Home Made Fish Extender for Disney Cruise

I'm so excited about our Disney Cruise coming up in February! I've been working on our fish extender and it's almost done. All that's left to do is add my Mickey to the top (we need new color ink for our printer first) and get the dowel and ribbon attached. Instructions will be posted next week.

 

Home Made Baby Food - Round 2

For round 1 of home made baby food click HERE

Madison is doing so great with her solid foods. She absolutely loves them, and she loves to help feed herself too. It's quite a messy experience with her. Way messier than Parker ever was.

We pretty much do all of her meals just in a diaper because of this. She helps the food into her mouth with her hand and then smears it around, or just swipes the spoon from us to help herself if we're not moving fast enough.

As we're adding more and more to her list of foods that she loves, I'm figuring out more recipes to keep the flavors interesting for her. After all, I wouldn't want bland, unseasoned foods. Check out round one of baby food prep here.

Broccoli and apple: Equal parts broccoli and apple. Steam or microwave the broccoli, and then blend with 1 chopped steamed apple (steam by microwaving chopped apple in a microwave safe bowl with 1 inch water for 2 minutes) or you can boil the apple for about 7 minutes. I leave the peels on my apples, but you can peel them before steaming. Puree until smooth.

Baby Oatmeal: This one's so easy, you'll wonder why you ever bought "baby" oatmeal. Take regular oatmeal, and in either a food processor or coffee grinder, pulse to chop the oats. Keep ground oats in a tupperware or mason jar until needed. Prepare for baby with breastmilk, formula, or water.

For extra flavors in your baby's oatmeal, try grinding some dried fruits (like apple or banana) to powder and add to oatmeal when you prepare it along with spices like cinnamon and cloves.

Apple and Carrots: Steam 2 apples and 3 whole carrots. Puree until smooth

Pumpkin, Apple, Banana: 1/2 cup canned (or fresh steamed*) pumpkin, 1 steamed apple, 1 banana. Season with ginger, cinnamon, and cloves to taste. Puree until smooth.

*To make fresh pumpkin puree

Home Made Baby Food

Home made baby food is so easy to make, and incredibly cheap compared to the store bought versions. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to find good combo recipes. Below, I've compiled a list of some of the ones I've been making for Madison.

Car Seat Emergency Info

Just a quick, but extremely important, project for today's nap time. A car seat emergency label.

 

Space Saving Breastmilk Storage

I remember that first day after I had Turbo. The lactation consultant came into my room and said "Well you don't have much to work with, do you?" She went on to tell me that it was OK because the size of your breasts has nothing to do with how much milk you can produce. She also said that when her dad had a dairy farm it was often the cows with the smallest udders that produced the most milk.

Well "Moo moo" I AM that dairy cow.

Minnie Mouse Birthday Wreath

Between bed rest, birth, and having a new baby around, I have been seriously slacking on posting my crafting. So now that Snow is 2 month old, I figure I should catch up a little.

Turbo will be turning 2 in April. Since I want to make most of the decorations myself, and I'll be going back to work before then, I've started to slowly put some things together so that I don't go crazy at the end. I decided that we needed something on the door for the party, so I came up with this Minnie Mouse ribbon wreath that will hang in her room after the party.

Click below for directions

Toddler Christmas Tree

Ok, so I know it's not even Halloween, but since I'm anticipating having to go on bed-rest in the next 2 weeks thanks to all of these contractions I decided to bump up a few busy projects I had planned for Turbo.

Toddler Christmas Tree

 This $4.00 project kept her busy for 45 minutes this morning! That is an unheard of amount of time to keep this little 18 month old occupied.

Disappearing 9-patch Baby Quilt

 One of my best friends is having a little girl in February. I found a pack of fat quarters with the perfect color scheme and added a few other prints that I fell in love with.

Disappearing 9-patch baby quilt

Isn't that adorable?

 It's raining outside right now, so indoor pictures will have to do.

Butterfly Mobile

After seeing this on Pinterest when Turbo was a baby, I really wanted to make it for her, but I just never got around to it. Now in preparation for Snow, I've finally completed it!

