Handmade Holiday 2017

Happy 2018!  I wanted to write a post on some of these things prior to Christmas so that they might be the inspiration for some last minute gifts but time got away from me.  I guess they will have to be next year's inspiration.  I have had so much fun making gifts for Lyla since she was born and now I get to do the same for Ana as well.  

First up: Christmas PJs.  Now the pajamas weren't actually Christmas gifts but I made them for the girls to wear on Christmas.  It is so fun to see Lyla getting to wake up Christmas morning and see her Santa gifts while wearing a cute pair of Christmas pjs.  

I made Lyla a pair of Movie Night Pajamas by Sew A Little Seam just like last year.  

This year I decided to make them entirely out of the deer fair isle Christmas fabric from Girl Charlee with the exception of the cuffs on the sleeves and ankles.  I seriously love this pattern so much and plan to make tons more of these babies.  In fact, I may never buy the girls any pajamas as they get older.  Here is a picture of my cutie in her Christmas pjs on Christmas morning:

Of course I couldn't leave Ana out of the Christmas pj fun!

I decided to make her a pair of Lullaby Line Snap Pajamas from Peek-a-Boo Pattern Shop.  I really liked this pattern too.  I did make one mistake when I was sewing the gusset.  I was using my serger to sew the legs together and I accidentally cut right through the gusset.  Oops!  They still look cute though!  I don't have a picture of Ana wearing hers on Christmas because she blew out her diaper right away!

I did get a picture of her with her Christmas headband that I made when we had her snuggled into her carseat to head over to my parent's house.  I used this knot bow pattern and tutorial from Coral + Co.  It was a quick and easy sew.  

Here are my sweet girls together in their pajamas:

Next I will share with you the gifts that I made for the girls. 

For Ana I made a bandana scarf and a pair of harem pants.  For the bandana bib I used this tutorial and pattern from See Kate Sew.  It was a very easy project and I LOVE the mini pom pom trim.  Also this mustard dot fabric is the best.  Unfortunately Girl Charlee no longer has this fabric.

These harem pants from Made By Me Patterns was seriously the easiest pair of pants that I have ever made.  So simple and so cute!

Now for Lyla's present:

This adorable soft structure baby carrier is called The Mini and it is by Sew Toot Patterns.  Sew Toot makes patterns for actual baby carriers that are so amazing.  If I had the time I might just try my hand at the real thing!  They also have a pattern for a baby nest like a Dock a Tot which would be fun to make too.  The instructions for the pattern were so easy to follow and this really came together quickly.  I had so much fun sewing it and I think I might make a few of these to sell in my Etsy Shop. I made the carrier with grey canvas fabric and this lovely Michael Miller print for the accent piece. The Michael Miller fabric was on clearance at Hobby Lobby which made it even more awesome!

Lyla had fun wearing her new Thundar stuffed animal on Christmas day.  Go Bison!

I hope you feel inspired by this round up of handmade holiday items!  Hopefully I will get a chance to write a post about Ana's advent baptism brunch soon!

Floral Number Monthly Baby Photos

 My little baby Ana turned 6 weeks this past Friday!  How is time going so fast!  Today I wanted to share with you a post on her monthly baby pictures.

For Lyla's monthly baby photos I found a vintage suitcase, some pretty fabric, a blanket (which now hangs out on the futon in our family room), and made a bunting with her name on it.  You can read more about her monthly baby photos here and here.  You can read about how I made the bunting here.

Above is a composite of all of her monthly photos from her baby book. The setup went with her vintage travel nursery theme.

Oh my goodness, she looks so different now!

She is definitely a little girl instead of a baby now.  It is so crazy!

I wanted Ana's monthly photos to also go with her nursery theme so I decided to make the number of each month out of flowers.  This was such a simple project that there isn't really that much to explain.

I waited for fake floral to be on sale at Hobby Lobby.  I gathered up quite a few stems with shades of pink and white flowers.  I made sure to select some that had some nice leaves as well.  Then I trimmed all of the floral heads and some of the leaves off of the stems.  I laid out an off white textured throw that I found at Target in front of the large window in her room.  It lets in a fantastic light that is perfect for pictures.  Then I arranged the flowers into a number 1.  That was all I had to do folks!  It was so simple and they turned out beautifully.  It will be see fun to see her grow next to these lovely floral numbers!

Seriously the light in her room is so gorgeous!  I also had an adorable model as well.  She isn't always a cooperative model though.  I added bandana bibs to my Etsy shop, The Petite Seam and she was  not amused when I tried to have her model one of the bibs.

Thankfully she fell asleep shortly after this and I got some sweet photos.

