DIY Crib Sheets

When we found out we were pregnant, one of the very first gifts we received from my parents was a small crib. This crib was my Mother's when she was a child and has been passed around the family (cousins) for the past few years. My Mother was determined to track it down and reclaim it, which she did! However, the mattress was MIA, so she bought a new one. I absolutely adore the crib and it will be wonderful for the first few months, as we can keep it in our room. (I'm still debating on crib vs. co-sleeping, so this is a wonderful transitional crib while I decide.)

The only downfall of the small crib? It is an OLD crib that is a small/odd size. I could have ordered a custom fitted sheet for it, that would have lightened my purse by about $30. $30 for ONE SHEET?! Puh-lease... My solution, sewing!!

The first step was a trip to JoAnn's to find some cute fabric. I ended up going nuts and got TONS of different coordinating monkey and dot fabrics. Hint: more sewing projects and pictures to come! I then scoured Pinterest and came across two potential tutorial to try out. I ended up following Pretty Prudent's DIY Cute Crib Sheet Tutorial. It was a bit tricky the first time around, as I didn't provide enough room for the fabric to fold over the bottom of the mattress. Luckily, I used some random fabric for a "trial run" the first try. The second two sheets were a complete success once the kinks were worked out!! Below are some pictures. Let me know what you think!

Free Christmas Tag Printables

In the spirit of Christmas, I would like to share some basic Christmas gift tags that I created the other day. You should be able to easily download and print them out. I tried to save them as a PDF but they didn't print correctly, so I ended up going with a JPEG.

They are pretty simplistic, but they look adorable when printed out on either recycled brown paper or white paper.

On top of using my crafting skills for the majority of the presents this year, I also wrapped them with things that I found around my house. The presents are wrapped in newspaper as a result of a quote I saw on Facebook from GASAN.

"If every American family wrapped just three presents this holiday season in reused materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields. That's a lot of paper!"

However, you could also use fabric remnants or recycled brown paper that you can pick up at Walmart (this is what my sister did). To glam up the newspaper I used some twine and yarn that I had sitting in my craft basket. I even created a couple of bows with some of the newspaper scraps! My inspiration for this entire thing can be found on my Christmas Pinterest Board. I think the simplistic tags look absolutely adorable with the newspaper, twine, yarn combo. What do you think?

Preparing for Breastfeeding

I realize it has been a while since I made my last post. I've sewed several things, so there are a couple of tutorials on the horizon. I've just been too busy sewing to sit down and write everything up and take pictures. (No, I didn't take pictures while in the process because I was too focused/lazy)... I like to think it was because I was too focused though.

One of the things that I have started looking into is getting prepared for Breastfeeding. Before, I felt like it was too far out to really get ramped up on it. But now that I am down to 10 weeks until the wee one makes his grand entrance, I think I should get ready! I am shy of my 1 year anniversary at work, so I will only be taking my vacation/sick time off. This adds up to 4 weeks of completely work-free baby time. I then plan on working virtually for roughly 2 months. I'll be making the transition back to work and pumping exclusively after that, so I need all of the preparation I can find!

Before jumping into the resources, I'd like to share that I will be able to get my Breastpump COMPLETELY FREE! No, I didn't receive one for my baby shower. I actually took the steps to contact my insurance provider. Anthem Bluecross Blueshield covers 100% the cost of lactation support and 100% lactation equipment rental/purchase. All I have to do is get the prescription from my Doctor and contact one of their approved medical equipment providers. A little more leg-work than going to Walmart or Amazon.com, but extremely worth it! There are several providers, so I actually have the choice between the Medela Swing, Medela Pump In Style, The First Years Breastflow miPump Double Pump, or Medela Advanced Personal Double Electric Breastpump. I'm leaning towards the Medela Pump In Style, but would love your feedback if you have a preference out of the ones listed!

My word of wisdom for this post - check with you insurance BEFORE buying a pump. You could get one free of charge!

Now for the links to resources for pumping exclusively...

I hope to update this post as I discover more resources, but the following are what I've collected as of today! Let me know if you find them useful OR if you have any you would like added to the list by commenting on this post.

Here are a few links to the La Leche League, which I have a feeling will be invaluable as I begin my journey. I also am currently reading "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding" by La Leche League and love it!

