diy felt christmas tree tutorial

 

Oooooh, my first do-it-yourself tutorial ever. In keeping with the season, I thought I'd share the first Christmas craft I've done this year, and well, ever.

slightly radical christmas??

Okay, so remember my post about our radical christmas? Feel free to read it again and rub it in my face. I'm still sticking by my values, don't get me wrong. We aren't spending a ton of money on toys they will barely play with and break. We are just doing a compromise. Yeah, I can blame it on Mr. Handsome here, and say he wasn't really feeling the whole exclusively-handmade Christmas from the beginning. I mean, he liked a few of the ideas, but I think he felt slightly excluded and I'm not absolutely positive, but maybe the fact that I hadn't been able to find time to start even one gift yet and Christmas is next week. Maybe that had something to do with it? My bad. So, this Christmas will still be kind of different. We aren't going overboard, I'm still making a few gifts. Don't judge me too hard. I'm the first one to admit when I've promised too much. Unless you're a credit card company, then I might leave you hanging for a while. Ha!

our radical christmas

When I think of the Christmas celebrations we have already had and when I think of how many we will have in our family lifetime, I think, why not throw a little curve ball in there? Just for the heck of it, try something new and see how it flies with the troops. Not that they have a whole lot of say or anything. So, it didn't actually unfold in this linear thought progression, it kind of just sprung itself on me one afternoon while I was planning some crafting projects for my girls. Homemade Christmas gifts? I started seeing cute little games I could make, jewelry, a doll house someone made from recycled materials. Think bookshelves and old wood pieces not aluminum cans or  plastic bottle type recyclables, I mean, I don't want them turning into bums. Basically, I just saw really cute homemade Christmas gift ideas that cost a fraction of what popular commercial toys cost and knowing my girls, they would love some of these handmade gifts, especially if they knew it was made especially for them.

toy story birthday party

Our DIY Toy Story birthday party turned out great. Emme had a wonderful time and we were pretty stress free. Only the last 30 minutes of preparation got to me because the icing I bought from Albertson's failed on me. But, it worked out fine. Emme started planning her party months before the occasion and I already had a pretty good idea of what we were going to have. Luckily for me, Erik was more than willing to help make this a DIY party and he really contributed a lot to the design element of it all. If we would have purchased a big party pack of supplies for this party we could have easily spent a few hundred dollars. Instead, we hit the fabric stores, the Dollar Store, 99cent store, Walmart, and of course, Target. We did a lot of printables to help with the theme and basically just did everything ourselves. The only commerical Toy Story products we purchased were a few of the party favors and a tablecloth. We already had tons of Toy Story figures for decoration. Emme's grandpa also rented a jumper for this occasion so that kept the kids busy, as well as her other grandpa's gift a few months back, our awesome backyard playset. We asked the kids to dress up, and a few did. Of course, Emme wore her Jessie costume. Her dad and I wore matching Alien shirts from Target.

Our main idea was to have 3 different themed areas. The gift table was meant to resemble Andy's room, one of the eating tables was meant to represent more of a cowboy/cowgirl theme, and the food table was tied in with Pizza Planet. For our Toy Story party menu we served pizza, chicken wings, potato wedges, salad, fruit, cake, and cookies.

 For the gift table, we bought the blue and yellow fabric to make the background and banner. We printed off letters for her name and the clouds. We hung the banner from a rod and string. I just had to sew a long tube for the rod to fit in. The banner was glued to yarn.

The cowboy banner was made with bandana print fabrics from fabric store. Again, I glued it to yarn.

 A close up of our Pizza Planet station where we put our pizzas. Erik made a rocket out of craft foam from Walmart. He printed out a picture of Woody, the Aliens, Buzz, and the Claw to make it look like a scene from Pizza Planet. I found a font similar to the one used for Toy Story products and printed Emme's name. We printed a 3 from the Toy Story 3 ads. We also glued glow in the dark stars to the board. The board was a pre-colored science project board from Walmart. We added some green star balloons from the 99cent store, a Toy Story Alien tablecloth from Walmart and some green polka dot napkins and star napkin holder I already had. 

 For the gift bags, I covered a small standing shelf I had in my kitchen with leftover cow print fabric from Emme's costume. We strung up Army men on yarn on this table and the Pizza Planet table. They looked like they were sliding into combat. 

We also had extra seating for the little ones down in the family room. We added a few printable Toy Story drawings to make it tie in with everything. As you can see, we used 99cent store star balloons in different colors to make everything feel more festive. The stars added the extra fun element as opposed to regular round balloons.

