the weighted blanket project

What is a weighted blanket and why did I need to make it?
 In our case, Faith is the one who will benefit from this. Everyone processes outside information differently. everything that comes into your brain via your senses is a form of stimulation. In Faith's case, she gets overwhelmed sometimes because her brain just hasn't learned how to deal with all the stimulation coming in. Some things overwhelm her like food textures that she's not used to, too much play time, and new places (to name just a few). On the other side of that, she is calmed by some things and she seeks out certain stimulation for example she likes to have her tongue brushed, she likes her skin brushed, she likes little pressure squeezes, music, and touching soft things. The theory behind the weighted blanket is that it can be really calming and helps a person's brain to reset and figure out all the incoming stimulation. Since Faith is so young it's possible that if we help her in these ways, her brain can figure out how to rewire itself and this won't be an issue later on.
Here's a helpful website that shows all the different ways that this kind of product can help many people, not just people with sensory processing issues. Keep in mind though that they are trying to sell their product so it's a little hyped up in some areas. http://www.weightedblanket.net/benefits.htm
As you can see, this is expensive!
So- I was thinking... I have a sewing machine and a JoAnn's gift card, maybe I could make something.

I started out with a plan to make a traditional quilted weighted blanket. Seems easy enough. When I got to the store I found this amazing fabric that had all sorts of different fabrics and textures in the pattern and that is perfect for us! I got the textured pre-planned blanket fabric which came in the size I needed and I didn't even have to measure out the blanket.

I bought
1 yard of the special fabric,
1 yard of the fuzzy bumpy kind of fabric,
1 yard of some thin polyfil
heavy duty upholstery thread
extra sewing machine needles
2 bags of crushed seashell (1.75 pounds each)

I had
some scrap flannel

I decided to make little pouches of the crushed shell instead of just pouring it right into the blanket.
-The first thing I did was measure out what sizes the pouches should be against the design of the fabric. In this case, I wanted my weights to be in each little elephant. The blanket or weighted clothing should be about 10% of the body weight + 1 pound. my blanket is about 3.5 pounds since she's growing so fast and it's distributed really nicely.

-I decided wash everything so it would shrink BEFORE I sewed it since there were so many different fabrics on the blanket face.

-While the fabric was in the wash, I took my shells and my flannel and made little pouches. I put about the same amount of shell in each one (compensating for size once in a while)

-You can see that I used a diamond stitch because it seemed really strong and was less work than double stitching everything. You should either use a really thick stitch or double stitch because I have a friend who has done one of these and she didn't double stitch it and hers sprung a leak eventually. I'm also hoping that making the pouches will help me avoid a leak.

-For the blanket, I pinned it right sides together and sewed around the edges like you would for a normal blanket.
-Then I sewed around each elephant leaving the top open and then putting the corresponding pouch in and sewing up the top as I went. then I closed it up.

It was a LONG patience-trying process and as I added more pouches it got hard to maneuver.
If I did this again I would have chosen the square quilted pattern in this theme that still had as many fabric textures and I would have just done square pockets for the weight.
I might consider selling these if I have a friends or what not who wanted to buy the supplies but to me, it's not worth the work to makes them and then list them for sale to strangers. I understand why they charge so much for these but with my gift cards, coupons, and manual labor, this project only cost me $2 out of pocket.

4 dozen cupcakes

I had the brilliant idea to do these cute cookie moster cupcakes for Davin's birthday. I stole the idea from another blog called Everyday Celebrating. I wanted to share these because they turned out really cute and I think you could probably do a whole lot of other characters if you thought it through.

 The directions are on the link I included and I will give that gal all the credit. My review of this idea is that it is very EASY! It goes pretty fast and turns out super cute. I did a couple of thing differently though; I used black frosting for the eyes and I used a little squeezy thing instead of a pastry bag. I like the squeezy thing because when I use a pastry bag I usually wear more frosting than the cake cuz that's how I roll. I used a big star tip instead of the small star tip and I honestly like mine better because I think he looks furrier.

Also, for the best cookie monster cupcakes it's best to put the eyes right next to each other and make the pupils look cross eyed a little bit. No one specifically said that anywhere else, and I found that my crosseyed ones look way better that the others I made before I figured that out.

So I made about 42 cupcakes in our house that equals out to about 3 dozen decorated party ready cupcakes.

The Great Apron Adventure

This is one of those crafts that in my experience does NOT pay to do it yourself.

First of all you need to know that this is way cuter in person though it is a little big. JoAnns had a huge sale for labor day weekend. Patterns were 99 cents and I had some major coupons for fabric. I saw some cute aprons on sale for like $15 a while back but I thought I could do it cheaper and that it would be fairly easy.

I was wrong!!!

Not only did it end up costing a little more than the aprons I saw on sale but it was a huge amount of time and effort put forth. I spent about 8 hours making this apron and it was not a hard task but it was a pain.

