Remake Your Kids' Art: Finger Painting Bunting

Doesn't your heart sink when your kiddo goes to throw something in the recycling and sees their old art work in there? They get so offended and it breaks my heart.

So I am posting about things to do with your kiddo's art projects, since so far it seems ok if we chop them up and reuse them.

Preston loves to paint and finger paint. So we found a bunting template online simply by googling it and cut out Mr. P's finger paintings. We used hot glue and twine, gluing the back top of the flags to the twine.

Give it a whirl.

To learn about the Dictionary P go here.

Or to learn how to mount photos on canvas go here.

Happy repurposing!!

An organized baby girl closet!

As promised in my last post, I'm ready to share a project that we worked pretty hard on! The closet system for our nursery. 

I just LOVE how it turned out!

Did I mention that we did all of this for under $80?! 

To purchase something prefabricated would have been $120+!

As usual, we got to work pretty quickly, because when there are free time and materials we must get to work. There is mess in the first before shots from my bonus daughters as this was their room before we decided to make it the nursery. 

Before we get too deep, here is the before shot:

It was your typical builder grade closet with one bar the full length of the closet and a shelf at the top that you could only pile stuff on top of one another to fill. We ripped that out pretty quickly before we remembered to take our before shot, but I'm sure you get the gist. 

I did some research and started a pinterest board for kids' bedroom and closet inspiration.

I sat down with a trusty mechanical pencil and lined notebook paper and wrote out what we needed to accommodate in this closet. For example, we have a tiny house and this is the best closet to house the vacuum, so it was necessary to build a specific place for the vacuum cleaner. Other things were onesies, swaddle blankets and sleep sacks, pants of various sizes etc. 

I started getting hand me downs at an alarming rate and so grateful I was since it kicked our butts into gear! I sketched out an idea of what would work for us in this space. The sketch is embarrassing... I'm great at many things but drawing and even just sketching out is not one of those things

We measured the closet space and adapted my sketch to the measurements to make it work.

Here is a shot during the process: 

The details:

We used these simple plastic shoe boxes on the shelves. 

Since baby socks are so tiny and tend to get scattered all over the place I also didn't want to waste a whole drawer for these. 

We still have a shelf (reused) at the top of the closet, it is just more compact. I put swaddle blankets, the breast pump and two sleeping bags up there. Probably more of a temporary storage solution at the moment, but it works loads better than the last shelf with too much room.

I separated the clothes by size which is a tedious and exhausting task!

I used the closet hanging tabs that we'd purchased when Mr P was tiny, but I'm not the biggest fan. So I used the different levels of dowels to create a better visual separation.

0-3 month clothes on the bottom and 3-6 and 6-9 month clothing on top. 

I have a storage container in the garage filled with 9+ months clothes, but I figure by then I'll be ready to go through clothing again!

We incorporated this dresser that we found on the side of the road then painted. All I really did was add the fabric flowers I made behind the drawer pulls.

Off to the left up top we added pre drilled melamine to accommodate the navy baskets from Dollar Tree. If we choose to switch things up later, we can simply move the pegs and the shelves. 

Lastly, at the bottom I wanted to be able to contain laundry and toys.

I purchased two laundry baskets from Ikea, they were $4.99 each. After researching we designed this space for the two to nestle in here side by side. 

The one one the left will hold dirty clothes and the one on the right will house baby toys.

We took the doors off since you couldn't see the whole closet or get to the middle of it. We added a dowel kit to the top just under the track and these thrifted curtains that are Pottery Barn! They were only $7.99 for the pair! Now we can close it up or open it all the way up to get to the things we need!

This is the smallest bedroom in the house and needed to have the most organized closet to make sure that life with all four kids at home this summer will run smoothly!

All I have to do is make labels for all of the baskets and bins so that when mommy brain sets in I have a system of checks and balances!

One more look at it:

The girls and Mr P will be sharing a room for the summer! 

Stay tuned on how we will make that work!

Hope baby girl's closet inspires you!

DIY Fabric Flower Drawer Pulls

I'm really excited to share a project with y'all from this weekend for our baby girl's room!

I can not believe that I'm already in my third trimester and that I'll have a baby girl in less than 3 months! It just blows me away how fast this pregnancy has gone by.

OK, on to the project! It is very sweet and simple, but packs a lot of punch in the cuteness department :)

Take a peek!

We found this dresser on the side of the road in our neighborhood a couple summers ago on our way home from the park. It wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination... and we didn't care. 

We painted it white as soon as we got it home, and it was good enough for the time being. Now that I am pulling together a nursery for the new baby I wanted to glam it up a bit. 

I was inspired by this post that I have seen pinned a million times. However for our nursery the look was too clean looking and I wanted something a little bit shabbier.

So, I'll tell ya how I did it!

I used:

Scrap fabric

Sharp Fabric Scissors

Round Objects from the recycling bin

Polyurethane Spray

Scrap Cardboard

A scribe

Cheap Ikea Drawer pulls

Screw driver

1. I cut out various circles using jars from the recycling bin as a template. I chose my patterned fabric to be the back and front and my solid fabric as the middle two layers.

