Category — DIY

I obviously couldn’t just let the burp cloths be regular old burp cloths.

obviously.

Edit: These were super easy to make. I purchased cloth diapers from Target (I think Gerber brand?) and simply sewed them to regular cotton fabric that I had on hand. Right sides together (although there isn’t a right side to the cloth diaper) leaving a gap at one end, I just went around once, pulled inside out, pressed and then went one more time around. They took no time at all and now I have some super cute burp cloths!!

I think I have said it before… Bryan and I were very picky with our crib bedding. Picky as in we didn’t like a single bedding set we saw. Scratch that, we didn’t like a single affordable bedding set we saw. Sure, Dwell has some non-cutesy ones, but at a price we just didn’t want to pay. Which led me to making our bumpers and this weekend, to making the crib skirt.

It was surprisingly difficult to find a plain white crib skirt that wasn’t ruffled. So I took matters into my own hands (obviously). A quick trip to IKEA, a $5 white twin sheet and about 30 minutes and voila, a basic, inexpensive crib skirt. (Our crib came with a drawer for the bottom of the crib, but we didn’t like the amber color, so we left it out. Right now there is a plastic big storing some blankets and such living under there.)

Nothing fancy, and I only had to hem one edge, since it was already ready to use! Much easier than buying a few yards of white fabric.

This year I gifted certain people a little something that I think I will have to start doing every Christmas. For each person I donated one weeks worth of meals (You can do it here!) and then included a Starbucks gift card. I made little fabric envelopes out of some Christmas flannel fabric that I had and I must say, they turned out pretty cute!

I printed out little cards that explained the gift, and then used some of my lime green tape to reenforce the edges. I didn’t have a pattern or anything for the little fabric envelopes, and I went through a few practice ones before I got the proportions right. Starbucks was out of their Christmas themed cards, but the green mugs worked out perfectly! A long red ribbon finished out the pieces.

I’ve been home sick the last few days so I took some time to finish a little project I had waiting.

I have had this plain, wood, glass-less frame for probably over two years, just waiting to be beautified. I finally got around to asking Bryan to paint it white for me and then I had my mom use her staple gun to attach the ribbons. It will be used for Christmas cards right now and then will move into the nursery to hold pictures, cards, whatever!

Recently I designed these Save the Dates for my lovely friend Natalie. I love how they turned out and can’t wait to do the invitations!!

The best part: my little sister hand drew the succulents and peonies for me, then I imported them into Illustrator and digitized them. Thanks Megan!!

Well, I finally finished the bumpers. They really weren’t that bad to make, but I hope I don’t have to do it again for a while. I used the pattern from Lotta’s book and they didn’t turn out half bad.

We wanted something bright and cheery and not too babyish and this yellow fabric was perfect. I used white ribbon for the ties, and stitched the ends closed with alternating yellow and blue thread. If we have a girl next and the bumpers are still good I figure we can just switch out the blue thread for pink and we will be all set.

We also picked up a few yellow and blue baskets from World Market this past weekend, which fit perfectly in our IKEA Expedit.

(don’t mind the hardware box and tools on the shelves.. those will be gone before baby comes!)

The nursery is getting closer, but there is still a lot to do and not very much time left to do it!

Week 33. The belly just keeps getting bigger, my hormones are making me one emotional lady, and thanks to the 86 degree weather here today my feet are nice and swollen. Sweet. But with only 6 weeks or so to go, I am a little sad to think that this part of my life is almost over. Being pregnant has been such a blessing, and I have been very lucky to have a very easy time with it all. Although I am starting to get a little uncomfortable having a 4+ pound baby swimming around inside of me, and I can not wait for him to make his debut and to hold him in my arms, I am really going to miss feeling him inside of me, wondering if what I am feeling is a knee, elbow, heel…

We had my sister take this picture of us Friday night while picking out our Christmas tree and we liked it so much we made it our Christmas card picture. This year I did a simple text design (I didn’t get a picture of that side of the card for some reason) and then I used fabric tape from Paper Source to secure the picture. A silver envelope sealed and finished with some more fabric tape at the bottom of the enclosure and that was it! They are all stacked up and ready to go out tomorrow.

Feels good to have those done! Just a few more gifts to buy, a lot of wrapping to do and a ton more Christmas movies to watch. 2 weeks might not be enough time…

Here is another little free download, in case you are looking for some better-than-basic labels for your holiday cards! You can download them here, or from my Downloads page. They work with Avery labels, 8 to a page (they didn’t provide a number, but you can see which ones here.) Also, the template does not include the outlines, I provided those here for you too see what they would look like.

Download the PDF.

If you wanted to, you could print these out on card stock and use a tag punch to turn them into gift tags. Enjoy!

I wanted to share some gift tags that I created tonight, in case anyone out there is interested! Feel free to download them! You can find these, as well as my activity booklet, available for download on my downloads page.

I suggest printing these on 8 1/2″ x 11″ white card stock, trimming the tags and then hole-punching them at the top.