Children's Hospital Mask

One of the first (and easiest) projects I wanted to tackle when I decided to start this project of cleaning out my sewing/crafting room was something that I had, ahem, put off but that was soooooo easy.

I started following an Instagram account called PrayersforBailey and a few weeks back her mother posted on IG that Bailey was not a fan of the hospital masks, and it had taken a lot of time to get Bailey to wear one during her current hospital stay. I've made fabric hospital masks before, in fact our first nurse that came to the house to watch the kids had shown me some that she had bought online, and I asked to borrow one so I could recreate it. I ended up giving her a few more and my initial mask that I made was too small, but it fit Genny perfectly, so we added it to her doctor's kit.

I chose some scrap fabric, then whipped up two pediatric-sized masks and finished up one adult mask that I had found while searching for fabric. Voila! A mask for mom, and two for Bailey. Now my only problem is figuring out how to get them to her... I've tagged her on IG but she hasn't responded (they get so many comments I'm not surprised they don't sit and read all of them. They do have two kids, one of which is constantly in the hospital)

These are the fabrics that I grabbed. I wasn't sure how long it would take me to make one (it had been a while) but I knew that I wanted to make one for her brother if I had time.

This is my super mathematical way of figuring out how long to make the ribbon loop. Yup, I graduated high school with this logic.

Here is my unwitting model. I think she would have looked happier if I had told her the mask was for her. Once she realized she was not going to get the mask, she lost all emotion in her face. (I'm not sure where she gets that drama from...)

Here are the finished three! It took me about a half hour to make the two pediatric size ones (the purple fabric and the princess fabric) and I also finished up the adult pink fabric mask in that time. I was out of time because the kids needed to be put to bed, but when I posted this picture on fb for Bailye's family to check out, I offered to make her dad and brother one too. If they don't end up responding to me, I will probably just call up Rady's Children's Hospital in San Diego or St. Jude to see if they want them.

See you next time as I clean out my crafting room!

It's Been A While...

Well, well, well. This feels a bit rusty, but then again it's been AGES since I last blogged so that's probably why... Don't get me wrong, I've thought about blogging. I really have. But Life has gotten away with me. Or so I say. Don't we all claim that our lives are too busy when we really just didn't take the time to do something? But if it's actually important, then we MAKE time. So that's what this post is about... Making time to create the things that make me happy. Because I'm a crafter by nature, and I craft almost every day. So I decided that since I'm in the full swing of Christmas crafting, and since I'm also in the full swing of a few other life-changing event preparations, I'd try to document my crafting as I do it during the week. Let's see how quickly I fizzle out on this claim to document all of my crafts, shall we? I'll tell you what: if, by the end of December, I have documented my crafting at least once a week, then I will hold a give a way for the three people who actually read my blog. Who knows what it will be, most likely what every I'm in to at the moment. But don't hold your breath, I'm not good at maintenance, so I'm sure I'll miss posts here and there.

Don't you worry- I'm not going to dangle words like "life-changing event preparations" and not go into any detail. So here it goes: I'm pregnant. Yay! Five months! But don't get too excited; it's not mine. Ha! That hasn't gotten old yet! No, seriously, I'm a surrogate for a wonderful couple and I'm so very happy to be pregnant (I really do love to be pregnant!) and it really puts the cherry on top to know that this baby girl is going to go to such a wonderful set of parents as well as extended family. Seriously ladies, if your pregnancies go well, think about becoming a surrogate. It's such a wonderful experience! But even though I know logically that this is not my baby, my instincts are still the same as with my other pregnancies. IE: I'm nesting. Big time. All the time. I'm rearranging. I'm organizing. I'm throwing so. much. stuff. AWAY. It feels great!!

Now onto life-changing experience two... I'm moving in eight months. Across the country. This was not an anticipated move. No, in fact, it was down right out of left field. You see, we just bought this house in December. Of 2013. And we're moving. In June of 2015. That means we'll have spent roughly a year and a half living in this, my self-proclaimed dream house. But that's how it goes with the military, folks. That's just how it goes. So this impending move to a [smaller] new house has had me change gears from WE NEED FURNITURE TO FILL THIS HUGE HOUSE! to WE NEED TO GET RID OF EVERYTHING BECAUSE WE'RE MOVING BACK INTO A 1500SQFT HOUSE! Big item on the list? My craft room. Do you know how wonderful it is to have a craft room?! It's the cat's meow. Seriously. Especially for a right-brained girl like me who starts and stops projects as the wind blows and can never keep her stuff organized.

