Valentine's Gifts

We have had so many huge things in the works that I am way behind on posting but wanted to quickly share the valentine's gifts Echo gave to her friends at our preschool coop. A lot of kids in our group have dietary restrictions including a lot of gluten free folks as well as some vegetarians and some that don't eat sugar. Echo and I came up with the idea of giving honey sticks for Valentine's day since it is a sweet treat that met everyone's needs. I cut out the heart shape and then had Echo decorate them. They turned out really cute and they were a big hit with everyone! Definitely a solid choice for a relatively healthy Valentine's day treat.

Home Made Birthday Gift of the Year: The Perfect Picnic Blanket

Sorry for the bad picture, it is all rumpled from being rolled up in our closet

Still no baby so I am trying to squeeze in a few last blog posts I have been meaning to do. Unfortunately I have been feeling lousy and very very tired so I didn't take any decent pictures of this project but you'll have to take my word for it that it turned out great!

I try to do home made gifts as much as I can (and supplement with store bought, I love giving gifts!) so for Eric's Birthday this year I made him a gigantic picnic blanket! We did a ton of picnic dates in the early days of our relationship, when I was in grad school and he was out of work and money was tight to say the least. Now that we have a little one (and one on the way) going out to eat can be really difficult for different reasons. Picnics however are a great kid friendly activity, we can get in a date night and bring the little ones along too! I have been eyeing the awesome picnic blankets that have a waterproof side for a while and decided to make one of my own this Summer. You can find the tutorial I used here. I love this version because it is extremely large but still folds up small so you can store it in your car, plus it has pockets for storing your goodies!

Close up of the fabrics

It uses a lot of fabric so it can be expensive to make but I saved up some coupons I had for Joanne's and was able to spend a little less that way. It was very easy to make because it was all straight lines but a little tricky just because there was so much fabric to work with. Anyway, it turned out lovely and I can't wait to get some use out of it when the weather cools down, I see a lot of picnics in our future this Fall!

Valentine Coffee Cozies

I don't have much time for blogging on this lovely sunny day but wanted to quickly share a little Valentine's day project I whipped up for my parents. We often go out for coffee together so i had the idea to sew some coffee cozies using some of my scrap fabric and turned the whole thing in to a cute card! They came out really cute and were a breeze to make, you just need a cardboard coffee sleeve to use as a template.

For Eric I made a restaurant passport that we can "stamp" with stickers each time we try a place on our list. it will also give us a good list to work from when we are trying to decide where to go on date nights. He also got a pair of cozy slippers (which I did not make) and a card.

For Echo I gave her a little felt bag with hello kitty crayons and glitter glue pens in it. Apparently this is the best gift you could give a  one and a half year old girl because she absolutely adores it, to the point where she had a huge screaming meltdown when we took it away from her at bath time. She needs a lot of help using the glitter glue pens but is enjoying experimenting with them. She loves that her new crayons have a picture of hello kitty on the label. She keeps pointing at it and saying "gat!" which is how she says cat.

I hope everyone had a happy Valentine's day and got lots of quality time with their loved ones!

Home Made Christmas Gifts

Now that Christmas is over I can reveal my home made presents from this past year. I didn't get as many done as I would like but here is what I ended up giving.

For my Dad and Eric I made these handy fire wood totes. I can't find the tutorial I used anywhere now but they were really easy and fun to make. It's always so hard to think of good hand made gifts for guys and these were the perfect thing.

For Echo's baby friends I sewed some little bath time buddies out of terry cloth. They are basically just wash clothes but so cute! I packaged them with little travel sized baby shampoos.

For my mom I made my first attempt at making an encaustic collage. It was definitely harder than I thought but fun to play with. I think I'd like to get a book and learn more about this process in the future.

My grown up friends got home made bees wax candles and a locally made food item (not made by me but bought at a cool store in Marietta which sells locally produced items).

That's it for this year but if I end up having time and fortune smiles on me I am going to try to work on some home made goodies for Valentines day.

Homemade Gifts

Now that Christmas is over I can reveal some of my homemade gifts that I worked very hard on from October onward. I already showed you the sweater kitten that I made for Echo but here are a few others I've been working on.

This first one was a recycled sweater blanket I made for Eric. It's a great, cozy little lap blanket perfect for curling up to watch tv with. I got all the sweaters from a thrift store for 3 to5 dollars each and I used 6 sweaters total. I also sewed a cozy flannel backing on that I got on sale at Joanne's. This one took me a while but it was well worth it and I was pretty pleased with the results.

For Eric's mom, dad and sister I made scarves just like my first project that I did on my sewing machine. These are so easy and fun to make and I knew they would turn out reasonably well so they would make good gifts.

Lastly I made a flower necklace for my mom out of recycled t shirt material. I chose the softest shirt I could find and used fabric glue to add it to a felt backing.

I also made a plastic bag dispenser for my dad but I didn't get a picture of this. They are really easy to sew and help de-clutter your space quite a bit.

In addition to giving homemade gifts this year I also received some pretty great ones. My mother in law sewed some storage bags for us and my sister in law did paintings for everyone. My mom made some soft fabric blocks for Echo and painted a picture for her nursery. Best of all my brother wrote a book of short stories for Echo and had my dad do the cover illustration! I am blessed to have such a talented and thoughtful family!