2. After cutting graduated sized circles, I scalloped the edge of the two patterened circles (the smallest and largest) buy just winging it. Then frayed the edges with my thumb nails. This can get very messy, so I'd recommend doing it over the garbage can.

3. I cut into the circle of my solid fabric making chunky petals and frayed them all by pulling them and running my thumb nail across them. 

Here is a photo to give you an idea of the steps above:

After I frayed all of my edges to my liking I wanted to stiffen the fabric up so my flowers wouldn't be floppy around the drawer pulls.

So...

4. I laid my frayed circular shapes out on a scrap piece of cardboard, took it outside and sprayed my fabric with a polyurethane spray. I could have opted for mod podge, it probably would have dried faster and would have been less stinky, but I didn't want to mess with getting fabric pieces in my mod podge and I was trying to make this happen as fast as possible :) 

5. I let my sprayed fabric dry for several hours in the garage.

6. The fabric pieces stiffened up just as I wanted them to! I crumpled them up a bit and layered them up biggest in the back down to smallest in the front and poked a hole through the center of the fabric with this handy tool that my husband has. It's called a scribe, and I'll tell you it worked quite nicely!

7. I stuck the screw for the drawer pull through the drawer from the backside and popped my flowers onto the front side and screwed on the drawer pull in the center. 

8. Last, I fluffed up my flower petals around the pull. I could not be more thrilled about the final product!!!

I think I'll take a little sand paper and some stain to the dresser to rough it up a bit, the white is just a little too clean looking at this point :)

 One last look up close!

You can go here for a look at the changing pad cover that I whipped up for the nursery in the same color scheme.

Later on this week I'll reveal what the rest of this closet looks like in baby girl's room!

If you decide to make your own fabric flower drawer pulls, I'd love to see what you come up with.

Hope your weekend was great and your Monday is sweet to you :)

Flashback: Preston's Nursery

These past few weeks have been spent sorting, purging, soaking, washing, and building in preparation for the arrival of our baby girl. I'll be posting a series of the multitude of projects that we have been working on for her room and there will be plenty of before and afters. 

I have also been working on Preston's big boy room, and I got to thinking that I never did a post about his nursery. So, today is a little flashback to about this time (pregnancy timeline wise ~28 weeks) when we were expecting Mr. P!

I'll certainly have to dig around to find before photos of this room, but I'll tell you it was sherbet orange and mauve when we moved in. Ew. A couple gallons of paint, some chair rail installation, and a couple Billy Bookcases later this is what we came up with!

This weekend our little man will move into his big boy bed! I can not believe that he will be 2.5 years old on Sunday. It's so true that time flies when you're having fun!

I was going to post a blog...

I had every intention of posting an incredible/fun/inspiring/fill in the blank blog today, however all of my photos are blurry.

I think sticky toddler fingers got to my camera lens.

So, you get this instead...

iphone photos of the sweetest little boy in the world...

eating a gluten free cupcake, on valentines day,  

tangled up in a bad hair day while making the best memories with his mama!

Seize the day!

A Valentine

I don't like Valentine's day!

But I love LOVE. I love my children, I love my husband, I love my friends. 

But I love them every day...

Nonetheless, I decided to make a valentine for a sweet friend.

I have been thinking about this concept for awhile and wanted to play with it. It is inspired by mixed media art, which I seem to be crazy about these days.

I have so many ideas & inspirations and so little extra time on my hands these days. So I figured I'd start here:

The back is white fabric with large pink polka dots. 

I adore how it turned out and I am flooded with inspiration for other projects!

These are great scrap bin busters, and they are so very fun to make, especially if you know exactly who you're making it for :)

I hope my dear friend knows I am grateful for her and my love runs deep.

After all, that's what valentines day is supposed to be about.

That's what every day is supposed to be about!

xo

A DIY Changing Pad Cover for our baby girl

Hey Y'all!

I am thrilled!

I'll let you in on a little secret... I was scared to death to take on a project involving elastic.

There, I said it. 

I found this tutorial and built up the courage to go for it. This was such a simple undertaking! Really, this project took just a little over an hour start to finish.

Remember my up cycled sheet to water color fabric? This is how I gave it a new life :)

I wanted a little brighter fabric to lighten up the bold print of this fabric used (and will use on more nursery projects), and to lighten the burden of the cost of the fabric.

Right now, the dresser is still in Mr. P's room, but I had to try this on for size!

I followed the tutorial pretty spot on. She only uses 2 fabrics and I used 3, so I took the whole suggested measurement and divided it by 3, knowing I wanted my water color fabric to be a bit narrower, I accommodated for that.

I did also change my seams. I think overcast edges look much more professional and I feel like they hold up better. I also ironed my seams down after sewing them. You can see what I'm talking about in the following photos:

If I decide to make another one, I'll cut off 10" squares from the corners to create the pockets as opposed to the 8" squares instructed. Maybe my changing pad is a bit deeper, but I'd be more pleased if the cover fit a tad snugger.

All-in-all this was a very fun project, very simple, and I'm thrilled that I nailed the elastic!!

Also, Mr. P tested it out and gives it two thumbs up!