 I liked the more rustic, natural look of leaving the wooden embroidery hoop exposed instead of covering it with ribbon like in the tutorial. I also used 3 different colors of scrapbooking paper with the vellum in order to tie in some of her bedroom colors.

See the instructions here

Crayon Wallet Tutorial

I hadn't planned on this being a tutorial, so I don't have pictures as I went, but here's a pattern and tutorial for a very cute crayon wallet that saves us when we go out and need to keep Turbo busy for a few minutes.

Crayon wallet to keep toddlers busy

 

Pinterest Inspired Newborn Stocking Cocoon

 

How cute is this picture?

After seeing this picture on Pinterest, I knew what I'd be doing for Snow's first photo shoot when she's born in December. I however was not going to be spending the $85 on the cocoon that's sold by this website, and since I had made the Easter bunny hat for Turbo's first photo shoot I decided to work on making Snow a much better priced cocoon.

Crochet Newborn Stocking Cocoon

Not too bad for making it up as I went if I do say so myself.
See the pattern after the jump

Fingerprint Noah's Ark

Our good friends are having a baby boy! They've decided to name him Noah and run with the theme of Noah's ark, so for the baby shower we made him a thumbprint "Noah's Ark" in place of a guest book.

How cute is that?

Everyone on Pinterest has probably seen the thumbprint trees people are doing in place of guest books at weddings, so I had my highly artistic friend Nola draw an empty ark for us and I picked up some ink pads for the shower. Next to the empty ark I left this note:

Help us make some art for baby Noah’s wall.

Add a thumbprint animal to the ark and sign your name. Get creative with any animal you’d like.

(But please try to keep it to no more than two of each)

And below that we made a few example animals for people to see. 

Here's our empty-ish ark (sorry, I forgot to take a picture before people started)

 

Maternity Wrap T-shirt Tutorial

Maternity clothes are just too expensive. Last week I found this Isabella Oliver top online, but I just can't bring myself to spend $125 plus tax and shipping on a shirt that is meant for me to wear for only a few more months. So I decided that I would take a few yards of jersey material I had laying around and see if I could make something myself. 

 I think I did pretty good compared to the original.

See how to make your own after the jump.

DIY Diaper Wreath

I've been working on a baby shower for a friend of mine and decided that we should have a diaper wreath for the door. After seeing a few on Pinterest, I thought I'd give it a try.

 

See how to make it after the jump.

Animal Finger Puppets

While working on an animal themed baby shower for a friend I decided that we needed some cute finger puppets to be part of the decorations. Unfortunately for me, everywhere I looked, all I could find for patterns were ones that you had to purchase. I knew that I could design some myself. So after looking at lots of pictures of finger puppets online, I started drawing and cutting.

Attached are the patterns that I designed for these cute little guys. See full instructions after the jump.

Big Girl Quilt

Since Turbo is such a climber, I knew that we'd be moving out of the crib and into a big girl bed before too long. With that in mind, I started working on a quilt for her new big girl bed in April. It's a good thing I started then, because at just 15 months old, we've needed to upgrade to a twin size. It's a good thing though since # 2 is coming in December. This gives Turbo plenty of time to adjust and not think that the baby is stealing her bed. The quilt just came back from the quilter and I finished the border so we're all set.

 
The pattern is "Flim Flam" by Pressed for Time Quiltworks. It's meant to be a throw quilt made from fat quarters, but with an added column and row in addition to the borders it makes for a perfect twin size.

The pattern can be purchased at The Pincushion Boutique for anyone interested in trying their hand at a very simple, but beautiful quilt. Check back later to see the tutu bedskirt and Tangled theme room.

Laundry Room Hanging Photos

Now that the family is moved and I finally have a laundry room that isn't the garage, I've been wanting to use some pinterest inspiration to do some decorating. Unfortunately since we're renting, my options for remodeling and decorating are sadly limited. So with that in mind I decided to keep it simple with some pictures of my daughter (Turbo) hanging from pants hangers and a quote from Mary Poppins.