Big Girl Room Revealed!

I thought I would display some shots of how the BGR ended up looking. I am so happy with it and my daughter has a whimsical, girly place to lay her head every night :)

The white sleigh bed was the inspiration starting point. I found it at Salvation Army before we even got pregnant with Miss C's sibling. I went home and researched the company that was on the plaque on the bottom of the headboard. It turns out they are big on childrens furniture and all of their trundle beds are priced over $700!! I told my husband what I found and we went back that night and brought it home for $117 since all furniture was 25% off that day. It really is a good solid, heavy piece of furniture and will allow us to use it for many years in her room.  Of course, there are the curtains, nightstand and mobile I made her as well. She got a pink and green comforter that looks like a patchwork quilt so we stuck with pink with bits of green for the rest of the room.

The princess rug is another something I found at a mom2mom sale for $8. It comes with teacups, saucers and a teapot so you can have princess tea parties. I can't wait until the day we do that :)

Both of these toys were rummage sale finds. The doll set has a high chair, rocking cradle, bathtub, sink and lots of storage underneath it. I got it for $10 and it is starting to overflow with not only her few dolls but any stuffed animals that may need loving. The desk is a little tikes piece that my mom found for $5 and Miss C LOVES to sit in that chair and color or cause other trouble. On the wall is the vinyl sticker I like to call 'paint by numbers from hell'. It was 105 separate little pieces that took me over an hour to figure out. I had to find each piece on the 'map' they give you to help put it together and then go and find it on the sticker sheet. Of course none of these numbers could go in any order. I promised my husband this thing was staying up for YEARS after all that work! We got it at Target for less than $20.

This is a better shot of the curtains with the nightstand. But, this is an even better closeup shot of the nightstand that I took while it dried.

 Once again, the dresser we redid. It holds her name blocks and picture frames I made. The top of this thing is always covered in stuff now. I try to stay on top of keeping her room neater than mine but nobody's perfect. The shelf on the wall is also a project I re-did and the butterflies are more vinyl stickers we got at Jo-Ann's for 40%.

My husband is also very happy with it alll but most especially on how much I saved him. I think he is finally impressed with how much I am able to do with so little to spend :)

Thrifty updates

The big girl bedroom was finally finished a few weeks ago!

I decided to post all of my halloween crafts before revealing any new projects though. But, with Christmas projects on the horizon I have to get them in now. Plus, everyday gets me one day closer to my due date and I have so much to do before then :)

I bought this bookshelf storage thingy at a garage sale for $3 about 2 years ago for my mom. She had those colorful plastic bins on it to store toys in the playroom in her house. But, as the number of her grandchildren grows, so does the number of toys! We had been looking for something to use as a nightstand of sorts in Miss C's room when we were at their house one weekend and it was sitting in the hall. My mom said she was waiting for someone to take it to the curb. It was pretty beat up when I bought it and our kids had added to it so she was just going to trash it.

It came home with me and we got to work. My before picture was taken AFTER my husband had sanded it down:

We painted it white to match the other furniture and I found some scrapbooking paper I liked and Mod Podged it on there. This was a big project for me. I had never done such a big area of mod podge before or on something that I needed to be perfect. I re-did the top twice-thank goodness it's water soluble! Then I did research and got out an old credit card and used that to smooth it out and I was happy with my second attempt. I really love the overall final look of it:

It has many more of her books and trinkets on it now and is the perfect size for what we wanted. That pretty cool lamp was found at a mom2mom sale and I think it adds the perfect bit of diva :)

The last project for the big girl room took me forever to finally get to. And, it was the easiest-there is no method to my craft madness!

I found a 52x90 curtain panel at Salvation Army a long time ago. It was $2.99 and I thought it was beautiful and of course a great quality; very thick and sturdy. I really had no idea what I would use it for but I thought it would come in handy eventually.

I had brainstormed over a few ideas of how to use it in the BGR and finally decided to just use it as a window treatment just like it was intended. Except I needed two short panels so I cute it in half and made a spot for the rod to go through on the bottom half and just did a basic hem on the top half that I cut. I added some pink rick rack along the bottom that I got for $3 at Jo-Ann's. For $6 I got beautiful curtains for my daughter's room.

Halloween Headband

I joined Pinterest about 4 weeks ago. One of my friends had invited me-I didn't even ask. I had heard about this place all over the internet and it seemed EVERYONE and their brother was begging for someone to invite them. This must be something good.

I must admit I don't get it. I am not addicted. I don't even go on everyday. Is there something I'm missing?

Yeah, I have several boards and add to them every once in a while but I think I would have survived without it. So far.

