Not to get all "baby stuff" on you, but.....

Well, since I have a bun in the oven, everything around our house has sorta of gone baby on us...I mean, there is an actual crib in our house- WHAO! So exciting! So of course I had to get all hyped up about making the baby's bedding.....at first I thought, "ugh, this is going to be much too much of a hassle, I should just buy something." Well so then I started looking around on websites, and instantly became obsessed with Serena & Lily - their 3 piece crib bedding sets are adorable! Great fabrics, so cute, etc., etc. Well, the not so cute thing about them is the price- like seriously, $580 for crib bedding? You've got to be kidding me! So that wasn't gonna happen.....and since I have this lovely fabric store here in Nashville, Textile, which carries THE CUTEST fabrics, I knew that if I could figure out how to make the stuff, I'd have something just as adorable as Serena & Lily for at least 1/2 the price. TA DAAAA! This stuff was way easier to make than I anticipated- don't get me wrong, it's a big project, and you have to be ready to spend some time on it, but I am so happy that I went for it, and I know all of you over-zealous, (and especially first-time), expectant gals out there can do it too! I'm not going to get in the nitty-gritty step-by-step on this stuff, but I want to generally share how I made all of this.....so take a look at the pics below....

You'll need 8 pieces of fabric to make the body of your bumpers- 2 pieces for each bumper. You'll also need any piping and other trim that you want to use to embellish the style of the bumpers. Finally, you'll need something that will serve as the ties that will attach to the crib itself. Here I made my own ties to match the fabric I bought, but you can also use any ribbon you like. For each bumper, I put one tie on each of the four corners, and then 2 set of ties on the top and bottom of the long bumper as well. This way you'll use the corner ties from adjacent bumpers to tie onto the crib posts.

Once you have all of your pieces ready to go, you need to assemble the bumpers from the inside out. So lay one of your pieces of fabric down, right-side-up, then start to place all of the other pieces where they need to go. Any piping or trim you're using will lay with the rough edges lined up with the top of the pieces of main fabric. Same goes for the tie pieces- they will all be placed so that the ends of the ties that will go around the crib bars will be in the middle of the body piece of fabric and the rough ends will be placed right on the edges of all four corners (and in the case of your long bumpers that run the longest length of the crib, you'll need a set of 2 ties on top and bottom to tie around the middle bars of the crib). Once you have all of the pieces situated like so, lay the other piece of body fabric right-side-down on top of everything else, then pin together. Then you're ready to sew it up. Sew all around all four sides, leaving only about a 6-8 inch opening on the bottom edge of each bumper so that you can stuff them. Once you have it sewn up leaving the stuffing hole, turn the bumpers right-side-out. Then stuff!

Finally, sew up the 6-8 inch stuffing hole by folding the edges inward and pinning in place. Tip- if you've chosen to use any piping or trim, use a zipper foot to sew around those sides, which makes the machine work easier. Good luck!

Baby Shower Favors

I recently co-hosted a baby shower for one of my friends, and straight off I volunteered for favor-making duties- I just love this kind of stuff, so I snatched up that responsibility right away. I wanted to make something that the gals would take home and actually use...now, I'm a big bath person, so this sounded especially great to me. I just rounded up the following materials and put together little bath salt favors with a cute baby theme!

• Unscented bath salts as well as scented bath salts (pick your fav scent, and check Marshalls or TJ Maxx for really great deals on giant jugs of this stuff- I mixed the two together as the scented ones were a bit overwhelming, so I toned them down with the unscented)
• Glass apothecary jars of various shapes and sizes from Hobby Lobby or Michaels
• Ribbon of your choice (here I used blue in honor of the soon-to-be-born baby boy)
• Plain round white stickers (found these at Office Depot, seriously think they're meant to be yard sale price tags!)
• Stamps of your choice
• Ink pad in color of your choice

So I just mixed the bath salts together to make a lovely smelling mixture, then I filled each of the glass jars with the salts. I finished off the cute favors by gluing a piece of ribbon around the jar (hot glue gun works best), placing a white sticker where the ribbon ends came together, and then stamping the sticker with something cute and fun. That's it! This is an easy way to make super cute favors- perfect for baby showers, wedding showers, birthdays, or any special occasion where you'd like the ladies to leave with something lovely! Have fun!

