Sister Shirts Using the Silhouette Portrait

In my last post I told you that there was one more part to the gift that we gave to Lyla when she came to meet Ana at the hospital.  The last part of her gift was a big sister shirt.  Of course I had to make a little sister onesie so that Ana could match.

This project was quite simple and I've already written several posts on using heat transfer material with the Silhouette Portrait so I won't bore you with all of the details but I'll just hight light a few important things.

I found the onesie and toddler t-shirt at Hobby Lobby.  I created the graphic using a font called October Twilight.  With any script font you want to make sure to weld the text before cutting out the shape so that the text will come out as one continuous shape and not a lot of little pieces.  I found the heart arrow in the Silhouette Design store by typing "heart arrow" in the search bar.  I measured the front of the t-shirt and the onesie where I wanted to put the designs and then sized each design accordingly.  When you are using heat transfer material you always have to remember to mirror the designs before cutting them out.  Also make sure to load the heat transfer material properly into the machine.  I accidentally loaded it upside down the first time oops!

I just love how the shirt and onesie turned out!  Now getting a picture of the two of them wearing their sister shirts was the challenge.  Ana wasn't having it so she had a pacifier for most of the shots. Lyla kept kicking her legs up in the air so that I had to fix her skirt a ton of times.  Finally I told her that she needed to keep her legs down if she wanted a snack at church ha ha.

Of course most of the shots were less than perfect like this one when Lyla heard daddy walking by.

Or this one where Ana's pacifier fell out and Lyla looked like she wanted to run away.

Or this one where Lyla is trying to pull up her skirt and Ana's legs are straight up in the air (I think she was imitating big sister here LOL)

This shot was the only one I got with Ana's eyes open.  

But even the outtakes are adorable.  I love these two girlies so much!  Next up on the blog I will be sharing Lyla's Halloween costume with you and I am so excited about it.  It is the first time that I sewed her a costume and it turned out great!

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.

Baby A's Nursery Reveal

The day that I blogged about Lyla's finished nursery was the day that my water broke and labor started.  Since I'm getting a little impatient here's hoping that posting about baby girl A's nursery will do the same.  So without further ado here is her nursery:

I am absolutely in love with this room.  My vision of floral and lace came together in this room even better than I had imagined it.  You can read about how I made the floral and lace chandelier here and you can read about the floral letter and the lace frame art here.  So much of the rest of this room was made possible by Target.  Target is hands down my favorite place to shop (and no Target is in no way paying me to say this but if they would like to I won't turn it down *wink wink).  The crib sheet and ruffled crib skirt are both from their new Cloud Island nursery collection.  Surprisingly that crib skirt had some not so great reviews online.  Most of the negative reviews were centered around the fact that it was really wrinkled coming out of the packaging.  There is a simple solution to that though.  I just threw it in the dryer with a wet towel and it came out perfect!  And $25 compared to $80 for comparable crib skirts was such a steal!

I cannot tell you how much I love this crib.  I love the vintage look which is why I picked a classic Jenny Lind style crib for Lyla's room.  For this room I wanted a metal crib but most of them are ridiculously expensive.  This crib from Little Seeds is affordable and I love the color.  I bought mine at Wayfair but I just got an email from Target today that they are carrying Little Seeds products now. You can find the crib here.

You can read about the vintage doily art that I made for above the dresser here.  This dresser is tied with the crib for my favorite piece of furniture in the room.  I found it on Craigslist after months of looking and here is what it looked like when we got it.

I liked the gray but it was too close to the color of the wall so it needed to be painted white.  It is such a gorgeous vintage piece!  I used the same baskets mounted to the wall that was used in Lyla's room at the old house and you can read more about it here.  I found the tray to hold diapers and other things that we need while using the changing pad at HomeGoods.  I made another changing pad cover using extra fabric from the roller shade project and gray dot minky.  You can read more about how to make the changing pad covers here. That toy basket in the corner is from Target from the Pillowfort collection.

Those gorgeous lace curtains are from Target from the Shabby Chic collection.  I found two of the panels on clearance in store.  The other 2 were bought online and I had kind of a funny experience with them.  Instead of receiving the curtains I receive a package full of bras but the packing slip said it was the curtains.  I had to jump through some hoops to get the curtains but it ended up to be a blessing because they actually went on sale which I wouldn't of known about had I received the right order the first time.  You can read more about how I covered the roller shades in fabric here.  I found the curtain rods at Wayfair.  That rocker was thrift store find that I recovered for Lyla's nursery and you can read more about that project here.

The lamb was a gift from the previous homeowners.  I found the pillow and that beautiful lamp at HomeGoods.  The bookshelf was a clearance item from Target.

