Okay, seriously, this is the longest craftiest post ever. I’ll be impressed with you if you actually make it all the way through.

I thought I would show you some of the projects that I’ve been working on for the past few months.  Now, keep in mind, I usually don’t do this much crafty stuff on a regular basis.  Once I finished the nesting process during the pregnancy (which I. love.  I love cleaning out stuff, organizing, etc.), I decided that I needed some projects to put my hands to.  Most of them were done when the girls were sleeping, some were done on days off that Adam gave me.

All that to say:  no children were neglected in the making of these crafty items.

First off.  I made a baby gift consisting of a onesie dress, 2 bibs, and some baby shoes.  The tutorial I got for the onesie dress can be found here. The bibs I just made up on my own using bibs I already have as a pattern, and the shoes came from a pattern found in this book. I got the book at hobby lobby the last time we were in the states.

I’m not gonna lie.  The shoes were difficult to make (big shout out to Mirandi who helped me make them while she was here visiting!), even though the book says that they are only a difficulty level of 3.  I can’t imagine some of the projects that are rated at a 5.  I’ve made these shoes a lot.  More than I’m going to admit.

More on the shoes later.

Next up:  baby Cole’s room.  It was already blue (the girls crib bedding had a blue background with pink and red flowers on it).  I made the bumper pads, the crib skirt, and the trim on the curtains.  What I did for the bumper pads was just make slip covers for the ones we already have.  It sounds more complicated than it is, but it really wasn’t that hard.

Although, I’m really proud of my cording, lol.

(The cording wasn’t difficult either.)

The canvas boards on the wall there… I covered those with leftover fabric and will spray mount his newborn portraits onto them if he’ll ever just go ahead and be born.

Adam gave me that red chair (he bought it at the goodwill for like $15 and then my mom paid to have it recovered if I’m rememebering correctly) when I was preggers with Alanna.  I’m so glad that I chose to have it covered in red, because it works well for a girl or a boy.  The little storage cube next to it was bought at Wal-Mart right before we moved to Scotland.  We bought 4 of them at the time, and had one sitting in the garage that hasn’t been in use for awhile.  So, I recovered it using a hot glue gun.

Seriously, ya’ll, I can make anything with a hot glue gun.  No lie.

The sheers were already in the room, I just added the boy bit to the bottom.

Funny story, when I was in college, I bought this HUGE bolt of sheer fabric for like $60 (it was being sold for so cheep, because it had a teeny tiny little flaw on the edge that went all the way through- you couldn’t even see it once the sides were hemmed).  I sat in my college apartment and made all of the sheer curtains for our first home when me and Adam were engaged.  I even still have some of that fabric left on the bolt there was so much of it!

Anyway, that sheer curtain came from that bolt of fabric and was in the girlie nursery.

My mom and I bought this changing table when I was pregnant with Alanna for $15 dollars at a consignment sale.

We’re all about the deals.

Oh yeah, I made the quilt too.  I didn’t use a pattern for this, just kind of sewed the squares together and then did one solid color on the back that wraps around the edges.  It’s kind of wonky (yes, that is a real word), but it doesn’t bother me!

Inside the crib.  I did not make the sheet. I purchased it off of someone on etsy.com.  It just seemed way out of my league for my sewing capabilities.

The outside of the bumper:

The inside of the bumper:

Check out that cording… lol, it’s SO not hard to do!!

Annnnndddddd, the crib skirt.

Whew. That wraps up the baby’s room!

So remember the baby shoes?  I decided to try and make some for Cole.  The first pair came out alright.

He’ll match his room, HA!

The second pair, I tried to make with elastic and in a smaller size, thinking that with elastic, they’d have a better chance of staying on.

Clearly, I don’t understand how elastic works.

I got a better understanding of elastic when I made these shirts for the girls:

The tutorial can be found here.  And seriously, these are SO easy to make.  The first one took a bit longer, but the second one only took me an hour to make.

I lengthened the pattern on the tutorial since it is for babies.  I wish that Alanna’s were a tad longer, but that’s okay, because Nora can wear it when she out grows it!

Speaking of Nora, she didn’t like her shirt… she thought it was too tight, because of all the elastic.

I said, “You will wear the shirt kid, because I made it with my own bare hands.”

And I think she was okay with that.

And then, because they had peasant shirts, I made them go and harvest the fields for potatoes.

Not really.

So, remember the blurb book?  I thought I’d show it to you, even though I made it back in like April or something.

Here’s the cover:

They give you the option of printing your own image on the cover that wraps all the way around the front and back (which, I did).

The print quality is awesome.  I just copied and pasted my blog entries either right onto the images or onto the pages.  The templates were super easy to use.

I particularly like the page templates that you can put a bunch of pictures on… you know, the snapshots that you just want to pile all onto one page.

All in all, I heart my blurb book, and plan on getting one made a year for our family adventures and holidays and stuff.

One of my main goals before the baby was born (not that he’s been born yet or anything) was to get all caught up on my scrapbooking.  I decided that I could no longer maintain a scrapbook for our family stuff and each child, so hence the blurb book.  I do scrapbooks for the kids that pertain to events or pictures just of them.  My goal is to only have like 2-3 layouts a month per book so that I can actually keep up with it.

You may be wondering why I do the scrapbooks instead of just getting everything printed in the blurb book.  Well, I like to have my handwriting in their books as well as putting little pictures, or whatever in there. I really just enjoy making them for the kids when it all comes down to it though.  I find it therapeutic to go upstairs when they are in bed and sit at my desk and make something with my hands for them.

You probably think I am some kind of freak, but that’s okay. 

One more sewing project that I did recently.  The girls have these little pigs from a tv show here called, “Peppa Pig,” so when I came across this tutorial, I thought, wow, it would be fun to make a house for the girls for their peppa pigs.

There’s a character on the show named, “George,” that Nora insists on saying with a British accent.  Anytime we say his name, she corrects us as to its proper pronunciation.  I have video of that I think that I probably won’t ever post, so I don’t even know why I told you that.

And they open up to this:

Yes, those are mud puddles for the pigs to play in. 

I had fun with this project, because I used a lot of stuff I had around to make them.  The blue fabric I bought a couple of years ago to cover some of those storage cubes from Wal-Mart, the brown fabric came from a tweed skirt that I was going to give away, but decided to keep for the fabric.  I had the buttons, the button loops were hair bands (which is recommended in the tutorial).  I just bought a bit of green and yellow fabric, and some felt.

And yes, I used the hot glue gun to attach all felt pieces.

So, I really like this site for sewing project if you find yourself needing to take your mind off of a big gargantuan massive huge growth hanging off the front of you.

Ahem, I mean, if there is a sweet baby growing inside of you that you can’t wait to meet.

So, the past few days, being really desperate and having nothing else to sew, scrap, or glue, I borrowed this little beauty from some friends of ours.

It has a gazillion pieces I swear.

I’m not sure how many pieces it actually has because it was given to me in a big plastic bag with a fold out picture for reference. Thank goodness for that picture.

It was kind of touch and go there for a bit, as to whether or not it was actually making me more frustrated and irritable, but all in all, I had a good distracting time doing it.

So, now that I have done alllllllllllll of these little projects AND built a sadistic puzzle, AND this post brings me up to date with my blogging, there’s only one way for this pregnancy to go.  And that is for the baby to GETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUT.