Here's a little recap of stuff I've made in the past year. I know there's a lot of banter in blog-land about comparing ourselves to each other and about bloggers only posting the best of their lives leaving others feeling inadequate and such. I'm guilty of such comparing (blogged about it
here) and was hesitant to post this at all. But here goes.
You might have read
this post about having a hard time picking out a paint color for Eva's room. I finally settled on a Benjamin Moore color called Turquoise Haze. I love it. Eva
really loves it. Turns out my pink girl has fallen for blue and its her favorite color these days.
I finally Andrew got her room painted up in one day! I got her bed all set up and eventually hung up these tissue paper pom poms I made as decoration for her birthday party. Tutorials for these are
here and
here.
I also got crazy with making button monograms! I posted how I made the capital E on
another blog post.
I made the little one with burlap wrapped around a canvas. I found an
estsy shop that sells these and I decided to create my own. The Capital E is in Eva's room and the lowercase e is in Elise's room.
My grandfather made this dresser. I believe he made my dad paint it and it was gray and in my brother's room while we were growing up. It came away with me when I went to college, we painted it maroon with white knobs . . . gig 'em Aggies!
It got another redo when I was pregnant with Caleb and we put it in his nautical themed nursery. When I got pregnant with Elise, we had to switch rooms around again and it needed to become Eva's. It got repainted in a nice, bright white and I purchased pink glass knobs at Hobby Lobby. I found them on clearance for $2.99 each and bought out all the ones in Conroe and The Woodlands!
These little buckets and watering cans were found at Hobby Lobby on clearance. Eva's birthday is in August and all the summer stuff was on its way out.
I gave them all nice coats of white spray paint, stuck some styrofoam balls inside, tied on some ribbon and had fancy decorations. I LOVED these and felt very proud of myself.
I fell in love with a ruffly shower curtain from Anthropologie, which was ridiculously priced. I can't find it now and I can't even remember how much it was . . . but it was ridiculous.
I did some searching and realized I wasn't the only one in love with it. I found a couple online tutorials (
here and
here). It finally convinced me to purchase a sewing machine. While my mother-in-law was here for a visit, we spent a couple days making this one. The main body is a full-sized white sheet from Walmart. The stripes are made out of twin-sized sheets, also from Walmart. It was quite a project for my first sewing endeavor (thanks for spell check, computer). But honestly Andrew's mom did most of it. I learned many things though . . . My mind doesn't do a great job at engineering something like this.
All the work was worth it. It's beautiful!!! (Except the kids have a hard time opening it by themselves because its so heavy.)
Father's Day of last year
I had the kids each pick out a piece of scrapbook paper out of one of those coordinating packs and trace and cut out their own letter. Then we stepped outside, snapped a quick photo (in terrible, terrible noon sun) with them holding their letters spelling DAD. I had them printed, then glued them on some more paper, added a #1 and slapped them in frames. Happy Father's Day. I was watching some neighbor friends whose mom was out of town, so they made one for their dad, too.
Lastly, Caleb had to be a red, marching ant for his 2nd grade music program. It was in February, so they were clearancing (spell check says that's not a word, but I'm going with it anyway) out their winter stuff. I found this long-sleeved boys polo at Walmart for $5 or $8. Then I found this strong felty fabric at Hobby Lobby for 79 cents a sheet. It's next to the felt, but is sturdier than felt, I don't know what it is. Each sheet was pretty large and I could get two ant legs out of each. I just cut them out and sewed them onto the shirt. I also attached a thread from his sleeve to the middle leg and another from the middle to bottom leg so that they stayed up better.
Since it was February, I found this Valentine's headband at the dollar store. It had two big hearts on the top of the antennae, which I trimmed down to smaller circle-ish shapes. I purchased a package of huge red puff balls at Hobby Lobby and hot glued them to the trimmed ends. Ant antennae!
Thanks for bearing with me on all this crafting. I have done much, much less since the baby was born, but I want to do much, much more since I spend so much time on pinterest! Seriously, we're supposed to be eating dinner in 16 minutes and I have no idea what I'm going to make.