Unless you have done maybe 20 of these just for practice I would say just go ahead and buy a freaking apron. It was truly an adventure, it was a long, tedious, expensive adventure. My sweet husband spent his evening taking care of our children and made dinner to let me finish this project. All I have to say is.... this apron better last me a life time because I feel likeI have a lot invested in it.

I did learn a new valuable skill though; I learned how to make ruffles!

cloth wipes... am I crazy?

I use cloth diapers to save money. I could claim I'm in it for the betterment of my baby and the environment too but it really all just boils down to money. There are some pitfalls to cloth diapers. I don't mind the laundry, I don't mind the couple extra minutes it takes for each diaper change, I don't mind the bulky nature of cloth either. In fact I think the puffy diaper butt is kind of cute :-)
The thing I hate is the wipes! I hate how I have to pick out the wipes and touch the poo all over again and if I don't get them all then they leave white wispy stuff all over my cloth diapers. Grrrrrr!!!
I had thought of clothe wipes when I invested in cloth diapers and at first I was kind of grossed out by it. Why would I want to wash and reuse not only my diapers but my wipes too?!?! Plus, have you seen what people charge for the courtesy of reusing your wipes. Cloth wipes are like $12+ per dozen! Holy cow! Seriously?!?!
Well, last week after shelling out another $10 just for wipes for the 8th week in a row I decided that I'm tired of essentially putting poop on money and throwing it away.
Now before you really think I have gone off the deep end please know that there are things I will not do and big kid poop is one of those things. Davin poops once a day and I do not plan to reuse anything associated with that daily ritual. He wears disposable diapers over nap time which is when he usually gets stinky and I plan to use disposable wipes in that scenario as well. Newborn baby poop though is really no big deal and I have no problem with it. I'm just tired of touching it twice when it comes to having to sift through the dirty cloth diaper to fish out the wipes to throw them away.
I don't know about you  but I'm a bit short on disposable income both for disposable wipes and investing in cloth. Then I had an idea; a crafty idea!

I started looking at these wipes as closely as online pictures would let me. They are made of flannel. Hmmmm... What are receiving blankets made of? Flannel! We have a TON of receiving blankets and there are a few that really aren't my favorite. We have way more than Faith ever goes through in a week. You see where I'm going with this....
Step one:

Sacrifice some blankets and scrap cloth. I kind of eye balled the size using the bottom of my wipe box and I made them square. Some are lopsided but who cares? Seriously, it's going to wipe my baby's butt it doesn't have to be perfect; it just needs to be sturdy.

Step two:
I used a zigzag stitch and doubled my rectangular cutouts (making them square) because I noticed that a lot of the flannel wipes you buy are in fact 2 ply. I stitched around the edges and then just once diagonally across so it will hold its shape after I wash them. I don't want them to get all bunched up in the dryer.

So this is my finished product. I used 2 blankets and some random flannel scraps I had stashed in my fabric drawer. I ended up with 30 cloth wipes, from what I gathered most people do well with 2 dozen wipes.

So how do I like using cloth wipes?
I love my cloth wipes. I can clean a mess with 1 wipe that it would normally take me 3 disposable. The wipes are super soft and the best thing of all is that I can throw the whole bundle into the laundry bucket and not worry about it! For me if you're using cloth diapers it is MORE convenient to use cloth wipes as well.

There are two ways to use them; the wet method and the dry method. I don't have a wipe warmer for the wet method and I don't like the idea of having to be vigilant because your wipes could start to grow mold. I have read if you use the wet method you should use your wipes with in 48 hours and clean out your container. I use the dry method for now and I keep my wipes in an old wipe container and I have a little water bottle with some water. I did add a TINY bit of baby lotion to my water because it seemed like a good idea at the time and it smells nice. I squirt a wipe or two with water prior to cleaning off the baby as I need to. Some people squirt the baby and use a spray bottle. Some people just run to the sink and wet them down. I haven't quite settled on a storage and usage method yet I don't think. If I got a hold of a wipe warmer I would probably give the wet method a try, I might put maybe 6 wipes in the box and try the cold wet method using only a few at a time because I seriously don't like the idea of mold.

Yup I know what you're thinking, I am putting way too much thought into this.
LOL
The truth is that I'm caught up on my chores and I'm having fun experimenting with different thing while I wait for our homeschooling curriculum to come in.

Does homemade = saving $$$?

In this case... YES!

Have you ever seen those cool swaddling wraps for babies?
I had a really cheap swaddling blanket when Cole was born and it was ok but the flaps were pretty short and he outgrew it quickly. I would have used the same blanket on Davin but he was WAY too long for the blanket itself and again the swaddling flaps were too short. When I worked in a daycare I saw one like the one I registered for this time, the baby loved it and it seemed better designed than the one I was able to afford at the time.

