Birds. Much to Sister's dismay, the 3 have grown quite attached to these new pop culture icons. :) It's really pretty funny.

So, at the last minute i decided the dollies needed some birds too.

I happened to already have these little craft puffs. ( i'm so culturally illiterate, the only colors i thought angry birds came in were red and green! haha). Then i cut out little pieces of felt, drew on them with sharpies and hot-glued them onto the puff. Then i sewed a tiny piece of velcro to the dolls hand and one to the back of the birds so the dolls could "hold" them. :)

It's hard to always know what is going to get kids excited...i know there have been several times we have planned activities or gifts that we thought our kids would love and instead they fell flat...other times we have been shocked at the excitement over the teeniest little things....anyway, its always a gamble.

However, after they had opened the dolls, they each opened their little package of mini angry birds and they were ECSTATIC.  So excited and happy. i got all kinds of hugs and sweetness. i'm pretty sure i could have scratched the dolls all together and they would have been completely thrilled by those little birds that took less than 20 min. to make! Cutest, silliest little kids ever. :) LOVE them.

monogrammed knitted stockings

A good friend commissioned me to put initials on each of her families' stockings this year. 

Since they are knitted stockings the traditional thread monograms wouldn't work as well so she thought i could come up with something. 

Felt worked great.

I used some wool/poly blend, my fabulous sharp little fiskars, a print out of all their initials in a font i liked. (I thought tracing would take too long but since i had super sharp scissors, eye-balling the letters worked just fine.) Then i hand-stitched around the letters. 

It took about 4 episodes of our current favorite netflix tv show to get all 4 stockings done. :)

Now to get some decorating done in my own house!

DIY- Vintage Suitcase Makeover pt 2: map lining

So, after i removed the lovely, but smelly vintage lining and cleaned it reallllly well, i started thinking of what to line it with. My first idea was a vintage bed sheet, which sadly failed. The second idea was using my ever so handy road atlas and it worked perfectly! :


1st Plan : FAIL 
Materials: mod podge and vintage sheet
Method: Pre-treated the fabric w/ mod podge (coated it, then let it dry over night)
Put a 2nd coat on the dry fabric and coated the bottom of the suitcase with mod podge and then slowly tried to cut, fit and press it around the bottom and edges of suitcase
Problem: Did not stick, was not smooth, bunchy corners...majorly annoying

Here's a picture of the stiff, peeling, bunchy corners. I had such high hopes for a cute vintage sheet lining....oh well.

2nd Plan: SUCCESS!
 
Materials: Road Atlas!!, Hot glue gun and a little mod podge
Method: Used smallish pieces of atlas, hot glued around the edges of the paper, put a little mod podge on the center, kept layering, hot glueing, cutting...painted a top coat of mod podge over the top when the inside was completely covered in atlas paper.
Problems: None, except that after the first fail, i was sooo done with the project waaay before it was actually completed. :)

 - the little pieces of paper were able to fit the curved corners perfectly and the hot glue did a great job of keeping it stuck-yay!

If you missed the first part of the Suitcase Makeover project, click HERE

linking to: tutorial tuesday

DIY: Vintage Suitcase Makeover pt 1

I've been on a vintage suitcase mission for awhile now and have been able to find some great deals on some really fun ones. The only down side is, they often have an overwhelming "grandma smell". The first whiff is kinda nostalgic but then its just too much, especially because i'm hoping to actually use these suitcases for storage and don't really want to pass that scent off to everything i put in them.

So, i thought i'd show you how i gave this little blue samsonite a makeover.

STEP 1: Remove the silky lining

              -I could pull out most of it but did need some pliers and then eventually some back-up strength from Handy Andy to rip out the parts that were tacked down.

STEP 2: Once the lining was out, there still remained this decaying fuzz stuff which was the backing to the silky lining. I got it wet with a general cleaner and then used one of these scraper things to get it all off.

STEP 3: It still smelled after all that so i made up a mixture of water and bleach and scrubbed it clean

Ta' Da!

Click HERE  see how i covered the inside!

linking to tutorial tuesday at lollipops

DIY: Map Book Favors

Here's a little how-to for the map book favors i made for ben's birthday party. Super easy, but pictures are fun anyway.

fallishness randomness

If you are in need a some new blog fun and lots of great laughs you should (if you haven't already!) go meet Jami at  hello from the natos.

 She is seriously one of the funniest people ever. 

 But she's also real and honest and her family has a really awesome redemption story.

 jami nato also happens to be quite crafty and that is where i got my inspiration to make these burlap covered pumpkins. Aren't they cute?! I've had several of these fake pumpkins i got for next to nothing a couple of years ago and have never known what to do with them...Now i love them.

here's another little bit of fallishness. 