This is where the blog comes in. Not only is it October (best time to start Christmas crafting!!) but I also am nesting and in need to clean out all of my crafting supplies to hopefully bring a much smaller amount with me to Chicago.

Here are a few pictures to show you what I'm in for... Granted, I'm sure this could look much nicer if it was all Pinterest-Organized, but guess what? I don't want to spend my time in there organizing when I could be making. Am I right? (go ahead, mutter, "that's right!" to the computer, I know I did as I was typing)

And here it is folks. The ugly truth that I call my sewing room. This is the built-in desk that I went ahead and covered with not just my sewing machine, but also random scrapbooking supplies. I also have a basket that has who-knows-what in it that has been there since moving day, and our printer which somehow doesn't get swallowed up in the mess.

Then we have the desk and shelves. I thought I was a genius when I cut cardboard rectangles to use as fabric bolts. But the only way it would be genius, is if I did it to all of my fabric. That giant pile on the desk? It's my projects... Hoping to see it shrink as the weeks go by!

And finally we have the foot lockers with my scrapbooking stuff. Did I mention that I used to be a demonstrator for Stampin Up!? So I have waaaaaayyyyy too much scrapbooking stuff. Way too much! My goal when Glenn started preschool this year was to make quilts with my existing fabric and to catch up on scrapbooking. I'm only 4 years behind, so that should be easy, right? :/

Ok! Tomorrow I'll post what projects I worked on today, and hopefully I'll have worked on something else too. Spoiler: I made some scrapbook pages and started a quilt. Don't get excited- I start quilts all the time...

Welcome to Genny's Room

I've been on a kick lately... I'm thrifting furniture and refinishing it! It's a very frugal (and I believe stylish) way to fill in the empty spaces we have since we've moved to a house that's more than double our old square footage. The first piece I did was a TV stand I bought for $20. It was missing a door handle, and it was that honey oak, which didn't match our furniture style. I painted it a pale green, bought new nobs, and put it in the kids play room. It's a perfect height for the windows in the play room, and since it has doors, it can hide some toys!

Before I bought the TV stand for the kids play room, Thomas and I found a round table and chairs to go in the kitchen nook. It was old, smelled like play dough and was pretty dirty. I cleaned it and am still working on painting/staining it. I'm sure I'll do a post about it when I'm done.

My next purchase was a small double-door cabinet which is the perfect size for about any room in our house. Because it was such a perfect size, it took me a while to figure out where it should go. In the end I decided it should go in Genny's room, since there wasn't any storage in there to corral her explosion of toys, book, and doll clothes. I painted it a light grey, And kept the handles since they were still good.

And now we'll take a look in Genny's room! I'm not done yet (we just bought her a night stand yesterday that I'll be refinishing soon), but I know that my mom and sister want to see the room in it's entirety, and since it was picked up, and vacuumed, I thought, why not?

And now onto the main event: the cabinet!

I love the shelf in here- it really allows more storage! This inside color was the original color of the cabinet, but it was scratched and the color was fading in a few spots, so I knew it had to be repainted.

And there you have it! It really was pretty time consuming, what with all the painting and waiting that it required, but with a LOW budget, and with the result I got, I'm excited to do more!

Here is the TV stand I painted for the kids' play room, just in case you were curious. :)

Teaching Our Children About Real Heroes

I want to start by saying that I love Disney and it's Princesses. We had Disneyland passes last year and Genny picked a different Princess dress to wear each time we went. We have the movies, we have the books. We pretend we're the Princesses, and we have the toys. With that disclaimer, I want to explain what I did in my kids' rooms.

I recently started following Nuria Perez on Instagram, then found her blog. She blogs about adventures that she and her two daughters have together. A recent blog was on real live women heroes and why you should teach your daughter(s) about real live heroes in addition to learning about Disney Princesses. I loved her wall of female heroes she created for her daughters, and have been wanting to do something similar. Now that we've settled into our new house, I decided it was time. Then I thought, what about Glenn? Well, as it turns out, it's just as easy to find real male heroes as it was to copy the female heroes from the blog.

So behold! Our heroes that we will talk about and learn about. I didn't have six 8X10 frames to use for the project, but some sticky tack and page protectors worked out just fine.

Genny wanted to pose with her pictures, can you tell she's the shy one? ;) From left to right: Malala Yousafzai, Rachel Carson, and Jane Goodall.

I decided that since Glenn was still only three years old, I wanted his heroes to be out of reach. So they are above his dresser. From left to right: Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, and The Wright Brothers.

Who would you pick to be on your child's hero wall?