Next, are our Toy Story party games. I searched and searched for some good ideas and found something similar but we made our own variations. We knew they had to be easy enough for at least a 3 yr old to do. They all worked out perfectly. Our first game was "Toss the Snake in the Boot". I bought a laundry basket (could have used one we already had but let's face it, I could use a few more laundry baskets) from the 99cent store and a few rubber snakes from Walmart. Erik drew and cut out a boot from foam bought at Walmart, also. We let the little kids stand closer, but everyone basically had 3 tries to get as many snakes as they could into the basket. If there were ties, we would have gone into tiebreaker mode, but one of my little cousins made all 3. It was fun to see the children and their skills, or lack thereof. They all had fun trying though!

Here is the birthday girl trying to make a snake in the boot!

The next game was "Shoot Zurg" which was basically a dart game variation. Instead of darts, we used a cheap Nerf dart gun that was small enough for the little ones to hold. Erik had to help a few kids, but they all had a fair shot at getting the best score out of 4 darts. We printed out a picture of Zurg and taped it to the back of a cheap target set we got at Walmart. My 3 year old nephew won that game. The prizes were simple Target dollar bin prizes. One was a paddle ball set and the other was Silly Putty. They both went nicely with our Toy Story theme.

Big sister took the game quite seriously.

My nephew Keston. He almost won!

Just so there were no sore losers, we had little gift bags for the kids to take home. We decided against candy because Halloween was only last week. The bags included Toy Story stickers from 99cent store, slinkys from the Target dollar bin, a few Army men from the Dollar Store (one pack of 60 cost a dollar!), and a few random toys from a Toy Story favor pack from Target. These included a Toy Story maze page, kaleidoscope, plastic alien slinky, Woody sticker, and I'm sure there is something else I am forgetting. I put them in simple brown lunch bags from Walmart and threw on a few extra Toy Story stickers and that's it. I could have taken more time to add detail but I had no more time and the bags were just trashed anyway! I lined the bags up for display, but out of reach, on one of the tables and they fit in nicely.

While I was researching for the party, Emme got sight of the Jessie Hat cookies and just HAD to have them. So, I had to make them. The came out pretty good. The kids gobbled them up.

For the cake, we bought a white sheet cake from Walmart. It came with some flowers on it, but my aunt helped me scrape them off. We then added our own decorations and had a really awesome cake. Couldn't have asked for better, especially considering the money we saved on having a custom cake made that might be half as cool as this.

 

She was in awe of her cake.

All in all, our party turned out fabulously. We always put a lot of work into our girls' parties but I never document them! That stops now. I am so happy to have captured these memories for Emme and I know she will look back and remember this special party. I think Erik and I enjoyed putting it all together almost as much as she enjoyed spending this special day with her family and friends. She got TOO MANY awesome gifts (that I am still trying to find room for) and she is so grateful for everything she got. That makes it all worth it.

 Even before the presents she was so thrilled. 

A picture with mama and daddy. Happy Birthday to our angel.

For those looking to create their own Toy Story party, I have a lot of links on my "Emme's 3rd" Pinterest board. Head on over, click here.

dear emme

On this day, three years ago, my beautiful angel came into this world, appropriately named, Emme Angel. Her first few days were marked with a little bit of worry as she had to undergo phototherapy treatment at home for a high bilirubin count, or jaundice. She looked brown, but really was slightly bruised from delivery, which can cause the high count. She handled this treatment like a champion. After a few days of worrying her father to pieces, she came out from under the lights and brought with her, her very own bright light that we see every time we look into her little sparkling eyes. My mother says her eyes resemble marcasite stone, and I agree. They just shine.

Our little girl is such a sweetheart, sometimes I just can't believe how tender and loving she is. Every child is different, and although her sisters also crave and require lots of affection, Emme offers it back to those closest to her. Not a day goes by that she doesn't tell me how beautiful I am. She says, "I love you, my beautiful mudder" (she means mother) or other things like "Mama, you are just so pretty, my sweet mama". She is such a grateful child, always thanking us for everything. Not just with an instilled value of politeness that we want all of our children to have, but she has this unique grasp of true gratitude and it shows on her face and you can hear it in her voice. She is just appreciative by nature.