I also got some new sewing supplies for Christmas so hopefully by next year I'll be a pro and make everyone even better presents :-)

A Tour of Baby Echo's Room

Since I am now on maternity leave I am in full nesting mode. I've been working hard to clean and organize the house (especially the nursery) so that everything will be ready when Echo makes her big debut. I finally have the nursery cleaned and most of the baby things put away, at least it's one room in the house that is ready! I feel like so much love has gone in to this room and I am so grateful to everyone who contributed, especially those who made items for the room with their own two hands. It makes it such a special place and it radiates warmth and love. Here is a little tour around the room :-)

View of the changing table area (my dad's old childhood desk with a changing pad on top). On the end nearest the camera I have hooks storing my travel changing pads and a beautiful handmade bag by my friend Aileen which is currently holding extra cloth diapers. 

Overall view of the room, it was dark today so the lighting isn't great but you get the idea

Echo's toy shelf, complete with handmade pillows spelling her name from my friend Joanna

Handmade blanket under the changing table along with her other blankets, wipes and hand sanitizer at the ready, extra diapers, covers and diaper cream hanging above the changing area. I also installed an led touch light above the changing area for nighttime diaper changes. 

More diaper storage, extra wipes and baby toiletries 

art for Echo's room, the bottom one was a wedding gift from a coworker and the top one is an original watercolor I bought in Puerto Rico (Echo's first trip overseas, even though she was still in my tummy)

Wooden shelf for holding small toys, I also put our wedding cake toppers on here so mommy and daddy can watch over her :-)

The quilt hanging over the rocker was made by one of Eric's family members for us, the rocker was one that my mom used to rock me on as a baby and she and dad refinished it for me. We added a little clip lamp for reading and you can see my awesome diaper bag to the left of the rocker. 

My shelf of children's books and a cute cloth covered box which is currently storing her nice baby blankets. 

Crib with baby quilt from my friend Mary and a mobile made by one of Eric's family members

More art, these are all from etsy. 

 I'm so excited to have Echo's room all ready! Can't wait for her to get here!

A DYI Birthday Gift

Wow I have been really remiss in my blogging this past month! Blame it on the fact that I am 9 months pregnant and had a crazy last few weeks of work. I am now officially on maternity leave and have some extra time on my hand which is lovely. Maybe I will finally get caught up! So anyway, I'm going to start with some DYI projects that I've been meaning to blog about and then I will catch everyone up on what I've been doing lately.

This project is from all the way back in July, for Eric's Birthday specifically. As part of our push to save money (which is still going awesomely by the way!) we have been wanting to look in to making more gifts instead of buying. It's more personal and I'm pretty crafty when I put my mind to it so why not? Something that Eric really likes are those little moleskin notebooks. They are the perfect size to carry in his pocket and jot down ideas on. Him being the engineer that he is he likes them to have graph paper instead of regular paper so I decided to make a few for his birthday to add to the store bought gifts I got him.

For the cover I used scrap cardboard, the inside pages are just regular graph paper that I cut down to  a manageable size. One advantage of using graph paper is that it's easy to cut straight because of all the grid lines :-) 

I used an awl to poke holes through both the inside pages and the cover and stitched it up with embroidery thread.  

Lastly, I used fine tip sharpies to decorate the covers. 

This is a great, easy and cheap homemade gift. I would definitely do this in the future for stocking stuffers and the like. I think I may try screen printing the covers in the future and see how that turns out. If you are looking for a fun and easy project you should give this one a try :-)

Baby Quilt by Maru!

Yesterday I received a very special baby present in the mail from my good friend Mary (aka Maru). She is an amazing quilter and all around crafty type and you can see some of her work on her blog http://maruskicreates.blogspot.com/

When Mary heard I was pregnant she contacted me about doing a custom baby quilt. I was over the moon about this! We talked briefly about what colors and styles I liked and she sent me sketches of the whole process and later photographs.

Well the quilt arrived yesterday and I have to say that it is absolutely breathtaking! It is such an honor to have hand made gift of this quality from someone who is dear to me, I know it will be treasured forever.

Doesn't it look so pretty on Echo's crib?

I am already having to fight to keep the cats off of it, they want to claim it as their own :-) I can't wait for little Echo to get here (6 more weeks!), I will definitely be photographing her with this as a backdrop.  Words can't express how grateful and touched I am by this special gift, thanks so much Mary!

The Best Gifts...

Christmas has come and gone already and we are still basking in holiday cheer. We had a fabulous Christmas at home with my family and even though everyone came down with a nasty cold we all got everything we wished for and had a lot of fun hanging out together. We scored some really awesome gifts this year (like a waterproof camera and a shiny new coffee maker) but the presents that stood out the most were the incredibly touching hand made gifts.

My new terrarium, lovingly hand planted and arranged by my parents. 

My mom made me this awesome book of my artwork through the years, such a great idea!

Seriously, if you have someone artistic in your life this is an amazing present to make them. I was so touched and loved looking back at all my old drawings and sketches

And last but not least my dear friend Joanna painted us this beautiful watercolor of our house! I am so excited about this! Still looking for the perfect place to hang it.

Most importantly I got to spend some time with the people I love most, my amazing family. It just wouldn't be Christmas without them.

PS, the cats also got just what they wanted for Christmas,

Happy Holidays y'all!