It has given me lots of inspiration and ideas for projects so it isn't a bad thing at all. In fact I saw things like this headband all over pinterest for Halloween and I thought: "I could do that!"

I googled some directions for the rose thingy's and got to work.

I bought two of those fabric quarters for $1.99 at Jo-Ann's and used maybe a 1/4 of each one. I found the glitter netting stuff with the rest of the halloween decorations and craft stuff. It was 2.99 but I went three weeks before the holiday so of course everything was already 50% off. I made the rosettes, attached some bling I had on hand and glued the whole thing to felt in the order I wanted and cut it out of the felt. I added the netting to the felt first and then put the flowers down on that. I sandwiched my headband between the felt that held the flowers and another plain piece of felt and I was happy with it.

I am not happy with how my pictures turned out so please forgive me.

I am looking forward to wearing a lot this weekend....we have several trick or treating and other Halloween events to go to and then there's the big candy night! I think I could re-do this for any event or holiday by changing the colors and embellishments.

Happy Halloween to you!

Haunted house and a Treat Bag!

These, again are both crafts that I made last year...when I first got back into crafting. And went crazy with it.

But, since I didn't have a blog I can feature them now.

The haunted house was originally a unfinished bird house from Michael's. I don't remember what I paid for it though. I painted it black, mod podged some halloween themed scrapbook paper on the two sides of the roof and added some other embellishments that I found in the scrapbook section. I thought about putting it on a candlestick or something this year to give it height but I never did. Maybe next year. Or the one after...

I made this treat bag that I originally found here at eighteen25 (one of my first craft blog obsessions!) As you can see from the picture on the website and my picture I didn't get too creative with mine. I made mine look pretty much just like the one they made. I love it and hope my daughter uses it for years to come and am planning on making one next year for her sibling. It folded up nicely for storage this past year and when I pulled it out of the box and fluffed it up a bit it looked as good as new. So much easier than trying to store those buckets!



DIY No-sew Halloween Costume

I finally finished the halloween costume I promised to my niece. Yes, if you haven't read my entire blog yet I LOVE my nieces and do so much for them since my sister is craft-challenged :) I was planning on making my daughter a costume but when I found the perfect frog at a Mom2Mom sale for $5 that would keep her so warm, I changed my mind!

My niece decided months ago what she wanted to be and I told my sister it would be SO easy....it was! And, very inexpensive if done right.

These are the main characters in this project and I will see if you can guess what my niece will be going as this year:

If you guessed a cute little cowgirl from a big movie, you'd be right!

My husband and I babysat for our nieces back in the springtime and we watched Toy Story 3 with them. At first they did NOT want to watch this movie. I think they are afraid of the unknown and they had only seen a few minutes of the first Toy Story and freaked out. But, we took our chances and they LOVED it. In fact it was all they could talk about the next mornng. Thus, began an obsession with Jessie for my oldest niece. She loves Jessie and squeals with glee anytime she sees anything with an image of Jessie. So, Halloween planning began long ago.

My mom bought the jeans at another Mom2Mom sale for $1 since they would not be wearable outside the costume after this. We searched everywhere for a shirt and my sister finally gave in and gave me one of their $5 outlet store shirts they wear under their uniform jumpers. Jessie has a shirt with the buttons all the way down but ours works just as good. I got the cow print fabric on sale for $3.99 a yard at JoAnn's and only used 1/2 a yard. The felt squares were .29 each and used two whole ones. My niece is an average sized 5 year old if that makes any difference to this project :) The rest of the things I had on hand but I also needed red fabric paint, fabri-tac and white grosgrain ribbon.

For the pants I started by folding the jeans in half and tracing one leg at a time:

Don't go all the way up to the waist though since Jessie's are more like chaps. Isn't the little rufle on the bottom of the jeans a cute touch? :)

Once traced I cut my material and attached it to the jeans with the fabri-tac glue. I only did it on the four main sides of the leg and not the middle  since you would be able to see the glue lines through the material-it's very thin. I set them aside to dry and began working on the shirt.

I folded the arm to the back and the collar inside the shirt so the seams would be more visible. Then I laid my felt on the shirt and found the seams with my pencil and just followed the lines of the shirt with my pencil to trace them on the felt and had my basic piece. You need one for each side of the chest with room for the buttons in between. I also attached these to the shirt with the fabri-tac. I used the red fabric paint at this point to make the designs on the yellow felt. I Googled a picture of Jessie to make sure I got it exacly right. I would highly recommend having a good picture of her on hand for this.

