All in Crafts
Brad's family loves to give little "happies" for just about any occasion. It can be a happy for a hostess that lets you stay at their house (think cookies or a cute coffee mug with hot cocoa), or it can be something cute and small for a holiday. Halloween is our first really good holiday to give Melody a small happy.
For the Alabama/Ole Miss football game, Brad and I agreed Melody should wear a "house divided" outfit. I designed a onesie, and she had some red pants. But I thought a tutu would be perfect. So I made my own so that it could also be "house divided". My best friend and I also have made tutus for all the holidays to wear with cute onesies we are making the babies! Check it out below!
Melody has a TON of headbands. When we first find out we were having a girl, all I could think about was how I wanted cute headbands. I bought quite a few myself, but my cousin gave me a bunch of hand-me-downs too from her little girl. So I needed a way to store all these cute headbands. Check out what I did below!
I use Pixelmator for all of my "main images" on my blog as well as other images I create. For instance, I created my website logo using it, my husband's blog logo, and numerous iron-ons for some DIY shirts (Birthday Shirt and Disney Shirt). We spent approximately $15-$20 2 years ago on it. I would say we have definitely gotten our money's worth. I also have the iPad/iPhone versions as well. I believe that cost around $10. Since my husband and I have family iCloud on our devices, we were able to also share the use of Pixelmator on ALL of our devices (including our Macs).
So for Brad's birthday, I wanted Melody to wear some sort of "Happy Birthday" shirt for her daddy. However, with babies (and kids in general), they grow SO fast. I knew that even if I bought her a generic "Happy Birthday!" onesie, it would be unlikely that she could wear it for my birthday...5 months later. It really wasn't worth the $20 that it would cost to buy one from someone online. I decided to make my own.
For my best friend's baby shower, I wanted to do something with the utensils and napkins to make it easier for guests when they are getting their plates. I decide to make napkin rings so that everything was easy to pick up all at once. Check it out below!
For my best friend's baby shower, I decided to make the favors simple but cute. I wanted something that people might would actually use at some point. A lot of times you go to showers and weddings and end up with favors that you just throw away. I did some research and decided to use candles somehow. I mean people can always find a purpose for candles. Using washi tape, I was able to make some cute and decorative tea light candles for everyone to take home. Check it out below!
So Brad and I cheer for opposite college football teams. We have good reason seeing that we both attended different colleges. I am an Alabama graduate and fan, and Brad is an Ole Miss graduate and fan. It is very, very hard to find house divided things for Alabama and Ole Miss. I could always get something custom made, but I usually want to attempt it myself if I am resorting to that. So I decided to make a door hanger from burlap. It is a super easy craft. It only took me a few days and that was primarily me waiting on paint to dry! See the steps below:
My cousin is having a baby boy in October. We celebrated baby Samuel at her baby shower recently. I struggle to just go and buy a gift without making a basket out of it. I looked over her baby registry, and I decided I wanted to do a bath gift set. Sure, you can go buy pre-made ones, but why do that when you can make your own?!? So I went to Target and started my search. I bought as much bath stuff as I could from her registry. I wanted the "basket" to be the actual bath tub, but our Target did not have the one she registered for, so I had to improvise. Check it out below:
I hear with every baby there is one thing you get a lot of. For some people it is blankets and for others it could be bibs. One thing we did NOT get a lot of was burp clothes. I personally did not want to go pay a lot of money for something I knew Melody was going to just spit up all over. Instead, I decided to make my own (well sort of).
I made a larger diaper cake for my best friend's baby shower, but I decided to use some of the other diapers and ribbon I had left over to make "mini" diaper cakes. I am a huge fan of decorating with items that can either be given to the guest of honor as a gift or that you get to keep yourself. These diaper cakes doubled a cute décor and a much needed gift for the mommy to be. See below!
For my best friend's baby shower, I gave her a couple of options for a guestbook. Since she would be the one displaying it, I wanted her involved to an extent without giving too much away. I found some different options through Pinterest, and I let her pick. She thought it would be cute to have an elephant and balloons that people signed. So I took that idea and ran with it.
The biggest trouble I ran into while pumping breastmilk was not having any free hands. This was troublesome for two reasons. One - this prevented me from being able to feed Melody AND pump at the same time. This was an issue only at night because I did that feeding alone, and I was ready to go back to sleep! Prior to my pumping bra, it was taking me 15 minutes to prep for feeding and pumping, 30 minutes to feed, and 30 minutes to pump. Then I had to clean up, change Melody, put her to bed, then go to bed myself. That was over 90 minutes! The second reason was that my hands would get super tired from holding the breast shields in place while pumping. I sometimes would slide my bra over the bottom of the shields, but it would still leak.
To match my Disney outfit while at DragonCon in 2015, I made my own hair bow. The one I made was really quick and easy! See below:
So now that it is Father's Day, I can share these adorable cards that I made for Brad and our dads. These will work for any dad, grandpa, great grandpa, or you can even switch them up for moms, grandmas, and great grandmas! They will work for just about any card giving holiday as well. Just change up the wording!
For my best friend's baby shower, I decided to design and create the baby shower invitations from scratch. Below is how I did the design, and then I also give some guidance on how I assembled them!
I came up with the idea of making my own wine charms when I was trying to come up with a good party favor. While I actually never used these for party favors, I still think the idea of making your own is ideal for any occasion. And if you aren't a wine drinker, they can still be used on any glass with a stem to help everyone identify their glass! You can easily change out the beads or even the charms to make each one unique!
For my best friend's baby shower, I decided to make her a corsage rather than go buy a generic flower one. A ribbon corsage is actually really easy to make and it makes is a little more special since it is something they can keep forever since it won't die like a flower one.
My mom and I went to Disney for my 30th birthday. I plan to do my trip report soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to share with you my DIY Disney shirt I made. I really wanted a pregnancy Disney shirt. I googled and found some that were going to be around $30-$35, but I knew I could make one for much cheaper. So I decided to give it a try. I designed the shirt myself using Pixelmator. You can either design your own shirt, or you can buy the rights to an image online and just print it yourself. The entire project cost me about $15. See below!
I really wanted to have a gender reveal party for our family and friends to announce the gender of our baby. However, my mom and I were going to Disney in January, and I wanted to know before our trip. This did not line up with my 20 week appointment. Then with the holidays, it was impossible to have a party after finding out at 16 weeks. Therefore, we came up with different ways to tell our families over the holidays. Check out each way below!
