Appliqued bibs

It's been pretty busy around here this month, so I don't have a whole lot for ya this week, but I have been working on some baby stuff for a few people I know who are expecting babies soon.

This is the easiest tutorial I have seen for making Baby Legs style leg warmers.  It took me about 5 minutes max to make this cute pair:

Check out my post on making easy baby hooded towels from a bath towel and half a hand towel.  It took me about 15 minutes total to make 3 of them this week.

I haven't joined in the appliqued onesie craze (yet!), but I had some fun embellishing some bibs I got in a huge pack from Walmart for my drooly, already teething almost-4 month old.

 
Seriously, this kid has been slowly cutting two teeth on the bottom for about a month.  Already not a happy thing for the poor guy, but add in perpetually soaked shirts from drooling, and that makes for a grumpy, cold, itchy, raw skinned baby.  Enter water proof bibs...

A tie for my little man...

and a flower for a sweet little girl.

I have a feeling I will be making many more of these.  So easy, so fast.  And so cute.

Plastic zipper bag to shower caddy

Why buy a travel shower caddy when you can make one using two things you already have in about 10 minutes?  I made this for my husband because it drives him crazy when we visit my family and we share a bathroom with my sisters... and they only have lady- scented body wash.  Haha.  So now he can easily bring his manly soap and whatever other masculine things he needs to be comfortable in a girly bathroom right into shower.  My man can smell like a man even on vacation.

You can make this super fast and easy project too!  All you need is a plastic zippered bag (the kind sheets, curtains, pillowcases, etc. come in),

and a hanger you don't need any more.  Any of these types of hangers would work.  The bottom three are baby hangers. 

I settled on the dry cleaning hanger (with cardboard tube removed) because I could bend the metal without using tools to get the shape I wanted.  Easy button easy!

 Next decide if you want to keep the little plastic hanger that is attached to the bag already.  If you don't cut it off.  I decided to keep it because it increased the number of options for hanging.  And I am a girl who likes options.

Next, I laid the hanger on top of the sideways bag to figure out where I would need to punch a hole for the top of the hanger to come through.  I marked that with pen, and used a hole punch to make the hole.  I was going to use a grommet, but I didn't have one that was big enough.  Oh well, that's ok, because it would have added at least 5 minutes to the project, and I promised a 10 minute project!  You may want to punch a couple of other holes if you think water will need to drain from your bag.

Secure the hanger in the bag so it doesn't slip.  You can do this any way you want; I used hot glue- just be careful because hot glue melts plastic a bit, so whatever you do will be permanent!

I promised options!  Try hanging it on the shower curtain rod... (That is my stuff in there, not my husband's...)

Or around the shower head...

Hang it on an existing shower organizer...

Use the little hanger if you want...

So many possibilities!  Jazz it up a bit with cute fabric, or by sewing dividers in so there is a little more organization.  Or let your kids decorate it with permanent markers.  It only took 10 minutes to make, so any extra time you put into it can be justified!

P.S. Mom, don't worry about the bathroom, BJ is just fine!

What works for me: meal planning

http://www.mypyramid.gov/

 I first posted on meal planning in January with a goal of cooking nutritious meals for my family more and coming up with a system for meal planning that would help me get over the fact that I completely hated everything about meal planning. 

I am happy to say that I have progress to report!  While I wouldn't say that cooking and planning meals is my all time favorite thing to do (ok, not even my second or third favorite...), it has become much more bearable, and perhaps a teensy bit enjoyable.

The first step is to find recipes that are inspiring!  I have a tab in my browser that is just for saving web pages with recipes that sound good to me.  I also write down page numbers of recipes from cookbooks, so I can easily find what I am looking for later.  If I found the recipe on a blog or website, I print it out and put it in a sheet protector in a 3-ring binder.  Having a pool of recipe ideas that you already know you want to make is really helpful when you are in a time crunch to get dinner made.  If I can't think of enough meal ideas, I look at my list of mind joggers or mix and match meal plans that I have printed out and in sheet protectors at the front of my binder.

Second, I roughly map out the menu for the month on my dry erase calendar.  This is easy to change and rearrange, so I don't worry about getting every last detail planned all at once.  I just write down the recipes that I know for sure I want to make that month, and fill in the other meals as it gets closer to that time.