Chicken Tortilla Soup: Yumm-O!!

Ok, I have made some version of this soup many times before, just tossing in this and that spice here and there in various measurements, but this time it turned out so delish, I had to share! Try it out for a nice fall soup as the nights start to cool off a bit!

Ingredients:

• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, diced
• 1/2 of a jalepeno, finely chopped
• 1/2 of a yellow onion, diced
• 1 Tbsp Cumin powder
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 Tbsp salt, plus more for seasoning to taste
• 1/4 Tsp Cheyenne pepper
• 1 Tsp Chili powder
• 1 15 oz. can chicken broth
• 4 Tbsp flour
• 3 cups milk
• 1 baking potato, peeled and diced
• 2 ears corn, shucked, and kernels cut off the cob
• 1/2 cup shredded mexican cheese mix, plus more for garnish
• Tortilla strips for garnish
• Diced tomato for garnish

What to do:

Place the oil, chicken, jalepeno, garlic, onion, and all spices in a large soup pot; cook the ingredients until chicken has turned white and cooked almost all the way through. Stir in about a 1/4 cup of the chicken broth; then stir in the flour to form a paste; stir in the rest of the chicken broth and then the milk; stir very well and bring to a boil, stirring constantly; then reduce heat to low. Stir in the potato and corn; simmer for about 10 minutes, then stir in the cheese. Cover and leave to simmer on very low heat for about 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft and easily break with the poke of a fork. Stir frequently as to not allow the soup to burn on the bottom. Taste before serving- if it's too bland, add salt until it tastes delicious. Serve with tortilla strips, diced tomato, and shredded cheese on top. Enjoy!

Dork Alert!

Ok, I know that it is completely not normal for a 28 year old gal to get this excited about something so mundane, but check this out, I just found the most amazing way to get furniture indentations out of carpet! Yep, that's right, that's actually what I'm sitting here typing this post about at 9:13 on a Saturday morning- furniture indentations!

So we're shuffling rooms in our house all around to make way for the baby- selling furniture, moving furniture, etc., etc.....needless to say, we have LOTS of furniture indentations left in the wake of all of this moving, and they drive me NUTS! So I was reading online about how to get rid of these pests, and the method that looked easiest to me was the one I tried first- putting an ice cube on the indentation and then let it melt and then fluff it up- NOPE, don't even bother, totally doesn't work. I figured heat needed to be involved somehow, so I thought about trying out the 'ol clothes steamer we got for our wedding- OH MY GOSH, I can't even tell you how delighted I am with the results- it's like brand new carpet. Our steamer has a flat attachment to use on garments, so I took that off so that the little spout would pour out more concentrated amounts of steam rather than spreading it out. Worked like a charm- you just hold the steamer over the indentation and I could literally see the fibers rising before my eyes! Unbelievable- super fast, super easy, and if you don't have a steamer, seriously come borrow ours- it'll be worth the trip!

Heidi, Tim, are you Paying Attention?

Ok, so this post has absolutely nothing to do with the purpose of this blog, so I'm sure I'm breaking the number one rule of blogging by putting it up here, but I can't help it. I'm just so proud and secretly hoping to get discovered- I couldn't resist showing you all this dress!

My friend Cami got married a couple weeks ago and a while back we were talking about dress making and what not, and she said, "oh my gosh, why don't you make me a dress for me to wear out after our wedding?" Well of course I was just so flattered that anyone would want to wear one of my creations, so I jumped at the opportunity. We went fabric shopping immediately and we were so thrilled with what we found (this Prada fabric) that Cami insisted that this be her rehearsal dinner dress instead! So we talked through the design together, and this is what came out of it. I say that it has nothing to do with the purpose of this blog because it wasn't inexpensive or easy to make, but again, I'm just too proud to keep it to myself! Hopefully the producers of Project Runway are crawling the Internet and find this post!
I learned so much making this dress- I have no formal training in sewing, and I mean, this thing is fully lined, has interfacing, and boning! I had no idea how to do any of that before I made this dress so I'm so excited to have the experience under my belt now! (Big thanks to Muna, who helped out extraordinarily!!) My favorite part of the dress is the bustle I put into the back (in this picture, it looks a bit messy, but in real life it's so cute!) Whew, think it turned out pretty great! Oh, and I made the little matching bow tie for her husband, Wes, too- how cute is that? Hope you all like it! And congrats to the happy couple!!!

