Princess Leia Hat

We recently went to Comicon.  Soooooooooo much fun!!!  But I needed wanted a costume for my 2-month-old daughter.  After all, you gotta start them young, right?  =)

I saw some Princess Leia hats online, but they were expensive.  Then I realized that I could easily make one myself!

I started by buying some brown fleece at Hobby Lobby (I LOVE buying fleece in the spring and summer.  It's always on sale, so 1/2 yard cost me like three bucks!).  I then made the basic hat from the free pattern found at Fleece Fun.  That took about 3-5 minutes.  Super easy--LOVE that pattern!!  I then cut some strips of fleece, rolled them up, and tacked them to the sides of the hat by hand.  It was so easy, so fast, and so cute!

Everybody kept stopping me to take pictures of her and ask where I got her hat.  It was definitely a hit!

(That's my Yoda backpack next to me--I used it as my diaper bag.  You can find them at Thinkgeek.com.  It got a lot of compliments, too!)

One of the highlights of my son's day was getting to cross lightsabers with Darth Vader.  The force is strong with this one.  =)

We had such a GREAT time!  May the force be with you!

Homemade Bibs

My seven-year-old son wanted his latest project as my next post.  However, he's still not finished with it.  So it'll have to wait until later this week.  In the meantime, here's my newest favorite thing!

A friend of my mother-in-law made the most awesome baby bibs.  They're large, they're absorbent, they're...

HAND TOWELS!!!!!!

How brilliant is this idea?  Hand towels with a hole to go over the head?!?  I LOVE it!!  How many times have you had a bib that the baby tugged on and it came off, just in time for them to spit green peas down the front of their white shirt?  Or the bib covered the top half of the baby and wasn't absorbent enough, so when your toddler was learning how to drink out of a cup, you lifted them out of the high chair and it appeared that they had peed their pants?  (But sorry, these bibs won't help you if your toddler really did pee their pants.)

Anyway, these are so simple and so genius.  She simply cut a hole out and serged on a collar.  

Then she added a decorative ribbon to add a touch of cuteness.  

I plan to make a bunch of these.  I don't have a serger, so I'll just zig-zag the collar on.  You could easily repurpose the collar off an old shirt, use ribbing, or use interlock.   

Maybe I'll do an actual tutorial soon.  This will be a fun and easy project.  Useful, too!

Hillbilly Wine Goblets

Now that we're all settled in after the latest addition to our family, posts will be regular again.  Sorry for the infrequency over the past week or so.

Ok, so I didn't make these.  A customer of my hubby made them and gave them to us.  But I thought they were so cute, I had to share them.  They look pretty simple to make--mason jars, candle sticks, and some glass glue.

And I figured hillbilly wine goblets needed hillbilly wine.  Can you get more hillbilly on a bottle of wine than a buffalo?  Of course, no wine for me these days.  I guess mine is a hillbilly milk goblet?

Knitting a Baby Hat

Ok, so I had a midwife appointment the other day and found out that I'm already dilated past 4 but still not in labor!  No wonder my labors are so fast and hard!  So, of course I need to fill my time over the next day or two, until she makes her appearance.  And since I don't have enough projects sitting around waiting to be finished, I decided to start another one.  =)

When Little Love #5 was an infant, she had the cutest little white crocheted hat that I was able to clip hair clips to.  It was ADORABLE!!!  Unfortunately, around the brim was an elastic thread.  She's severely allergic to latex, and we're limiting the new baby's exposure to latex, so the hat had to go.  I wanted one like it, though, so I decided to make my own!

I started by getting a round knitting loom (and why not get a set with lots of different sizes, while I'm at it?!?)  This is the Knifty Knitter set, purchased at Michaels.

I already had some really cute and thin cotton yarn, white with lightly colored specks, that I knew would be perfect for this project.  So I went ahead, read the instructions, and got started.

This was seriously one of the fastest, easiest projects I've ever done.  And I even took the time to teach my 8-year-old daughter how to do it.  Here's the end result (and yes, I know that this is one of the ugliest dolls in creation--and I have no idea who colored on her face--but it was the closest one we had to life-size).

Start-to-finish was well under 2 hours, and that was while taking breaks to show my daughter how to do it, finishing up the day's school lessons with both of my oldest, and taking potty breaks (after all, I do have an 8+ lb baby sitting on my bladder).

I LOVE how it turned out, and it's perfect for putting hair clips onto.  This was a definite success!!

So, if you're looking for a FAST, EASY, and ADORABLE project, I'd highly recommend this.  I can't wait to try out some other projects on these looms!

Do you knit on round looms?  What have you made?

Knitting, revisited

I had a friend ask me the other day how my knitting was coming along.  Let's just say...slowly.  It's easy to do, but I must admit that I sometimes get a little bit bored with it.  Part of that may be that I'm just doing straight knitting stitches, rather than switching it up with purling.  Or it might just be my crazy brain that's always thinking ahead to the next project.  After all, even when I'm doing a sewing project or hair clips, etc, I'm always ready to be done with it not long after I start it, just so that I can start my next idea.  That said, I'm still plugging along, determined to get this finished sooner, rather than later.  Here it is so far.

I know it's not perfect--far from it, actually--but I still figure it's not too bad for my first ever project.

I had the problem sometimes of my finished stitches slipping off the end of the needle when I set them down.   So I came up with the super-high-tech solution of putting a clothespin on the end of my needle.

I'm sure there's some more professional way of doing this in the knitting world, but for now, this works for me!

So, I'll keep right on knitting, until this is finished.  Meanwhile, my brain is planning the next project...

So, I've taken up knitting...

...because, you know, I didn't have enough projects and hobbies already sitting around waiting for me.  =)  The problem is, when you're on fairly strict bed rest, there's only so much you can do.  I can't sit at my sewing machine.  I can't stand at the stove (not that cooking is one of my hobbies--I don't really like to cook, to be honest.  But I LOVE to eat!!), and I've already made a gazillion hair clips and head bands.

I'm the type of person who has a busy brain and busy hands.  I can't stand for both not to be working at once.  I can't watch a movie or listen to a podcast without doing something with my hands.  And I can't make hair clips or sew without listening to a podcast or watching a movie or something.

I LOVE reading, but I can only do that for so many weeks straight.  Same with movies and making hair clips.  So I needed something new.  So last night, I found a few sites online that had free videos teaching knitting.  My wonderful Mr. Man ran out to the store and bought me the needles and yarn I wanted.  And now I'm knitting.

If I manage to keep this baby in for another few weeks (which is highly doubtful), I'll probably get tired of this, too.  So if you have any other ideas of projects I can do while laying on the couch, feel free to pass on the ideas!  Meanwhile, I'll post pictures of this project once it's finished.  It's going to be a blanket, but we'll see if it'll end up big enough for the new baby or one of the girls' dolls.  =)

Cupcake Felt Fun!

I love doing busy bags for my littles.  They're great at church, they're great to keep them happy while I do school with the older kids, and they're great when they're not feeling well and are stuck on the couch.  The other day I came across these cupcake busy bags at Crafty Couple.  I fell in love with them!!!  Yesterday, while the kids napped, I sat down in front of the TV and cut some out while watching shows.  So fun and easy!

You can print out the patterns for almost everything:  cupcakes, liners, fancy icing, regular icing, marshmallows, and chocolate chips.  It also comes with a heart one, but I did cherries instead.  Then I cut a bunch of little scraps for sprinkles.

Put it all together, and you have a large, fun cupcake!

The kids are going to LOVE these!!