Third, I make sure I have a meal plan for each night of the upcoming week (even if it is leftovers).  The plan is pretty flexible.  I go through each recipe and make sure I either have the ingredients, or that the item is circled on my grocery list.  I print up several grocery lists and put them all together in a sheet protector at the back of my binder.

Fourth, I have planned to keep my afternoon free from other stuff after 4:30pm or so (depending on what I am making) and just focus on dinner.  You can't always predict whether or not your babies/ toddlers are going to support you in this, but it does help!  My mom has an alarm on her phone that goes off around 4 or so that says "Make something yummy!"  Whatever works for you.

This might be overkill, but after dinner, I evaluate how much my family and I liked the meal (not my cooking skills -haha- just the meal in general)- i.e. on a scale of 1-10.  I printed off some calendars and wrote in the meals I cooked, along with how much we liked them.  I also make notes on the recipes for the next time I make it so that I can remember changes I make, and figure out ways to make the dishes better suit my family's tastes.

Here are some of the fairly successful meals I have made in the last couple of weeks:
Chicken Salad Sandwiches (So yummy)
Terriyaki Chicken Pita Pockets
Mexican Grilled Corn on the Cob
Grilled Buttermilk Chicken and Cheesy Mashed Potatoes
Eggs Poached in Curried Tomatoes with Quinoa (just a tad too spicy for my son- I would tone it down)
Pizzcuits
Southwestern Dinner Frittata
Lao Egg Rolls

PS- The grocery list, Mind Joggers, and Mix and Match Menus can all be found under the Freebies Tab at the top of the page.

Shirt refashion: Shorts, knapsack, and bicycle cap

 

I'm a sucker for "matchy" stuff on little kids.  Girls, boys, it doesn't matter.  I had a refashion in mind for my son, using one of my husband's old heavy duty shirts.  I knew it could be a great pair of shorts and a knapsack, and for the most part they turned out really well.  It was a big shirt, so there was plenty of fabric left.  All the recent blog tutorials on making hats inspired me to try one of my own, and I think it turned out great! 

This was the original shirt I used...

I used a pattern I made from another pair of my son's shorts to make these faux fly front shorts.  They came together very quickly.  If you make pants or shorts out of a shirt like this I recommend using shirts made of heavier fabric for the most part.  These shorts turned out better than the first pair I made out of a much lighter weight shirt.

The front pocket of the shirt made a great front for the knapsack, and I used the yoke of the shirt to make the top flap.

The buttonhole strip made great shoulder straps.  (I think I am going to move the tops of the straps inward a bit so they stay on his shoulders better.)  I did line the inside with some plain cotton fabric.

I made this bicycle cap with the help of this great tutorial at Dude Craft.  There is a video tutorial and downloadable pattern pieces.  It was made for an adult, but I measured my son's head and adjusted the pattern accordingly.  (The way I resized it was by measuring the width of the pattern piece, without the seam allowance- 6".  I measured my son's head- 19.5".  The hat is made from 4 pattern pieces, so I rounded to 20", divided that by 4, and figured a 5" pattern piece would fit pretty well.  I divided 5 by 6 to get the ratio to resize it- about 83% of the full size would fit my son.  I opened the pdf with the pattern in Open Office Draw and resized it to 83%.  It worked perfectly!  I did add the elastic in the back to give a snug fit, and he will be able to grow into it a bit more!)

My son was almost as tickled to wear his new hat (really the only thing he was overly excited about) as he was to go practice riding his tricycle. 

If you can believe it, my son didn't have a single plain white T-shirt.  So I used my serger (yay! I just got it last week! :-D) to make one of his onesies (which he never wears any more) into a regular T-shirt/ undershirt.

I could not get him to look at the camera!  He's cute anyway...

Ok, one more picture.  I couldn't resist.

PS- I realized after looking through a few of my refashion posts that it probably seems like I steal all my husband's shirts for my projects.  Well maybe I do!  However, I did get his permission to use all of those shirts before I cut them up, and anyway, I like to look at it like I am doing him a favor... Some of those shirts were 10+ years old and it was time to make room for some other clothes!  Refashioning old clothes into something new is one way to purge your closet of unused, unloved, or ill- fitting clothes while keeping the nostalgia of a loved item of clothing.