The one I registered for this time is $25 and they can run up around $40 depending on the material and the style. 

 I have tried to do a lot of homemade things and cut costs where I can. We have what we need but we don't have a lot (if any) extra income most days. My challenge has been to see what I can actually save on versus it being more or the same cost as if I had just bought it in the first place. The general answer I have found is that if you want to actually save money and you don't have any of the supplies you need to plan for your project.
Here are some things to keep in mind that I have found helpful:

• keep an eye out for sales and sign up for store coupons
• don't buy anything unless it's on sale if you can help it
• your inital creativity and excitment can cost extra- you can still have a cute project without letting yourself go overboard

For this project I heard about a huge sale at JoAnn's and I decided to check it out. McCalls patterns were only 99 cents this week! Although I didn't find a pattern for this project from McCalls I did allow my self to spend $3 on patterns I thought I could use in the future. I saved $26 by doing this! Remember: you're only saving if you actually use it so don't get carried away :-)
I found a featured section of fabric that was like $2/yard and even though they didn't have baby prints I limited myself to this rack and chose something else. I probably wouldn't have chosen this fabric if it hadn't been on sale but it is cute and in perspective it's only an experimental blanket. Not having a pattern or even a solid plan at the time I couldn't guarentee that this project was going to come together. I also decided to use a knit fabric for softness and stability. Knits were up to 50% off this week! Jersery knit would have been ideal in my mind but I found a comparable fabric for $2 less per yard so I went with that.

I bought 2 yards of each fabric. The total cost was $15. It could have easily run into the $20-$30 range if I hadn't picked thing that were on sale. When I got home I used a recieving blanket to give me an idea of how big I should make the body of the blanket and I kind of made the rest up as I went.

The project turned out really well! I will be adding it my list of baby gifts for people and possibly making another one for myself after Faith is born. I want to see if she actually likes to be swaddled and how much I use it. I also want to try out this one and see what needs to be fine-tuned before I make a second blanket.

So I saved a total of $10 + tax on this blanket by making it myself. I also have saved by making my own hair bows. I might be able to use the extra knit fabric from my blanket project to make a couple of sleepers for Faith since I was able to pick up the pattern for those for 99 cents!

How to make: Hair Bows

Upon purchasing my fair share of hair bows, flowers, butterflies, and headbands; I decided that I might be better off in the long run if I could just learn how to make some of these things. The first thing I wanted to learn was hair bows; 1) because I don't have very many of those, and 2) because it seemed easiest.

Upon reflection I have 2 insights for you before you start.
- floppy grosgrain is a great ribbon to learn on
-you can do just about anything with hot glue

You will need:

• ribbon (about 1 yard) -I find I like 1"-1.5" ~ 31 cents/ yard
• a hot glue gun ~ around 2.99 if you don't already own one
• a lighter -if you're using grosgrain ~ 99 cents for a 3 pack
• thread~ who doesn't have this? you can get it al the dollar store for a bunch of colors!
• small alligator clips~ $2 for a 10 pack
• patience!!!!~ priceless

Start by getting all your stuff out and your glue gun warmed up.

Tie the very end of your ribbon in a knot. Don't pull it all the way tight, leave it with that cone shaped triangle bit in tact.

Cut the knotted end off and set it aside, run the ends of the big piece through the lighter flame to seal the ends. Don't catch it on fire! Fold the ribbon over kind of like a breast cancer awareness ribbon leaving one side much longer.

This is the part that takes a lot of patience and practice!!!
Wrap it around itself losely so the front and back look like this

Back

Front

Straighten it out a bit and scrunch the center together. (This also takes practice and patience)

Bind it REALLY tight with your thread to hold it. Bind it enough that the thread can hold itself in place. The flip it front side and put a dot of hot glue on the top.

Glue the flat side of your knotted piece to the top of the bow.

Put a dab of glue on the back and put down your alligator clip and run one end of the knotted piece through the clip. You may need to glue that down or if your clips were like mine they have a slit through the center so the glue holds down your ribbon as well.

Trim the excess ribbon and wrap your other end around and glue it down.

The finished product might resemble this!

Some people like to start with big bows, they say it's easier. I prefer smaller bows from the floppy more forgiving ribbon as I learn. My bigger bows still don't look like the store bought ones but I think they still look pretty cute!

I saved around $2.50/ bow by making it myself. I found a website that will sell these for 79 cents but the colors can be limited and even if I went that route to buy all my bows I would still save around 29 per bow by making it myself.

new found gift ideas

I recently had my baby shower!
I can't begin to tell you how blessed I was by everyone who made us feel so loved! The shower was last week and I'm still kind of over-whelmed by it all. From helping hands to the cutest outfits and accessories to homemade gifts; our needs have been provided for and then some.
While and am SO thankful for the support of everyone I was amazing at some of my homemade gifts and I will be stashing them away in my mental list of gift ideas. I wanted to put them here too; not only for you to enjoy but also because I seriously don't have very good mental listing abilities and these things need to be written down! So without further delay here they are in no special order for your own refrence as well as mine!

