First Pair of Longies

I made my first pair of longies, for those of you who don't know what longies are (I had no clue a month ago!) they are long pants made out of wool, that can be used for a diaper cover, at this point we are just going to use them for warm pants this winter for Colten, but I love how they turned out!

There was a little hole on the back so I added some contrasting wool and then added more of the same color, I think it looks like a little tale, Stephen said it looks like a bulls eye.

I couldn't get him to look at the camera for the life of me

With the help of dad her is a font view!

and the super cute back again, its big for two reasons, one I wanted it big so he could grow into it this winter, and two because he is wearing a disposable and his cloth diapers are more bulky so it will fill it out more!

For my first try I feel it was pretty successful,

here is the tutorial I used to make my longies

Let Them Eat Cake!

Last week I taught the sisters in my ward how to work with fondant for our weekly meeting. It turned out to be a really fun class with a good turn out.

I showed them how to trim the cake, make a dam to keep the filling from spilling out, and how to do a crumb coat. I have taught a class like this before and somehow I made the same mistake of not taking my frosting out of the refrigerator early enough to let it warm up so it was a little hard to use at first but once I got it going it worked out great.

Here are the ladies, more showed up as the demonstration went on, I didn't get a count but I felt like it was a good group of ladies.

My mom was a great help, you can see her sitting with Colten to my left, Sam was in the nursery playing with the big kids, it was nice to know I didn't need to worry about the boys while I worked.

Here I am showing them how to roll out the fondant and cover the cake, I was working fast and talking as I went so it didn't turn out as smooth as normal but it was good enough for a quick cake.

After I finished my presentation the sisters were given the chance to ask questions, taste the fondant, and decorate a cupcake how ever they wanted using my icing, fondant and tools.

Even some of the kids got in on the fun, we had lots of beautiful cupcakes and lots of fun!

Below is the handout I made with my Fondant recipe and butter cream recipe.

Marshmallow Fondant

Crafty Thrusday: Make Your Own Pillow Buddy

For Christmas I made Sam a lion pillow buddy, after seeing the lion one my sister asked if I would make her a bear pillow buddy. I followed a fellow bloggers tutorial to make the first one,  but I had a really hard time with it because you hand sewed the head and eyes on after everything was done which was really hard and not very secure and the head popped off a few days later, so I figured out a different way to sew the head on. Warning there are lots of photos!

So if you want to make your own pillow buddy this is what you need:

• 1/2 to 1 yard of main fabric
• 1/2 yard of second color (brown on mine) for face and feet
• 1/4 yard (that's the smallest I could get) for nose fabric
• Upholstery thread (helps with hard play!)
• Embroidery thread
• 1 bag of pillow stuffing
• Hook and Loop tape
• Fabric or buttons for eyes
• Optional: Felt for paws on feet.
• Large Paper for making pattern

Crafty Thursday: Birds Nest Wreath

Using the eggs I posted about last week I made this quick and easy wreath.

What you need:

Eggs

Grape vine wreath

Moss

Hot glue gun

Just figure out how you want to nests and eggs to look and use LOTS of hot glue to attach them.

Here is how mine turned out.

Click here to see where I party

Crafty Thursday: Earthy Eggs

So for my birds nest and an up coming craft I wanted eggs to decorate with, but I wanted something a little more earthy looking, I tried to just paint plastic eggs...that didn't work. So I got the idea to use Mod Podge to glue tissue paper to the eggs and then paint over!

Drying after Mod Podging (is that a word...) the tissue paper on. I used a box and toothpicks to hold my eggs so they wouldn't stick to my table.

Then blending different colors, white, yellow, brown, light blue, and light green to make earthy tones and painted! When dry I added a little bit of water to brown and splattered the eggs.

After drying I realized the eggs were a matte finish, and I was wanting more of a glossy one.

So I added more Mod Podge and let dry and they turned out glossy and beautiful! Stay tuned, next week I will show you how I used them!

Click here to see where I link!

Crafty Thursday: Car Seat Recover

My sister gave me a car seat to use for our new baby, only problem it was VERY pink, so I decided to recover it!

First I ripped out the seams holing the different parts of the car seat together, the nice thing was the fabric and batting was surged together for each section making it easy to take apart.

While ripping it apart, I marked darts and other tricky parts with a black marker on the batting

Here is how the darts looked when the stitching is ripped out

next I pinned each piece of the car seat to the new fabric with the batting side up

You can surge the new fabric onto the old, but I just did a zigzag stitch along the original surging line. 

The slots where the straps come through are pretty much big button holes, my machine couldn't make one big enough so instead I did a zigzag stitch catching the original car seat fabric and used a seam ripper to open the slot.

Sewed each section together top first, then bottom, then together in the middle.

Finish off with some bias tape, add a cute baby....

And pink becomes cute green!

Family Friday: Upcycling Jars

Sam and I had a blast upcycling old jars. We took tissue paper, Mod Podge, paint brush and jars and turned them into a work of art!

Sam loved tearing the tissue paper.

I love how he looks when he is focused on doing a task.

Here is the finished product!

They turned out great and I love that I can use it for many different things.

Click Here To See Where I Party!

Crafty Thursday: Birds Nest

This week I made a simple project, a little birds next. My grandmother is so sweet and gives me magazines to look at and I got this fun idea out of a Country Living magazine.

Continue reading to see how to make one for your self!

Family Friday: Hand Paper Flowers

This week Sam and I had some fun celebrating spring by making some fun hand print paper flowers.

Aren't they pretty! I had a lot of fun doing it, Sam had fun to the first flower and then was done, this is probably a project more for older children, so we will definitely doing this again in the coming years. Keep reading to see how to make them.

Crafty Thrusday: Race Car Track

So I am dubbing Thursday Crafty Thursday I know lame name, if you have any better suggestions I would love it!

So this week I have been working on fabric roads and race track for Sam. Here is how I made his race track.

What you need:

• Black Felt
• Green Felt
• Freezer paper
• White paint (I used acrylic because that was what I had)
• Velcro
• Pinking scissors
• Sewing machine

Here is the race track I cut out, I just used a bowl to make the curves, drew it on with a fabric pen and cut.

Then cut out squares of freezer paper and two strips place where you want your finish/start line, remember the freezer paper is where it will be black.

Paint, it takes about 5-6 coats because the felt absorbs lots of the paint, you may need to let it dry and then paint some more.

When dry remove the freezer paper.

At this point I thought I was done, I let Sam play with it and realized it was hard for him to get it to lay flat and when he would drive his car it would move and he would need me to fix it. This got me thinking...

Add green felt to the back, using pinking shears trim the outer edges just to make it look nicer. Pin track on flat and sew on with a zigzag stitch. Make a small strap long enough to wrap around the rolled up track.

Add Velcro to both sides and attach strap to track.

Now its ready to roll up and be put away or to be opened up to play!

Little and Big Brother Shirts

You got a sneak preview to my boys new shirts with the Bleach Pen Letters and the Freezer Paper Stencil posts. Here are the finished shirts!