Tennis Guy Gift

For Grandpa this year, we made a little Tennis Guy.  He's great for holding all kinds of stuff in his mouth like

Chapstick

Pens

Shavers

Washcloths

Toothbrushes

And keys...with funny faces...

But it's mostly just good at sitting somewhere, looking at you, and reminding you of your grandson.

Merry Christmas, Bonka!

Christmas Car Map

 Gentlemen, start your engines! 

This year, my big gift to my 2 little boys was a gift of time and effort and creativity.

 My hope was that it would stimulate hours of imaginative and cooperative play between my sons.

 It was so fun for me to make this car map and it's something I've wanted to do for a really long time!  It took WAY longer than I thought to just plan everything out and make it all fit in a way that made sense.

 I started with a plain black fleece blanket, then I used a bunch of those cheap felt squares to create my city blocks, and houses, and...everything.  It was a lot of cutting and pinning.  I really liked the blanket idea, which was not mine, because it was pretty easy to find a cheap blanket, and much less expensive than buying a large piece of fabric.  Also, it made it so the roads are all seamless.

I sewed the small pieces onto the individual squares first, and then I sewed each square onto the blanket. It was a lot of switching thread colors and making sure everything fit right, and pinning, and re-pinning, but I'm in love with the way it all turned out!

 So, a couple of my favorite parts are the race track, of course, and the gas station - the pumps are actually shoe laces and the ends fit in these little pockets I sewed on, so they can come out and fill the cars up.  Pretty fun.

 I love the park.  It's just really fun.  It was one of the hardest things to sew because of all the small pieces and because it was such a small square but I really love it. 

 I REALLY love the car wash.  The cars can just pull in underneath those scrubby brushes just like the real deal.  I super stitched those on so they couldn't easily be pulled off.

 I really love the beach too.  Sewing on the beach fence looks harder than it actually was. :)  And it totally reminds me of Florida beaches everytime I look at it.  The water and waves were fun to create, too.

 The brown mass of crumpled felt at the top is a little weird at first glance, but my son has tons of these tractors so I thought a place where they could push the felt dirt around would be perfect for them.

And anyway, I found an awesome little garbage truck for the city that takes all the trash right to the dirt dump, so it works out really well.  Side note, another one of my favorite finds was a school bus for the school. 

It was really fun  to create the beach houses, too.  I love them!  And I love that the driveways are just the right size for cars to park on.  Can you tell this was fun for me to make?

 I also had fun making the barn and farm area.  I threw this in because my son has a lot of little animals that I thought he'd have fun playing with in here.  Once the blanket and all the squares were sewn on, I sewed on each and every little dotted line, which was a little tricky given the size of this thing.  And then, I decided to add fabric to the back and around the edges.  They were already finished with an embroidered edge, but I thought it needed a little more durability.

 I found this super fun fabric and I am so in love with the result.  I cut it large enough to just fold the raw edges around and under on the right side of the map.  And I just ran a sewing machine around the edge with black thread.

 Then, to "quilt" it, I machine stitched all the edges of the black, so at the edge of every road, and then around both edges on the race track.  It worked like a charm, and the backing fabric is so busy you can't even tell if I did a good job or not, which I LOVE!  If you were to look close, you would see how things are totally not lined up to the pattern at all, but it doesn't even matter.

And the finished product is just as great as I ever hoped it would be.  One of the funnest things I've made for my kids yet!  And I think they like it almost as much as I do.  Win-win!

 

 

So the grand total was:

Blanket - Garden Ridge - $5

Felt - Craft Store/Fabric Store - $8

Car Fabric - Hancock Fabric - $12



Pumpkin Faces

My newest creation.

 

I saw this on Pinterest and thought, what a cute idea!  And a decoration that the kids can actually touch and mess with to their hearts content - bonus!

 

Thought about making it, but it wasn't until I saw these:

At Target that I really put my plans into action!  They have 3 different felt face sets for $1 each and I loved them most because I didn't have to make them myself!

 

So, the supplies I used all of which I already had:

a black frame

black pokadot fabric

a sheet of orange felt

tiny piece of brown felt

some batting

black embroidery floss

black ribbon

spray adhiesive

and of course these pumpkin faces from Target

 

You are about to see one of the worst documented tutorials ever seen in the blog world.  Sorry.  I got carried away and didn't remember to take my camera with me.

 

Step 1: Cut a piece of fabric to fit inside the frame.  Make sure you cut it so it is much too big - this way you have a way to attach the fabric to the back of the frame insert so it won't come off if pulled on (which I guarantee will happen if you're going to let kids play on it.)