Have you seen what our fireplace area looked like before we painted it?? Here's a picture just for you.

Blech... I hope this inspires anyone who is on the fence about painting indoor brick. i think it is just about always a very good idea. yes indeed.

Oh and did you notice that super lovely globe in the picture above baby ben's head?? 

My wonderful mom bought it for me at a little vintage craft fair hosted by our favorite family pumpkin farm. It has a little sticker on the front that says 1954!!! and it was only $8. I am in love. I am also in love with the fabulous dust stenciling all over the shelf. It took many weeks of not dusting to achieve that effect.

Well, i guess that's probably all the globe pictures you'd want to see... 

Hope you're having a great weekend...wow, i just said weekend. and its only wednesday. I think i might be looking forward to this weekend a little too much. Five of my best girlfriends from junior high are getting together for a sleepover. This will be the first sleep-over we've had together since we were all 14. Pretty excited about this. :)

linking to lollipops

Book-Inspired Finger Puppets

One of Ben's little buddies had his first birthday just 7 days after his own. For this special guy i bought a book by one of our very favorite children's authors, Sandra Boynton and then made these simple little finger puppets to make it extra fun.

I finished them while watching a movie with handy andy, and besides the teeny scraps of felt all over the couch and the long hot glue strings "EVERYWHERE" (quote by handy andy), it was super easy and lots of fun and i can't wait to make characters from another book.

Speaking of picking out another book, what are your children's book favorites?? I'm kind of wanting to expand our board book library.. i think the majority of what we used to have has been eaten or destroyed by the older 3. Suggestions please :)


linking to  sugar and dots and sewmuchado and let birdz fly

ben's party invites

I don't usually send out real invites to little family parties, but this idea came to me fast and besides, it's Ben's first birthday, and he's adorable...so he deserves a little more effort. ;)

Handy Andy completely refused my request to cut up one of our hardbound world atlases (good thing someone is keeping me in check)...so i had to get creative. Happily i found 2 big US road atlases at goodwill that worked great. And each for only .99.

The rest was super easy: little triangles, pretty card stock and simple white envelopes with a piece of map glued into the flap.

Hopefully these will get me going on the rest of the party planning, which is now 3 days from now. If nothing else, everyone can bring their invitations and stick them to the wall for decoration ;)

diaper box storage

 I've been busy trying to make and keep our school/craft/play room organized, functional and productive... the craft corner is turning out to be the biggest challenge of the room. My goal is to create more white space to make it feel less cluttered and one area that i tackled this week was above my sewing desk. The mismatched baskets full of fabric up on top of the shelf needed to go.  I grabbed 3 empty diaper boxes and did a little painting.

1) first i primed it to help cover the bright colors, then painted a couple coats of blue using some left-over paint samples from Ben's nursery.

 2) When the paint was dry i duck-taped the sides down

And that's it, nice, sturdy, free storage. :)

sad to say good-bye...

....to these 3 little ladies

 I was so very happy to hear that 3 little Canadian girls wanted to adopt them but now that they are all ready to ship out i'm kinda sad to see em go. :)

However, before i did, i thought i'd at least let you meet the newest one. In honor of the little girl she is being given to, her name is Lily-Rose. Isn't that such a sweet name?

She has a chambray body with 2 red vintage buttons, a sweet little yellow skirt with pockets, and long striped seer-sucker legs. oh and a little removable felt pin in her hair.

Her legs are my favorite part, they will be just perfect for chubby little baby hands to grab hold of and pull around the house.
Although when Handy Andy saw her for the first time, he looked at me with a face that kinda said, "ummm, sweetie, did you realize the legs were almost twice the doll's height?? cause, they are. hope you're ok with that." isn't it sweet that he even cares. :-) yep, i'm cool with it and i think the baby will be too.

 Well, anyway, i guess that's all except that i'm afraid my little dollie shop will probably be deserted for awhile now. oh well. :)

quick ruffled gift

I went to Target in search for a baby girl gift last week and found all 4 of these coordinating pieces on clearance and the perfect size for next spring. But....i thought the little white hoodie needing a little sprucing up...besides, all white is kind of an accident waiting to happen so i thought some ruffles in the front would make some nice camouflage. :)

I cut these strips out of some old knit t-shirts. Then i adjusted my tension to a loose basting type stitch that gathered it up all on its own. Then i stretched them out a bit and sewed them onto the jackets.

This quick little clippy to finished it off. This is super simple, but if you'd like a little how-to, you can look at this tutorial HERE.