We are back from our vacation, and O and I are spending the week at Guh-guh & Grandpa's house (Elliott will be here with us tomorrow). My mom and I have been working nonstop on O's handmade Christmas gifts. Here is her baby doll carrier. We have all of the pieces, and now we just need to sew them together. So far, I've done all of the sewing, which is pretty surprising :) I'm going to let my mom do the top stitching, so it will look nice and neat instead of crooked :) Hopefully, we'll finish it tonight and start on the doll diaper bag. We are using my Beco as inspiration, and I'm hoping O's doll carrier will turn out the way I have imagined it!
Since I've been posting about our handmade gifts lately, I thought I'd include this silhouette of O that I made last year. It was very easy, and her grandparents loved them. To make this silhouette I took a profile picture of O, printed it as an 8 x 10, cut out around her profile, and painted it black. Cutting the hair was a little difficult, and I'm still not happy with how it turned out. I think it will be a little easier to do now that her hair is longer :) I think this idea came from here. Enjoy!
It's finished!!! I started taking pictures for this book in April and planned on finishing for O's birthday in July. I worked on it and thought I'd finish it in August. Then I put it down and didn't pick it back up until Sunday. I'm so happy to be finished with it, and O loves it! Yay!!!!
My mom and I have been working hard on O's handmade Christmas gifts :) We were glad to finish these baby doll diapers for Baby Emma. I made the small striped on by myself (except for the velcro. My mom sewed it on with the sewing machine after I tacked it). Unfortunately, I always forget about the seam allowance, so it's a tight fit. Fortunately, Baby Emma doesn't mind :) While we were working, my mom tried one of the diapers on Baby Emma, and she was concerned that it gapped a little in the back. I reminded her that we don't have to worry about leaks with these diapers :) I guess she was remembering our days (about 2 years ago) when we made diapers for O. These were MUCH easier, but we both enjoyed making the quilt much more than the diapers :)
Elliott and I have been working on O's doll cradle today. He was not at all excited about it, but he worked hard once we got started :) I drew out a pattern on a grocery bag and then traced it onto the board. Then Elliott cut everything out. It's a bit assymetrical, but hopefully O won't notice the imperfections :) I sanded it tonight, and I'm hoping to prime and paint it tomorrow.
It's finished!!! Well...it's almost finished. We still haven't actually quilted it yet :) This baby doll quilt is a big part of O's handmade Christmas this year. We made it to match her "I Spy" quilt that we made for her last year. I am so happy with how it turned out, and I have to give the vast majority of the credit to my mom. Thanks, Mom! Unfortunately, O has already seen it, but I'm hoping she'll somehow forget about it before Christmas (not likely). We suggested that maybe we were making it for my niece, and O didn't like that idea at all! She said "Guh-guh make kilt for O!" We reminded her that she already had a quilt, and she said "O needs 2!" Now, I just have to convince Elliott to help me make her baby doll cradle!
My mom and I recently finished making a bunch of felt food for my niece and godson (and his brother). I cut the felt out months ago, but I'm scared to use the sewing machine without my mom (it breaks every time we use it), so I was waiting for her to come sew them. My mom did all of the machine sewing, and I did the cutting and hand sewing (sewing the chocolate chips onto the cookies). My mom loved sewing the eggs and said she could sew a hundred eggs :) We are thinking of opening an etsy shop, which is something we've been talking about for a year or so. I'm hoping that this nausea will pass soon, so that I can be more productive :)
I made this memory game for O for Christmas, and I know that she is going to LOVE it! To make the game I cut a piece of balsa wood (from Hobby Lobby) into 10 equally sized pieces, sanded the edges, and decopaged the wallet sized pictures to the boards. The hardest part about making this game was choosing the pictures. I planned on choosing 5 pictures from each year, but I've got 5 pictures here from O's 1st 4 months! I ran out of boards long before I ran out of pictures. I hope to buy more boards soon, so I can finish this game and mark it off my list!
Sorry for another off center picture! It looks perfect in draft form. I don't think that blogging through flickr is going to work out :(
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O and I made this sign for Elliott last year for his birthday, and I thought I should share it since it was a fun activity and a wonderful keepsake! (Elliott's mom just laminated it for us, so we can use it every year without worrying about messing it up. Thanks, Grandmother!) To make this sign, I took pictures of O holding each letter spelling out "Happy Birthday Daddy." My mom had the stuffed letters that worked perfectly for this project. I then printed the pictures as wallet sizes and glued them to a posterboard. I also traced her hands and cut them out for added decorations! Elliott loved it, but I think I love it more! O also REALLY enjoys looking at the sign and "reading" it :) I'm not sure where this idea came from, but I *think* that I saw something similar in an issue of Family Fun years ago..JPG)
O was very excited when she saw the rocks. We started by matching them face-up. Then I decided to play Memory with the rocks face down. I was not really expecting her to catch on the first time, but she understood immediately :) I made a big show of turning over one rock and then was thinking out loud trying to remember where the match was, and she quickly turned over the matching rock for me! I couldn't believe it :) We had a great time, and it was great practice for learning turn taking skills. I had to prompt her a few times to only turn over 2 rocks at a time, but other than that she GOT it! I'm really looking forward to playing more memory games with her, and I guess I should have started sooner. Although, I think this game is the PERFECT first memory game since the rocks are not identical and the differing sizes of the rocks give clues as to which stickers are on them..JPG)
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I made this sticker book for O for Christmas. To make it I used 8 x8 cardstock, scrapbook paper, and magazine pictures. I laminated the pages (so that O will be able to remove the stickers if she wishes), and Elliott tried to bind them together at his dad's office. This was a frustrating process because the pages were thick and the holes didn't punch well. I had to actually clip the holes and put the binding on by hand. It took awhile, but was fairly easy to do. I added a pencil pouch attached to the book with a book ring for her to store her stickers in..JPG)
These are my favorite pages :).JPG)
Here is one of the landscape pictures I added from a magazine. I was hoping to find more good landscape pictures for the book, but didn't have very much luck :( A good thing about the book is that I can add more pages if I need to. It feels good to mark another gift off of my homemade Christmas gifts list!