I used about 3/4 of each square for the shirt and then took the last 1/4 piece of each felt square to make the sleeve cuffs that Jessie has. Seriously, Google it. They were just a long, wide rectangle of fet that I painted the same curly cue desing on. Once dry I cut three pieces of white ribbon for each cuff and hot glued the ends together to make a little loop and glued them to one inside side of the cuff. I added a piece of velcro on each inside end so they would stay on my nieces little wrists.

Now I was done and I could't wait to see her in it. I realized after I was done that Jessie had a belt and my costume didn't. The pants have no belt loops so we would have to brainstorm that one but my sister  told me not to worry about it so our Jessie doesn't have a big belt. I was going to just embellish a red dollar store foam hat for her but my sister treated my niece to a 'prize' for doing something or achieving something and my niece picked out Jessie's hat at the Disney store for her reward. I think she got it on sale for about $8. The boots are something my niece saw at Gymboree and proclaimed that she HAD to have them to be the 'real' Jessie. My sister got them on sale for $9.99. So, the costume itself cost me about $8 to make and had I made the cheap hat and she wore her own shoes it would have come to about $10 but it came out SO CUTE!!

When she had it on she came running into the room and threw herself at me in a big hug she was so excited. She kept thanking me and thanking me and told me how excited she was to show her friends at school. I can't wait to see her in the Halloween parade the kindergarten class puts on :)

 

 

I'm up for the challenge!



Jack-O-Lantern cake

This past weekend was the big fundraiser at my nieces' school. Not only are they in Kindgerten and Pre-3 full time this year but my brother-in-law works in the parish offices and my sister, their mom, is a teacher there now too. So, they have to put in volunteer time as parents AND staff. Plus, this is something for my two perfect and absolutely wonderful nieces so the whole family is willing to help :) My mom cooked up a storm: two kinds of cupcakes, two kinds of brownies and halloween cookies galore. She packed them all in pumpkin themed wrap and sent them to school on Friday for the bake sale portion of the event. My sister called her that morning after getting to work to tell her how happy and excited the 'bake sale ladies' were with everything. Come to find out they weren't getting as much in as they normally do (they ended up getting a TON of stuff in later that day and sold out by Saturday night!) and they had just found out that the lady who makes them a few fancy cakes to raffle off or sell for a bigger price wasn't going to make them anything this year. They had no 'big' eye catching item. I wanted to help and since I know how to basically decorate cakes with the flowers and all that fancy stuff I wanted them to have a special cake. But, I was already down at my mom's house for the day and had none of my tools so I knew it would have to be relatively 'easy'. I found the instructions for this cute little guy over at Family Fun and I am so happy with how he turned out and how much fun he was to make. My mom helped me out a LOT so I think that was part of the fun! I used two bundt pans, three Betty Crocker Spice Cake mixes (so GOOD!!) and two tall cans of whipped frosting. The stem is a ice cream cone and the face is flattened and cut out gumdrops.

I have a few things I did differently and a few tips to offer.

-if you are making this for an event at your own home it's great. If you are making this for something where you will have to transport it-be careful!!! He did not look like the picture once he got to the bake sale..I had to do some damage control because he shifted between the layers. If I ever do another one and have to move it I will definitely put dowels in a few spots.

-I couldn't find a green ice cream cone so I bought a regular one and planned on covering it with green icing. I changed my mind once home. My mom had green sugar crystals and Karo syrup. I simply covered the cone with syrup via a basting brush and then sprinkled the crystals all over it. I let it dry and it was perfect.

-When you dip the pieces of the face in the chocolate let it dry or cool a bit. You can see my fingerprints in a few places where I touched it while trying to get them in place as soon as the chocolate was applied...oops!

I don't know who ended up winning the raffle but I have heard it was a hit with the kids and they ended up having to come up with a cover so the little fingers would stop touching it!

Definitely something I will try again in the future :)

A ghostly re-purpose

This is one of my favorite Halloween decorations this year and I don't know why. I made it last year-maybe it's because it was so cheap and easy. Or maybe it's because it's spooky but in a cute way.

I'm talking about that ghostly guy on the right :)

He started out as a $1 purchse from Salvation Army-it's a sconce cover, I think.

I simply painted the inside with mod podge and then sprinkled it with TONS of white glitter-be sure you do this over a piece of paper or a box top or something because this project got extra glitter everywhere! I used my black paint pen again to make the face and tied some halloween ribbons around the little piece at the top and was done. So quick and inexpensive. I put one of those LED battery operated tea lights underneath him too...that's the best part! My daughter makes me turn him on everyday...she even wants him on during the day when you can't even really tell he is lit up but he's cute nonetheless so who wouldn't want him glowing? :)