La Leche League International's Facebook Page

Below are some of the resources that I have found on Pinterest that have been extremely helpful for me. (In no particular order...)

"Timeline of a Breastfed Baby" by the Alpha Parent

"Time Saving Breast Milk Storage Tips and Tricks" by Naptime Tales

"The Coolest Things About Breastfeeding" by Cassie W on Mama Say What?

"Extreme Pumping: Confessions of an Exclusive Pumper" by Happy Home Fairy

"Conquering the First Weeks of Breastfeeding" by Daily Mom

"Increasing Your Breast Milk Supply" by Erin at Simply Real Moms

Facebook Headers

I've recently noticed that a lot of people use simple photos for their Facebook Headers. This is a fantastic idea... as long as the pictures fit correctly. As you may have noticed from my FB Pregnancy Announcement and Gender Reveal, my graphic design background has given me a desire to do a little more than just the simple picture for my FB headers.

For those of you who are a little thrown by the idea of opening up any kind of editor more complicated than Paint, fear not! It is relatively painless, and I will try to explain as much of the technical details as possible. When I first started making FB headers, I relied heavily on the Timeline Dimensions page. Whoever made it is a pure genius! The only thing that bothered me when I was trying to create my own is that they don't show how many pixels are between the edge of your profile picture and the timeline photo AS WELL AS the amount of space taken up by your profile photo in total. So I figured it out myself and here is what I came up with.

For those of you who are getting a little overwhelmed... deep breath. "Px" stands for pixel, which is the dimension size that we typically use when talking about digital dimensions. Ever heard someone talk about screen resolution? Now, why are these numbers important? They are essential to figuring out how big you want your image(s).

Create Your Header

The first step is pretty simple. You have to figure out what program you want to open up and get going with. I typically use Adobe Photoshop, but that comes with a nice price tag. The free web-based alternative that I love is Pixlr.com's editor. You can pretty much do everything in Pixlr that you can in Photoshop and it's FREE!

Create a new document sized 851x315 pixels. You can think of this as your canvas. Now all you have to decide is if you want one image, multiple images, and what kind of text (if any) you want to incorporate. I recommend using the above dimension image to lay it out for yourself. The actual image is true to size, so you can even open it up in an editor and lay things over the top of it. A few examples of ones I've created are below...

Play around and have fun! It really is as simple as that. Make sure you keep in mind the space that your profile picture will cover (160x160 pixels which overlap 160x145 pixels). If you have any technical questions, please let me know. I would gladly walk you through things in a little more detail. I might actually be creating a more extensive tutorial on my Instructional Design blog, which I'll link to if I do! 

I would love to see the Facebook Headers you create. Happy Crafting!!

Baby Registry Checklist

I had my baby shower this past weekend and got an amazing amount of items for baby Lewis. One of the things that I am extremely impressed with, is the fact that I received 0-3 month clothes and 6 month clothes and managed to avoid the dreaded overload of "newborn" clothes. When creating my registry, I added a few onsies and sets but made sure to pick 0-3 month or 3-6 month sizes, rather than newborn. This apparently was enough of a tip off for those wanting to purchase clothes for baby Lewis!

I have several onsies in a newborn size, but have a feeling that if baby Lewis takes after my side of the family he will be straight into 0-3 months. If he happens to be a little stinker, then I know Grandma and Auntie will have no problem going shopping before we even get out of the hospital.

I already had a crib, crib mattress, and changing table thanks to yard sales. So I only had a few big items on my list. We opted for a stroller system with a jogging stroller, due to advice from my friends/family. The only other big ticket items were that I received were the baby swing, play mat, and car seat base. We also received tons of little items and goodies.

The only big items that we will have to buy are shopping cart cover, breast pump & storage bags, nursing pillow, and baby wrap. All-in-all not a bad deal! Below is the Baby Registry Checklist that I put together before creating my registry. I used TheBump's Registry 101 documents, FitPregnancy's Newborn Clothes, MommyNeurotic's Diaper Count when putting it together.

Changing Table Makeover

While I was originally going to simply put a changing pad on top of a dresser, I was able to get a changing table and baby bed at a yard sale for $100. The downside of the changing table was that it was pink. This called for a simple paint job. Luckily, the pink was a nice powder pink, not a bright screaming-in-your-face kind of pink. I'm not sure if you can even tell in the picture.

