DIY Animals and Cars Baby's Nursery and Baby Essentials

We finally finished the nursery!  During the last few months of my pregnancy, I decided to make some things for my baby boy.  To be honest, these projects were my "nesting" activities so I went a little overboard, lol. I fell absolutely in love with the cutest nursery fabric called "Animals in Cars" from Joann's Fabric!  So I decorated my baby boy's nursery and made baby essentials coordinating with the animals and cars nursery fabric theme. I was able to find many things from thrift shops for cute decorations such shelves, hooks, pillows, picture frames, his dresser, and chair.  In addition, the nursery essentials and decorations were made by doing several DIY projects that I found on Pinterest. With help from my awesome sister in-law Marilee, we made some incredible baby stuff for my baby boy (beach balls, crinkle baby tag blankets, and a baby blanket)! I also made pillows, bibs, burp rags, receiving blanket and an owl, clouds, and hot air balloon baby mobile!

I Spy Quilt (Animals in Cars and Tools)
We were inspired by Obsessively Stitching Blog to make an I Spy Quilt!  We made our patches 5X5 instead of 4X4. My blanket turned out to be the size of the crib and perfect for baby to play on the floor!

The Baby Pillows

I found pillows and stuffing from a local thrift store for my stuffing, which is a total money saver compared to buying it bulk at the store. I used the following tutorial and template: How to Sew The Slip Stitch and Owl Plushie Template.

Baby Mobile
I was inspired by Craftiness is not Optional to make our own DIY baby mobile.  I hand stitched felt owls, clouds, and hot air balloons by using embroidery thread. I even stuffed them with fiberfill.  I used the following templates: Owl Templates and Hot Air Balloons and Clouds Templates.

Garland
Instead of a curtain or valence, I decided to hang a garland/pennet above the window and below the picture frames or shelves! Here is where I got the Template and Tutorial.

Wall and Shelf  Picture Frames

Boy Subway Art is from Simple Scrapper.
 Button "Z" Wall Art- I glued on tons of buttons that matched his room.
Free vintage owl, elephant, and monkey printables are from Hand Made Home

 Nursery fabric wall art on canvas- I was inspired by Blue Cricket Design
I spray painted a plain picture frame to a blue color and a chalk board to green.
Book Shelves
I bought a couple spice racks from Ikea and spray painted them green, blue, and orange. I bought all the shelves from a thrift store. By the way, the white clock is from Ikea.

"Z "book shelf  decoration (I bought the cardboard Z from a craft store and used Mod Podge to stick the fabric over the letter Z).

Crinkle Baby Tag Blankets 

I used the following tutorial Baby Tag Blanket Tutorial and 8X8 template.

Fabric Beach Balls
 Templates and tutorial are from The Purl Bee.

Car Seat Cover

The matching car seat cover was made by one of my daughter's friends, which happened to be made out of the same fabric we used. It is a perfect car seat cover for on the go!

Receiving Blanket 
I made a rounded  receiving blanket following this tutorial: Receiving Blanket Tutorial. I use this blanket in my baby's car seat!

Burp Clothes and Bibs 
Burp Clothe Tutorial is from Cloud Nine Fabrics
Chenille Bib Tutorial and Template
Bib Tutorial and Template

I'm pleased with my several sewing projects even though they are flawed or not perfect after all I am just a newbie learning how to sew! I look forward to making some other new cute things in the future!

Butterfly 8th Birthday Party

This year I got very creative and frugal by making my youngest daughter's birthday party invitations, Happy Birthday banner, decorations, games, crafts, cupcakes, cake, etc.  The birthday party was big sister's words "epic"! 

 

The Birthday Invitation
Credits: An Affair to Remember and the Blossom collection (butterfly) by Shabby Princess and love you like a sister font.

The Beautiful Birthday Girl

She is wearing a darling butterfly and flower dress with white leggings!

Thank you, Mindi for the pink birthday Barbie!

The Party Guests!

You gotta have a silly picture too!

The Decorations:
Butterfly and Flower Happy Birthday Banner 


Garland Strands
They were hung below cupboards and over the windows in the living room.

Supplies:

Card-stock, scrapbook supplies (I used the Blossom collection by Shabby Princess), brown twine, embellishments from scrapbook kit, acrylic gems, stencil lettering, ribbons, glue gun, glue sticks, scissors, modge podge and a paint brush.