The Baby Wreath-

I actually made this one for someone else. I saw an idea online and I kind of ran with it. I saw other online versions using diapers but I made mine with
-2 recieving blankets

- ribbon

- socks

- baby toys

- something snuggly

- wooden letters

First I got a wreath form, these can be found with all things styrofoam in any craft store. I also purchased the ribbon and wooden letters at the craft store. I took my recieving blankets and wrapped them around the wreath using thin ribbon to bind them. I got some various baby things that are cute and useful and attched them as I thought they looked good. For finishing touches I tied a big bow and added the wooden name letters which worked well since this particular baby has a shorter name.

The BIG Hooded Towel

A friend of mine made this for me, it's super and I will be making more for my own family as well as using it as a gift for others.

She Used:

-a really big, soft, fluffy towel

-a matching hand towel or wash cloth

I'm not exactly sure how she trimmed it but essentially she folded the hand towel in half leaving some room to attatch it and sewed the 2 short sides together to make the hood then she centered the hand towel in the center on the wide edge of the towel and sewed it on. It's full size which is nice because this can be used for kids not just babies since babies often outgrow the store bought hooded towels unless you order them especially in kid sized. It's a really thoughtful and creative homemade gift!

Diaper Cake

Most of use have heard by now about these beautiful and fabulous baby gifts. I was lucky enough to get one at my baby shower and the only down side is that I REALLY don't want to ever take it apart! I have also heard that similar things can be done for weddings using kitchen towels and such and decorated with household "must haves".

For the diaper cake you will need:

- a TON of diapers (cloth or disposable)

-rubberbands

- Ribbon

- baby "must-haves"

-and a couple of baby bottles

The sky is the limit here so you can do as much or as little as you are able. The diapers alone are a great gift and with a little presentation who ever thought that diapers could look so pretty?!
You will need to roll up your diapers and wrap rubber bands around them. Then bunch them around a baby bottle to make the circular bottom layer. I think my diaper cake has 3-4 rings of diapers in the bottom layer to make the base wide enough. The bottle maye be tall enough if you are using disposables to use the same bottle for your next tier. a bottle of sparkling cider would also work and provide more length for the core. Same Idea, less circumfrence for each tier you make. You can do this for as many tiers as you want to. Each tier on mine is held together by a big thin elastic headband and then that was covered with thick cloth stip. You could use ribbon for that part if you want to. Alot of people attatch various baby items. SOme cakes are really loaded. Mine was simple and cute and decorated with fabric lolly pops. The top tier was made of embelished burp clothes. Which I'm going to list next. She topped it off with those spinning pin wheels. It is SO cute!

Embellished Burp Clothes-

***Please note***: I took these instruction right off my friend's blog. Although I had seen these done before I have never come across instructions for how to do it and she really did a great job. The blog I lifted this from is The Hot & Sassy Housewife

Here is what you need:

1. A package of Gerber cloth diapers (they come in a 12 pack)

2. 1/4 yard of six different coordinating fabrics...

(this will provide enough to make two cloths from each fabric)

3. Thread

4. Scissors

5. Iron

Here is what the cloth diaper package looks like along with the fabrics I used...

You can pre-wash and shrink your fabric and diapers but make sure to iron them. When you get the fabric it will be in a long, skinny strip. Fold it in half and cut it at the fold. These will be your two strips that you sew onto the diaper. Take one strip and fold the shortest edge over 1/2 inch and iron it, then do this to one of the longer sides. At this  point I lined my straight-edge-measurey-thingy (you know, the one that comes with your standard rotary cutter and mat in a kit?) up along the long folded edge and then flipped the fabric on the other side over the top and then slid the straight-edge-measurey-thingy out and ironed again. I could have just measured but this seemed easy and it was the perfect size.

This is what it should look like (yes, you leave the very end unfolded)...

Trim your corners...

Take a cloth diaper and center your fabric in the middle of it and pin at the corners. Be aware that the ends of the diapers are very uneven so just line it up best you can but they won't be straight. In hind sight I would have folded the long edges first and the short edges last and flipped them over the end of the cloth diaper. Oh well. 

Make sure you pin your fabric RIGHT SIDE up because this isn't something you are flipping. Pin everything but that unfolded edge you left at the end. The reason you leave this edge unfolded is because the cloth diapers can vary in length. When you get to this end fold it to the correct length and pin it too. Then you are ready to sew. Just start at one corner and go around the edge or the rectangle, backing up and sewing each corner a couple of times.

They come out looking like this...