Froof-er-ize Your Life

First off, I must apologize for neglecting my creative duties for so long....I'm sure I've lost most of my followers as a result, and I don't blame you- hopefully you'll all come back to me and I'll keep adding new posts!

Ok, now down to business.....so, I made this dress recently and am just OBSESSED with the one-shouldered froof I attached to give it some glam! As I was making it, I was thinking to myself, "wait a sec, I could add one of these cool froof things to any old washed up boring strapless dress and make it like new again." For instance, I have this old JCrew strapless black dress- it's cute, but boring, and old, so it needs something fresh to bring it back to life, and a froof like the one seen here would do just the trick! Making the froof is easy, and easy to work onto any strapless dress.

What you'll need to do is buy a big piece of fabric (preferably something sort of stiff and crunchy like the froof I made here, so that the ruffles will stand up on their own); fold it diagonally to make a triangle. The triangle, from tip to tip, needs to be at least twice as long as the distance from under one armpit, over the top of your other shoulder, and back around your back, ending at the same armpit. Then cut along the fold, cutting sort of a semi-circle shape so that the ends, which will attached under your one arm, are skinnier than the middle, which will sit on top of your other shoulder. Then sew up the open side, and then turn inside out. Then grab a needle and thread and loosely make stitches along the seem, so that once you get thread through the length of the seem, you'll pull it gently, bunching the fabric to make ruffles. Once you make the ruffles, make sure the froof is the right length to go from under one arm, up over your shoulder, around your back, and back to the first armpit. Then this next part is where your creative license comes in- just grab a needle and thread and start bunching the fabric together in random spots and making a stitch here and there and tying it off. This will make you one nice, long froof.

Then you simply attach the froof, beginning under the first armpit, securing it to your dress, also tack it on a few places on the front of the dress, only about right to between your cleeve, and then leave enough loose fabric that it will comfortably go up over your shoulder, and then start attaching again at about the middle of the back of the dress, and then a few more stitches, ending again under the first armpit.

This is a super simple and cheap way to completely reinvent an old strapless dress- the one shouldered stuff is really in these days, and this simple froof addition really adds MAJOR GLAM to an otherwise boring old dress! Good luck!

Baby Gifts!

Ok, so I have at least 3 baby gifts to give in the upcoming months (slash one is really past due- sorry Amanda!) and I wanted to make something super cute and practical for these friends....I have seen darling hooded baby towels online before, made by companies such as Dwell- they're all so cute, and well, so ridic expensive- honestly, what baby needs a $60 towel? So I thought I'd give it a go on my own. I am super happy with the outcome, and it seriously only took about an hour total to make- going to start mass-producing....here's how I did it:

First, pick out a fun cotton fabric and some terry cloth for the lining. Cut two rectangles with the fabric layered on top of the terry cloth so you have matching sized pieces. One rectangle will be the hood part, so it will be much smaller than the other rectangle, which will be the body of the towel. For the hood piece, layer the fabric and terry cloth with the correct sides together on the inside, and pin up 3 of the sides. Then you'll sew up all 3 sides, and then turn right-side-out. Repeat with bigger rectangle. Once you have the 3 sides all sewn up, tuck the edges of the 4th side of the hood piece inward, to make a clean closure, and pin up and sew together that final side. Don't close up the bigger rectangle yet.

Then, take your sewn-together hood piece and fold it in half inside out. Make a stitch along one of the sides coming off the fold to make the hood shape. Then take the remaining long side of the hood piece and tuck it into the 4th side of the bigger towel piece- tuck in the edges of the towel piece around the hood piece, and pin together- then sew up. And you're all finished! Now you have a designed-esq baby towel that didn't cost an arm and a leg!