Instructions:  Measure out 4" X 4" block squares on your patterned paper.  Use a stencil to trace the letters and cut them out. Paste the letters on a small block piece with a glue stick and then paste it on the large square.  I glued on some acrylic gems on some of the flowers and butterflies. Then, I applied modge podge on the letters, blocks, rainbows, butterflies, and flowers.  Allow them to dry.  Next, punch out two holes on each side of the paper things using the hole punch.  Push the twine through the paper pieces and tie each end making a small loop. Tie pretty ribbon between the paper!

Paper Flower Sticks

I was inspired by Kylie who posted a hybrid paper craft at Shabby Princess' Blog to make these gorgeous paper flower decorations. 

Supplies:

Card stock paper, digital scrapbook supplies, acrylic gems, green craft popsicle sticks, bamboo sticks

Instructions:

Measure four pieces of paper to size of 4"X4". For the paper flowers, fold the 4"X4" paper like you are making a paper fan.  Then fold it in half.  For the flower you need four pieces of paper you can do the same color or mix it up with other designed paper.  Use the glue gun to glue the pieces together.  Glue the acrylic gem in the middle and glue the bamboo stick to the flower.

The Party Games

We played the following games: musical chairs, cocoon toilet paper wrap,

 stick the dot on the butterfly, bug bingo, and a balloon game.

Musical Chairs

Cocoon Toilet Paper Wrap

Divide the kids into two teams.  The quickest team to unroll the toilet paper wins!
Stick the dot on the butterfly!

As you can see, it was hand drawn and colored with markers.  I traced some circles from a template for the dots!

Bug Bingo

I printed out the bug bingo game templates from Family Crafts  and hand wrote several different bugs such as the following: ant, bee,beetle, butterfly, caterpillar, centipede, cicada, cockroach, cricket, dragonfly, firefly, flea, fly, grasshopper, horsefly, ladybug, mosquito, moth, praying mantis, spider, stick bug, stink bug, termite, wasp, and worm. For the markers, we used colored torn paper. We played two rounds!
Balloon Game

Divide the kids into two teams. The kids had to pop the balloons to find letters contained inside.  The first team that successfully spelled the birthday girl's name won!
The Recycled Party Crafts


Toilet Roll Butterfly

Supplies 
Empty toilet rolls, googly eyes, card-stock paper, butterfly template, scotch tape, pipe cleaners, scissors, hot glue gun, craft glue or glue stick, hole punch, and markers.
Instructions: Wrap some card-stock paper around the toilet roll and tape the end. Cut out butterfly template.  Hot glue the butterfly wings to the toilet roll.  Rip up scrap pieces of paper and glue them on with craft glue or glue stick. Punch a hole on the top of the toilet roll and push a pipe cleaner through.  Twist the pipe cleaner and bend the antenna to your desired look. Glue googly eyes and draw a mouth with a marker.
Egg Carton Caterpillar

Supplies:

Egg carton, googly eyes, rainbow pom poms, green paint, paint brush, pipe cleaners, scissors, craft glue, hot glue gun, markers, and hole punch.

Instructions: Cut the egg carton in half using a knife or scissors.  Make sure the carton is flat and you may need to cut it down.  Paint the egg carton ( I used some metallic green to achieve the silky green look).  Use a hole punch on the sides of the four middle cartons.  Make sure you punch both sides and push through pipe cleaners for the caterpillar legs.  Glue on antenna, colored pom poms, eyes, nose and draw a mouth with a marker.
The Party Food
We served pizza, pretzels, pastel M&M's, celery, carrots, ranch dip, white cranberry peach with seven up, home made from scratch chocolate butterfly cupcakes, and a butterfly cake (no cake mix)!

Butterfly Cupcake idea was inspired by Martha Stewart.  

Mine didn't turn out as cute as hers but you can see that they do appear to be like butterflies!  I used pastel M&M's and pretzels for the butterfly.

The butterfly Cake

Chocolate Devil's Food Cake

1/2 c hot water

1- 1/2 tsp. soda

1/2 c. cocoa

2/3 c. butter

1 -3/4 c. sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. salt

3/4 c. milk with small amount of vinegar

2-1/2 c. flour

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix hot water, soda, and cocoa and set aside.  In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar with electric hand mixer then add eggs.  Next add vanilla and salt. Mix the chocolate mixture in with the rest of the ingredients.  Add milk and flour alternately a little at a time mixing well.  Bake for 30 minutes or until tooth pick is clean.

Make a Wish, Sweet Girl!