I found these gorgeous prints on Etsy.  The child of God and Alice in Wonderland printables came from the shop Adoren Studio.  The middle print came from the shop MINTable Printables and it is a quote from a Mumford and Sons song.  I found the simple white frames at Target for $3 a piece.

I found this picture ledge and the hooks at Target.  The pictures in the frames are of baby A's namesake.  There will be more on that once she is here and we officially announce her name.  The Alice and Wonderland print was actually on our porch at our old house but I thought is fit in well here.

Well that's it!  I love this room and I hope you love it too and are inspired by it.  I can't wait until baby A is finally here!

Vintage Doily Art

Happy Labor Day weekend!  I am enjoying this weekend by relaxing and getting some cleaning and laundry done in preparation for baby's arrival.  I can't believe that it is already September and officially my due date month!

I plan to give a full tour of the nursery in my next post but first I wanted to share a couple of diy projects with you.  The first one is this beautiful and simple art that I made out of doilies and embroidery hoops.  I didn't take any photos of the process because it is so incredibly simple.

I found these doilies at a couple of antique stores.  They are easy to find and it was fun looking through them to find a variety of patterns and sizes.  I was especially excited to find that pale pink one because it fits so well with the colors of the room.  I bought the wood embroidery hoops at Joann Fabrics and decided to buy three different sizes.  I put the doilies in the hoops and then carefully stretched them so that they were taut in the hoops.  I trimmed off the excess doily in each hoop and then applied a line of hot glue around the back of each embroidery hoop to secure the doily in the hoop.

I hung them above the dresser/changing station with simple gold nails.  I can't wait to share a full picture of the dresser once I do a nursery reveal.  It is such a beautiful piece of vintage furniture!

I have one more project to share with you today.  My execution on this one wasn't the best so I will share the original tutorial with you.

I fell in love with these beautiful lace curtains that I found on clearance at Target but I knew that I still needed to block the light in the room somehow.  I decided to buy blackout roller shades because I had seen many tutorials on Pinterest of how to cover them in fabric.  The tutorial that I followed (however I did not follow it very well) was this one from the blog The DIY Mommy. It is a great tutorial but I made a big mistake when I installed the shades.  I should of installed them backwards so that the fabric would cover the roll itself.  I tried fixing it but the shades wouldn't  roll up that way. Because of this I was unable to wrap the fabric around the sides of the shade because it would look bad in the rolled part.

It still looks beautiful and the shades roll up just fine but some of the fabric is starting to bubble because I didn't do a good job of applying the spray adhesive to both the shade and the fabric.  It will be easy to fix but I am just frustrated that it isn't perfect.  It's the curse of being a perfectionist.  I know it is still lovely and much better than plain white roller shades though.  I found that beautiful fabric at Hobby Lobby by the way and with the sale on the fabric I was able to cover 3 roller shades for $25!

Check back next week for the full reveal of the nursery!

Floral Letter + Lace Frame Art

Happy Sunday!  I am happy to announce that the nursery is officially finished.  I will share a full reveal in a few weeks but until then I've got a couple more DIY projects to share from the room. Today I am sharing how I created the floral letter and and lace frame art that is hanging above the crib in the nursery.

The floral letter is actually a repeat project from my blog.  Back in 2014, I created a floral letter R for our porch gallery wall in our last house. I created the floral letter A for this room using basically the same steps (and yes we have a name picked out for baby girl that begins with the letter A but I won't be sharing it on the blog for a while yet).

I started by painting the whole cardboard letter (from Hobby Lobby) gold.

I added the texture that you can see in the paint with this stenciling brush.

I used an awl to poke holes in the letter where I wanted to place the flowers.

Then I used hot glue to secure the flowers in place in the holes that I poked with the awl.

Finally I used ModPodge to attach some lace ribbon to the sides of the letter A.

I didn't take any pictures of how I made the lace frame art partly because they are so easy to make.  I found some open frames on sale at Hobby Lobby.  I used some scrap lace from my fabric stash. Actually the scrap lace in the smallest frame came from my mom's fabric stash and was the lace that she used as part of the bridesmaid dresses that she made for my wedding!  I then cut the scraps to roughly the size of the frames and used hot glue to attach the lace to the frames.  They still seemed to be missing something so I hot glued some of the leftover flowers in each frame.

I felt like the arrangement needed one more thing so I also hung this clock up with the letter and frames.  I actually bought the clock for Lyla's room but decided it didn't work in her room so I am glad to finally find a use for it.

I am so excited to show you the rest of this room!  My next post involves vintage doilies that I turned into art for above the dresser. Keep checking back for that post!