Big Sister Gift for the Hospital

Hello! I am back today and the first thing that I want to share today is that our newest little one has arrived!

Introducing Anastasia Grace (pronounced ah-nahs-TAH-syah, named for her great grandmother) who was born on September 29th at 10:30 am weighing 7 lbs 13 oz and was 19 3/4 inches long.  We are calling her Ana and we are so in love with our newest family member.  I have been on maternity leave now since the day before she was born and I have been loving my time at home with her.  Big sister Lyla has really adjusted well to life with a baby in the house and she seems to really love her baby sister.  This morning she had to give her two kisses before she left for daycare.

Introducing a baby sibling to an older child can really rock their world.  Everything that they have known changes completely.  One of the things that I did to help Lyla feel involved and to reassure her of our love for her was to give her a gift at the hospital when she came to meet Ana for the first time.

Part of her gift were these two sweet books which you can find here and here.  I think these books do a lovely job of explaining the love that you have for both your first born and any new addition to the family.

For her birthday Lyla received this doll from her godparents. This sweet doll comes with a magnetic pacifier and bottle as well as a little bear and a book.  Lyla absolutely loved the doll and I thought it would be fun to give her a diaper bag full of accessories for her doll.

I found this mini craft tote at Hobby Lobby.  It works perfectly as a diaper bag for a doll!

I started by loading it up with items she already had including the accessories that came with the doll, her keys (she got these keys for her first birthday from a friend and they are seriously the best set of toy keys I've seen), and her play phone.

The rest of the accessories in the bag were sewn from scrap fabric in my fabric stash!  For the diapers I used the pattern from this tutorial from the blog One Little Project.  I had to make the pattern smaller to fit the Stella doll.  I think I sized it to 70% of the original pattern.  I used scrap PUL and scrap fleece that I had on hand but you could use any fabric.

I used this tutorial from the blog Craftaholics Anonymous that was a guest post written by Christina from the blog 2 little hooligans.  I used scrap fleece for this project.

The burp cloths and changing pad cover were made just like my burp cloths which I originally wrote about on the blog back in 2013.  The changing pad was about the same size as the burp cloths and the doll burp cloths were just small versions.  For the changing pad I also add some velcro to keep it closed when folded.  I used PUL and dot minky for the changing pad.  For the burp cloths I used cotton quilting fabric and chenille minky just like I do for the full size versions.

Lyla loved all of her gifts.  Her favorite thing to do is change diapers and she changed about 12 dirty diapers in row while over at grandma and papa's house when we were still in the hospital.

There was one more part to this gift but it is a Silhouette project that I will write about in my next post.