 

Step 2: Cut a pumpkin shape out of the piece of felt.

Step 3: Pin the pumpkin to the piece of fabric sticking batting underneath to give it a 3D look.

Step 4: Using embroidery thread, stitch around the edges of the pumpkin to attach it to the fabric.  Probably would be much easier with a sewing machine, but I like the way this looks better so I did it this way.

 

Step 5: Stitch lines down the pumpkin to give it those grooves all pumpkins have.

 

Step 6: Stitch on a little brown piece as the stem.

 

Step 7: Cut a piece of the background fabric about 10-12 inches long and as wide as the background fabric piece you're using.  We are using this to make a pocket to put all those face pieces in.

 

Step 8: Fold this new piece in half and attach it with all the raw ends together to the background piece, so the fold is laying in the middle, just below the pumpkin.  Once you stitch it on, you should have a pocket.

 

Step 9: Cut out felt pieces that say Happy Halloween and stitch them onto the pocket.

 

Step 10: because I didn't have enough extra fabric around the edges, I lined the pocket with ribbon that I could tie around the back of the frame insert so the pocket wouldn't get pulled on too hard that the whole thing came off the frame.

 

Step 11: Spray the frame insert and attach the fabric to the frame.  Then fold the edge pieces around to attach them to the backside.

 

Confused!?  Sorry.  I wish I would have taken more pictures.  I'm not cut out for this whole tutorial thing.  I just make things up as I go along.

 

But here is where it sits at our house.

I love the way it turned out!

And it has lots of fun face pieces that can be mixed and matched whenever we want to mess with it.

My son likes the scary ones the best.

Happy Halloween!

Slime & Gak

Can't wait to use this someday with my two boys. 

How to make Slime. 

How to make Gak. 

Thank you, {Our Best Bites}!

Sharing

I saw this on {A Thoughtful Place} and kind of fell in love with it.

Too funny, right!?  I'd like one in my kid's playroom someday. :)

Boys Rooms

As we get ready to move our toddler from his nursery into a little boys room, I've been collecting some inspiration.  Here's what I've got so far.

Love restoration hardware.  I don't understand why it's so hard to find the most basic bedding sometimes.  I love the simple stripes.  No character beds for my little guy.  Also loving the truck on the floor.  How cool is that old thing!!  Jason would love playing with it.   The vintage clip boards hanging on the wall are a fun idea, too.

I've always loved the nautical look.  This room is so simple, yet really cute.  I love how all the furniture and even the wall covering ties into the theme.  Cute little paddles resting against the wall...

I've always had a thing for airplanes.  And this room is one of my all time faves.  LOVE the giant world map on the wall!!  How easy would it be to do that yourself using a projector!?  Also loving the compass above the bed, and of course the airplanes.  The bedding is adorable, as well.  i love the mixed stripes and plaids.  Might try to make a quilt like this.  It's just strips of fabric sewn together.

And another airplane room.  This is a nursery, but I think a lot of this room could translate toward a boys room.  Love the airplanes on the wall, and the giant ridable one, too.  I gotta find one of those!!  I'm also in love with the miniature aviator jacket hung in the frame.  How cute is that!!?

Loving the colors in this room.  I love the way that name looks above the bed - like giant type setting.  Also love the globe and the little traveling figurines - the elephant, the hat, the giraff, the basket.  All really cute.

Here's a cute baseball themed room.  If I were going to go with baseball as a theme, I'd try to pattern it after this one.  Isn't that bucket of balls cute~!?

More stores need to get in on the similar bedding in different colors trend.  It seems like Potterybarn is the only one to get the memo.  Makes it so much easier to make a shared room look nice!!!  I love the "matching" bedding in this boys room.  It's just a standard boys room, but the similar bedding makes it look really good.

This may be one of my favorite shared boys rooms of all time.  So simple, yet so cute!!  I LOVE the similar bedding in different colors.  It gives each child a sense of identity even though they are sharing a room.  I also love the black and white posters of different sports hung above the beds.  Maybe the child's favorite sport could be showcased here.

Cute ideas~!

Boredom Busters

Summer's almost over, but I saw these great ideas, and wanted to document them.

The gal at {Brassy Apple} shares how she made this cute jar, and more importantly all the ideas she put in it.  It's stock full of ideas for bored little kiddos. 

I love this idea of a weekly schedule from {Somewhat Simple}!!  I think it would make summer a lot more fun and organized and ensure you actually did all those things you wanted to!!  She has TONS of ideas and places to look for more ideas on her post.