Honestly, I would have been changing the table color even if we were having a girl. The changing table is in the front room, since this is where we will spend the majority of our time and have the rocker. I grabbed the side table in the front room while I was at it. It was a left-over from the hubby's bachelor days and it shows.

I knew the changing table was going to be an easy fix, as it was wood. The side table on the other hand was laminate wood, and thus a complete headache. I grabbed some 1-2-3 Primer and a can of gray paint that was on sale at Walmart. I gave the side table two coats of primer and two coats of the gray paint. I gave the changing table three coats of gray paint.

I absolutely love how the changing table turned out. It's more of an antique gray-white that a harsh gray. It also happens to look fantastic with the changing pad cover that I picked up at Walmart a week before. I am starting to get excited now that I'm getting things ready!

I also really liked how the side table turned out. How could I not with how it looked before? Sadly, I have to report that even with the 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of gray paint, which I applied and let dry over an entire weekend (we're talking a minimum of 4 hours before I went for the next coat), some of the paint came off when we moved a coaster. I'm not talking about just some of the gray paint, I mean ALL the paint. Still, it works well enough to keep me happy with it until we eventually invest in new front room furniture. We are still using my old glass TV stand, which I cannot stand. Can you tell we are still renting? I can't wait until we buy a house and really start investing in some nice things. It's just not worth the headache of moving and damaging things right now. Happy Crafting!!

Monkey Mobile Tutorial

We decided to go with the monkey theme, so I began looking around at different types of mobiles. I really am never thrilled with the store-bought type. They are just way too cheesy for me.

When I was trying to decide between a sock monkey and a regular monkey, I ran across this little gem from dropsofcolorshop on Etsy.

So I set to the task of figuring out how to make my own monkey mobile. Before jumping into the tutorial, I'll show you my final project.

Here is how I went about it.

What You'll Need

• Monkey
• Construction Paper (or heavy weight printing paper)
• Felt (4 pieces of heavy-weight for the main body, 1-2 pieces of normal for your accent colors)
• Thread (the kind you used to make bracelets with)
• Normal weight thread (same or contrasting color as felt)
• Hot Glue Gun
• Mobile
• Buttons (multiple colors)
• Wooden Purse Handle - I found mine on sale for $2
• Hemp cord

Step 1 - Creating the Monkey

You will need to use the construction paper to create a template for you monkey. You have enough felt for 4 monkeys, keep in mind that you will need a front AND a back piece for the monkey. The template will basically need to be at largest half a sheet of paper/felt.

1. Fold the paper in half and then the top third of the paper down, this will be the portion allotted for the head of the monkey

2. Use circles to layout how you want the head, body, legs, and arms of the monkey and cut out the template.

3. Use the template to cut out 8 body pieces of the heavy felt.
4. Create a template for the face, eyes, ears, mouth, and belly.
5. Cut out the ear, face, and belly pieces in the lighter felt (you will need enough for 4 faces)

6. Cut out small eyes and the mouth in the darker felt

7. Attach the face pieces using your thread

8. Attach the face using a lighter color of thread

9. Begin hot gluing a front piece to one of the back pieces - first glue around the belly and legs, leaving the entire upper body untouched

10. Stuff the bottom of the monkey, continue gluing up the monkey and then put more stuffing in

**You can now either be done with the monkey or use the heavier thread to stitch around the outside. Below are images of both monkeys. I opted to stitch around the outside as it gives it a more polished look. I will note that this took a lot of time and I broke one of my needles, but I'm extremely happy with the final results.

I don't have any in-process images for the next few steps... I will note that I only ended up using 3 of the 4 finished monkeys.

Step 2 - Assembling the Mobile

1. Drill 6 holes in the purse handle
2. Use the hemp cord to create the dangling parts of the mobile (I used one long piece to create two strings, which allowed me to use the excess string above to create my "handle")
3. Attach buttons to the string by threading through and tying nots (make sure to use a button at the very top to keep the string from slipping through)

3. Attach the monkeys to the end of three of the strings
4. Hang and enjoy!

If you make your own monkey mobile, or if you make a different mobile based off of this tutorial, please let me know! I would love to see how yours turns out. As always, feel free to contact me/comment if you have any questions.