Seriously that light!

I am so excited for the next post on this blog.  I have been working on a big fireplace makeover in our living room over the past couple of weeks and it should finally be done by the end of this week or the beginning of next week.  Here is a little sneak peak:

Keep checking back so you don't miss the post on this stunning makeover!

Bokeh Christmas Light Photos

I love this time of year so much.  I love the music, the lights, advent church services, all of the fun traditions, and fluffy white snow.   I do not like the very frigid weather that we had for about a week last year.  The one advantage to that was that we didn't have to wait in line at Santa's Village like we did last year because most people decided to stay home because the high was -8.  Don't worry we bundled her up well and Santa's house was well heated.

Today I am finally posting about some lovely photos I took with my Nikon DSLR around Thanksgiving.  I recently purchased a 50 mm f/1.8 lens which had been on my wish list for awhile. This lens is great for portrait photography and it has the ability to create some nice bokeh effects. Bokeh is that wonderful background blur that you often see in professional photographs.  Another definition of bokeh that I love is "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light."  I like that definition especially for this post on bokeh Christmas lights.

I moved some furniture around in our bonus room to get some blank wall space.  I found some 5' light strings at the Dollar Tree and hung them up on the wall with clear push pins.  I chose to get colored lights but you could also use plain white ones too.  We have laminate flooring in our bonus room that looks like a dark wood and I loved the way the colored lights reflected off of the floor.

I used Lyla's Simba stuffed animal to take some test shots while she was napping.  The key to these photos is to shoot in either manual mode or aperture priority mode so that you can adjust the aperture on your lens.  Aperture is the opening in your lens.  As the aperture widens, the amount of light that gets in increases.  Aperture is measured in f-stops.  Smaller f-stops=wider aperture and more light, bigger f-stop=smaller aperture and less light.  My standard kit lens that came with my camera had 3.2 as the smallest f-stop that it could achieve.  This new lens can go down to 1.8 which is a significant difference.  I toyed with the idea of spending twice as much to get a fixed focal lens that could go down to 1.4 but I have been satisfied with the results that I get with this lens.  I got to try it out for the first time with my sister's senior pictures and I loved the beautiful bokeh backgrounds that it produced.

The other key to these photos is the distance of your subject from the background that you want blurred.  In the first photo of Simba I have him placed only about a foot or 2 from the background and you can see that I get a some blur but the green wires are still visible.

I gradually moved Simba further from the background until I achieved the effect I wanted.

Unfortunately my subject was a toddler and didn't always stay where I wanted her to but I still love shots like the one above even if I can see the wires and the baseboard heater in the background.  This lens is also harder to get the subject in focus when your subject is constantly moving.  I definitely need more practice!

Bob the Sloth and a snack had to make an appearance in some of the photos to keep her in one place. One of my favorite shots is the one of her lying on the floor and holding the snowflake.  This definitely wasn't in the plan but I'm glad I kept snapping even when she decided to lie down!  Oh and if you want to learn about the Christmas pjs that she is wearing read this post.

I think I am going to try to get another session in with a milk and cookies for Santa set up.  Cookies will definitely keep her in one place!  Next on the blog: my take on a car seat poncho.

Christmas Pajamas

Now that it is after Thanksgiving it is probably okay to post about these cute Christmas pjs that I made for my daughter right?  I purchased this Red and Green Fairisle Deer fabric from Girl Charlee Fabrics last year.  I had already gotten one good use out of the yard I ordered by making these cute leggings for Lyla last year

Here is my little cutie sporting her Christmas leggings at around 5 months old.  By the way the pattern is called Baby Got Back Leggings which you can read more about in this post.

I still had a significant amount of the Fairisle Deer fabric left and I thought that Christmas pajamas would be the perfect use for it.  I found a pattern called Movie Night Pajamas from Sew a Little Seam which I was excited to try.  I like this pattern a lot and I will be getting a ton of use out of it. The pattern includes options for shorts bottoms and long bottoms, short sleeve and long sleeve tops, and the option to add gathered sleeves to give the pajamas a more feminine touch.  It is also a layered pattern which is nice because you have the option to only print the pattern for the size you are making.

The size options are 12 months-12 years which is yet another reason that I will get a ton of use out of this pattern!  I made 2T for Lyla even though she is mostly wearing 18 month clothes.  They are a little long in the sleeves and legs since I made the 2T size but otherwise the fit is awesome!  I had just enough of the Fairisle Deer fabric for the pants and the sleeves of the shirt.  The other fabrics that I used were a grey interlock from Joann Fabrics for the rest of the shirt and white rib knit also from Joann Fabrics for the sleeve and leg cuffs.  