The Party Bag

I used some leftover birthday balloon bags from my oldest daughter's birthday party a couple years ago.  We ordered a couple things from the Oriental Trading a while ago before I decided to do a butterfly theme (air planes, balls, and a package of random toys) and picked up some candy from the dollar store.  My mother in-law gave me some beautiful butterfly hair clips to give to the girls, which she got from Japan while serving a mission there.  The girls absolutely loved them!

Little sister was spoiled today with a loot of fun presents from her friends!  We got her Tangled, which she watched right after the last party guest left our house!   Last weekend she got an early birthday present from my mom and Uncle Nate.  They gave me money to get her ears pierced!  She was so excited to show everyone her sparkly ears!   As for her lovely butterfly party, Little Sissy said, "This was the best birthday ever!"  Yay! I am so happy it was a successful 8th birthday party!  We are looking forward to her baptism day in a couple weeks!  

Busy Box for Kids

Busy Box (Games for Kids)

For our recent activity day, my co-leader and I made a Busy Box filled with some fun HOMEMADE winter games for a family in our ward with small children. Our activity girls helped us cut things out and decorated the box. The busy box included the following instructions and supplies:



Snow Balls - We gave them two stacks of random magazines. Allow the kids to have a fun time ripping out all the pages in the magazines and wadding them up into balls. Collect all the "snow balls" into a pile ontop of a large blanket. They can then take turns running and leaping into the pile of snow or they can each hold one corner of the blanket and shake making a snow storm.



Snow Painting - Give each kid a spray bottle with paint and let them outside to paint pictures on the snow. We filled the spray bottles with acrylic paint and alcohol.



Moon Mud - We gave them a large box of corn starch. Mix one box of cornstarch with just barely enough water to make a viscous goo. Mix well and drop into a large cookie or baking dish. Moon mud should be runny when not manipulated, but turn solid when handled. Let the kids experiment with making balls out of it or trying to draw shapes in it (they won't form for more than a second). Then they can grab toys, trucks, and cars and have a great time rolling them ontop of or digging up the moon mud.



Coin Toss - Place tupperware bowl in a large pan or baking dish half filled with water (the pan not the tupperware). Have the kids take turns tossing their coins into the bowl. There are five pennies, dimes and nickels so there's no confusion as to who's coin made it in the bowl.



Tube Roll - We got four different sizes of wrapping paper tubes. Use the tape to combine the four pieces of cardboard tube. Place the box or bowl at the bottom of a set of stairs. Have kids take turns rolling things like balls or cars down the tube, trying to aim for the box at the bottom of the stairs.



Flying Fish - We cut out 1 1/2 inch by 12 strips of colorful paper. The kids will take one strip of paper and connect the fish tail together using the pre-cut slits. These fishies, if throw high enough by their tails, with twirl and spin in the air. They're especially fun to throw over a banister or off of a deck. They can take turns being throwers and catchers.



I Spy In a plastic bottle, it was filled with rice, wheat, lentils, etc. Hidden in the stuff are objects such as a nickel, penny, star, bell, crayon, eye, flower, letter, fastener, sport's ball, triangle, heart, gold bead, blue bead, shell, rubber band, feather, paper clip, and yellow pompom. Have the kids take turns playing I spy.



Glow in the Dark Food We included a box of blue berry Jello. "The secret to glowing food is  tonic water (diet tonic water works too).  It contains quinine, and guess what happens when you expose quinine to black light?fun, right??  So if you mix up a drink (like crystal light lemonade and add a little tonic water)you make magical glowing beverages!  Pretty much anything you can make that includes water can glow with tonic water like Jello. Now tonic water does have a bitter taste to it.  Adding a bit of juice or punch isn't very noticeable.  And if you do jello, you can use part regular water (half and half, or even less tonic) to minimize the bitter taste." I got this idea from Our Best Bites.



Cotton Ball Game- We gave them some cotton balls and green string. "Give each child a cotton ball. Use a piece of yarn as the finish line. Have the children get behind the line on their hands and knees and blow their cotton balls across the line. Whose ever crosses the finish line first wins!" This idea is from the baby sitter kit @ Wendy's Activities Blog



We also included a couple recipes for play-dough, finger paint, and giant bubbles.  It was very easy to put together because most of the stuff is recycled (wrapping paper tubes, water bottle, and cool whip containers) as well as household things we have lying around the house.  The box is wrapped, decorated, and ready to delivered to the family!