My Family Loves It » Projects

Jamie’s dresses

Heather — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 21:12:03 +0000

I did 2 more dresses this weekend. I used 2 girls shirts that were the same exact shirt but different colors and then 2 of my shirts that I never wear. I was going for funky but I think they need some sort of embellishment like a fabric flower to complete them. I first cut the girl shirts in half and then cut the bottom parts of both in half again (think the extra pieces might turn into headbands). Then I cut up my old shirts to use as the bottom 2 sections of the dresses. Jillian is sort of able to wear one but its still too big! I got grainy pictures but oh well! I have a bunch of dress ideas in my head but I need to buy some cheap t-shirts or go to the fabric store. I have a feeling the girls will be wearing a lot of silly dresses this summer!

EASY little girl dresses from clothes you don’t wear! I was so excited when I found this idea on...

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EASY little girl dresses from clothes you don’t wear!

Heather — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:01:03 +0000

I was so excited when I found this idea on a blog! I have made several of these dresses now but I started with the one with the 3 flowers because it was a really cute shirt that Jillian got sharpie marker all over. I cut off the bottom 1/3 of the shirt and bottom of the sleeves (added new cuffs to the now 3/4 length sleeves) because that is where the marker was and I was left with a great top for the dress! I combined parts of brown butterfly shirt with the horse shirt (and one of my old shirts) to make 2 new dresses. Of course I’m too lazy to put up pictures of the other ones finished….but you get the idea, right? And you can click the link to the other blog above for a tutorial. Its just a great idea for saving shirts with stains or holes or combining things that don’t get worn into something cute!

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my new sew phase

Heather — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 22:56:18 +0000

Well I have loads of things I SHOULD be doing and instead I am totally wanting to sew! I am not good at it and I don’t do it “right” but as long as I don’t care about perfection its fun! It all started with Ben repeatedly requesting a court jester costume and insisting I could make one. It wasn’t so bad, it was pretty fun actually and I am proud of my first sewing project as a mom. Since then I have made each of the kids PJ bottoms (one pair a bit snug and two too long), the girls dresses with matching headbands (had to make 4 headbands total because I kept making them too small), a failed doll outfit and today I made a dress for Templeton (now a girl but was formerly Hamilton, John’s childhood little stuffed mouse). Here are a few pictures for fun:

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Halloween bats (and sick days)

Heather — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:16:14 +0000

It was a busy week with the boys home sick from school sick most of it! Both boys got bad colds, Ethan’s was much worse but Ben had a bad ear infection too. Somehow the girls both stayed healthy though! I tried to keep them quiet so they could rest but Ethan got super Halloween crafty and (with a just a little help from Jamie and Ben) he filled the living room with a ton of bats and one spider. He made everyone in our immediate family and then branched out to add the extended family. I LOVE them and wish I got better pictures but I just had the little camera out at the time. They really look neat in person (and I’ll be sorry when I need to take them down for Christmas decorating in Dec). I love how he used deep yellow and red paper instead of black. I also love it that he thought the whole idea up himself and I could just sit back and watch the production of a huge colony of bats (yes I had to look up what a “flock” of bats is called since I didn’t think flock was right)!

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Time to get out the ghost curtain soon!

Heather — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 14:01:17 +0000

I’m starting to get excited about Halloween next month and soon I’ll have to put up my GHOST CURTAIN!!! We started bringing in a few little pumpkins from the garden but otherwise I think we need a little longer to adjust to the change of seasons before we break out all of the Halloween stuff. It is definitely my favorite holiday and the one I have the most decorations for!

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Coffee Playdough still fun!

Heather — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:06:37 +0000

I looked up my old post on my coffee playdough recipe and WOW my boys were so little then….. how can I slow down time (or bring Ben’s little 3 yr old curls back)? This past week I made a triple batch of the coffee dough for the kids to play with (I had saved up a bunch of used coffee grinds in a paper lunch bag so I could have made even more). When I suggested they go get out the dinosaurs to play with in the dough they surprised me by picking out an interesting assortment of animals instead. I guess polar bears can play in the mud sometimes too!

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DIY bug jar

Heather — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:56:19 +0000

I try to look at everything that is garbage or recycling to see if I can reuse it for something. Usually I save things for art projects but this time I made a bug jar from a mayonnaise jar. I used a sharp hole puncher (that looks like an ice pick) to add a bunch of holes to the lid and then added 2 holes at the top of the jar to add the rope. The orange rope was actually the handle from a Gymboree shopping bag (nicer stores usually use nice rope or ribbon for handles and I always take it off before recycling the bags). I had intended to write “bug jar” on the finished product but I hate my handwriting! We have lots of bugs, toads and critters my kids like to look at and then release and with a friend over one day they really filled the jar! I guess I should have called it a “toad jar” but that sounds weird! So this was a very simple thing to do but I think it came out nice, the green lid with the orange rope make a nice combo.

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Freezer Paper stenciled Lego guy Stormtroopers!

Heather — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 16:58:20 +0000

Well I have been wanting to do a freezer paper stencil for awhile now but I just got around to buying the freezer paper last week. Then I needed to decide on something to stencil on some of my boys’ shirts…. I did some googling of “lego guys” and found this flickr picture. Thought it was perfect for a shirt since they are also into Star Wars and I printed it out and made my own stencil based on it. Not perfect but this was my first time trying a freezer paper stencil so I was not seeking perfection at any step! What I did set out to do was cut out the stencil carefully enough (with an exacto knife) so that I could use both the positive and negative pieces to make two shirts out of the one stencil. I used an iron to adhere the stencil to each shirt (was a bit more tricky to place all the little pieces on the blue but I just ironed on a few at a time). I wanted to use fabric paint on the red shirt but I went for bleach on the blue hoodie. I used an empty spray hair gel bottle to get a nice mist of bleach on the shirt. I did it in the bathtub and when I saw that it was light enough I quick turned on the shower and rinsed all the bleach off (this was slightly tricky, look at the 2nd picture below and you can see the bleach working on the periphery that was drying but the area close to the stencil was still pretty wet. I turned on the water right after snapping the picture because I heard the bleach will get too light if you’re not careful). I am not sure which I like better because I am pretty happy with them both!

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Musselman’s Easter Applesauce!

Heather — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:24:40 +0000

Well I am all for a candy free-for-all BUT a little healthy mixed in on Easter is a good thing too! This morning after the excitement of the baskets and the egg hunting and the cinnamon rolls, we made some applesauce bunnies. This is a nice last minute activity that we did thanks to Musselmans. The kids colored the ears and bow ties and I taped them onto our heart cupcake cups and filled with applesauce (Musselman’s suggested doing 1/2 applesauce and 1/2 yogurt but I went for all apple this time). Some of the kids jelly beans and mini marshmallows for the face and they were all set to go. It is a gorgeous Easter day so the kids ate their bunnies in their playfort.

Musselman’s has a fun Facebook page and they made this bunny craft with applesauce (I’ve done them for Christmas ornaments but its a great idea year round).

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Shamrock St Patrick’s Day shirts

Heather — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:43:41 +0000

I made these for the girls this year, I first added iron on fabric stuff to the fabrics and then traced hearts on the 2 fabrics, cut them out and ironed them on. Pretty easy although I should have added the anti-fray stuff to the edges because I think they might start to fray after a few washes. Jillian’s is a dress and Jamie’s is the t-shirt. I put green long sleeve shirts under them and I was pretty happy with them.

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