With this project I also use a double needle for the first time to hem the shirt.  I found some good tips on using a double needle here, here, here, and here.  Your machine needs to be able to do a zigzag stitch to accommodate a double needle and you need to have somewhere to put a second spool of thread.  I actually have a place to attach a second spool holder but I have lost the attachment so I just dropped the second spool into a small mason jar that I placed behind my machine.  I checked in my sewing machines manual for tips on how to thread the two needles.  It was quite easy actually and I liked the professional looking results.

 I used my Silhouette Portrait to add the Merry and Bright lettering with gold glitter heat transfer material.  

Hopefully you enjoyed this post and found some helpful hints.  Oh and if you like that bokeh light effect in the background of some of these photos check back for a post on how I did it in the near future!

Digital Baby Book: Monthly Photo Pages + Custom Stickers

Wow it is almost November already!  I thought I would try to squeeze in a few more October posts in before the end of the month so here is the first of several.  I am back today to share another post on Lyla's baby book.  So far I have shared how to create a custom calendar page and the items that I scanned to files for preservation in the book.

Custom Calendar Page

Scanned Keepsakes

In today's post I am sharing the monthly photo pages from the book and how to create a custom sticker to use with the Mixbook software.  I have written several posts on Lyla's monthly photo sessions from her first year including this post on the burlap bunting I made for the set, this post on the monthly photos, and this update on how the photos were going at 4 months.  These photos were fun to share on FaceBook each month and also worked well as decor for her 1st birthday party.  But I knew that these photos would shine the most in her baby book.  

Each month I recorded all of the little things that Lyla did and all of the activities she participated in. Some of these things are recorded in the calendar pages but others were used to help me write a letter each month to Lyla.  I loved doing this and I recommend that every expecting mother plan to do something like this for their child.  It is really touching for me to go back and read each letter and I hope that someday it will be meaningful to Lyla as well once she gets to read them herself.  I plan to continue to write one every 3 months up until she turns 2 and and then yearly after that.  It would be fun to include all of the letters in a book that I could give to her at her high school graduation.  

As you can see I made each monthly page have the same format.  I chose to keep these pages clean and simple because I wanted the photos and the letter to be the focus of each monthly page.  I wanted to add a little "handwritten" element to the letters so that is where the creation of the custom stickers comes in.  Here is how I created them:

I opened up my Pixelmator software (you can do this in photoshop or any other photo editing software and I am sure the steps are similar) and selected a blank canvas size.  I just used standard letter size in this example.  I then selected a font and typed my message.  Next I clicked on the background layer in the layers window and hit delete.

Once the background layer is deleted then you will see a checkerboard pattern behind the text.

Now you need to save the document.  When the save menu appears click in the box next to "save a copy as" and then select PNG from the drop down menu.  PNG stands for portable network graphic.

Now open up your project in Mixbook and click on the stickers tab on the left side of the screen and then click on the browse stickers button.

Select the upload stickers tab in the menu that pops up and then click on the orange upload stickers button.  Find your file and select it.

Once the sticker has uploaded you can close the window and your sticker can be found in the project stickers section of the stickers tab.  If you hover your cursor over the sticker then it will magnify it.  

To add the sticker to a page simply click on it and drag it to the page you want it on.  When you have the sticker selected on the page you can change the size of it and also manipulate it in other ways using the gray tool bar that pops up below the sticker.  

I used custom stickers in other places in the book as well.  The hot air balloons on each calendar page were vector files that I purchased on Etsy.  The little bison that you see on this page was just an image that I found by doing a google search.  I saved the image to my computer and opened it in Pixelmator. I used the magic wand tool or paint selection tool and clicked on the background surrounding the image and deleted it.  Then I saved the image as a PNG.  The only problem with this is that the images are often poor quality which limits how much you can enlarge them with out them becoming blurry or pixelated.  This wasn't a problem for me, however, since I was using them on the calendar pages and needed them to be small.  You could also type png after the image you are searching.  You will know it is a PNG if the background comes up with a checkerboard pattern when you click on the thumbnail in google images.  Then you can eliminate the step of removing the background in photo editing software.

I also scanned the footprints from the hospital into my computer and made them into PNG files.  I had to adjust the darkness of the footprints to make it work properly but you just have to play around with it little bit.

One of my favorite pages in the book is this page with all of her monthly photos and her 1st birthday invitation in the middle.

It is so fun to see how much she has grown.  And now she is 15 months!  Time flies!

Here is my little cutie playing in the leaves.  I love her so much!  Up next: a simple diy Kitty costume.