Her favorite thing to do is to play with her daddy. She loves rolling around on the ground while he tickles her, balancing on his feet, standing on his back, riding his back like a horse and ever since she was baby, with no fear, she'd sit in his hand and bask in the feat. I could cry just thinking about how much her daddy loves her and I am so grateful that I know she will grow up with a good man in her life that will always show her affection and tenderness. It already comes back tenfold in her personality. She calls her younger sister her little sweetheart, or a princess baby, with the most precious sounding soft voice.

Of course, she is a child, which means she is as perfect as can be. She has her whiny days. She drives us crazy like all children do so well. She shrieks like a baby banshee sometimes, and boy is this child loud. We thought my oldest was loud before Emme came, but she takes the cake, for sure.

She's growing up. She is maturing. She is starting to act more like her older sister, and looks to her for companionship that I can only appreciate from the outside, since I never had a sister-sister relationship. But I know it is so special. As concerned as I get that she climbs, when I walk into their room to check on them in the night, and I see that Emme has climbed into Luciana's top bunk, my heart melts. No matter how many toys they squabble over, no matter how much they argue over who gets what place mat or who is touching who, or looking at who, at the end of the day, these sisters want to be together, like friends, looking for an intimate comfort that only a sister can offer.

So today we wish my baby girl, Emme Angel, a very happy birthday. We love her more each day.

Emme had a great time at her Toy Story birthday party. I will post more pics tomorrow of her special day.

homemade halloween

Here are a few pics of our homemade Halloween. This year I tried my hand at making the costumes and it turned out great. I didn't make them all from scratch, but I bought as little as possible, fixed them up myself and saved a lot of money. A lot. Luciana was the Corpse Bride from Tim Burton's movie, Emme was Jessie from Toy Story, and Roslyn was a ladybug.

For the Corpse Bride costume I hit the thrift stores to find a wedding dress look-a-like. I found a perfect dress and veil combination for $8.99. The Walmart bride dress was about double that. All I did was rip it up a little, make it look dirty with some black face paint I already had and she threw on her boots and a  $5.00 black wig. So, her costume was about $15.00 total. She loved it.

My little Corpse Bride

Now the Jessie costume took a lot of work. But, I didn't mind because this was a three event costume. First, she wore it to the Toy Story on Ice show here in town, then there was Halloween, and next she will be wearing it to her Toy Story themed birthday party this weekend. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), she LOVES Toy Story and especially the Jessie character. For this costume, I found the pants at Walmart for $5.00. The shirt was on sale at Target for under $10.00. Then, I purchased a yard of $2.99 cow print fabric (could have bought half a yard but I needed extra for her party) and yellow print fabric. I bought a $2.00 strip of belt material and a $4.00 pack of foam to make her belt buckle. The hat was around $10.00 (if I remember right) from the Halloween Spirit store. So, for her costume I spent about $35.00 (subtracted some for the second use of fabric). All I had to do was cut out the yellow shirt chest and wrist portions and sew it on with my machine. Then, I also used my machine to add the red embroidery detail (which you can't really see in these pics) which really set it off. The cow print chaps were hand sewn. I just cut the shapes and voila, the cutest chaps in town. The Halloween spirit store had a "Deluxe" Jessie Costume for around $40.00 but it was so cheaply made and had a plastic hat that I knew wouldn't make it in this house. So, all in all, this was an awesome homemade costume that saved us money and turned out better than the store version, for sure. 

Jessie the Cowgirl

Little Roslyn definitely had a "just-throw-it-together" costume. She didn't mind though. For her costume I bought a red long sleeved shirt and pair of black leggings each for $3.88 from Walmart. She can wear them both again. I bought a pair of $3.00 clearance antennae from Carter's. I went to F&M fabrics and got red and black tulle on sale for $1.00 a yard  and I bought a yard of each. I made a new-sew tutu and added some black and red ribbon. The wings were found at the Dollar Store for, you guessed it, a dollar. Her costume cost about $14.00 total. Could have spent less if I already had black tights for red shirt but her winter wardrobe needed some new pieces anyway. Also, if I would have bought a tutu as cute as hers, it would probably set me back around $40.00 at a children's boutique. So, I win. 

Our lady of bugness

So, the pics I got weren't all that great quality. I blame the eager kids who could barely wait for me to finish getting them dressed and the family members waiting at the foot of my driveway while I scrambled for my own shoes. I didn't dress up, unless disheveled pregnant lady counts? Next year I will take some great shots before the commotion starts.  Maybe even the day before. Someone just remind me next year please.

And here is one more picture with a few stragglers that I thought were important enough to make this a collage heavy post. Again, I hope everyone had a great Halloween. I am beginning to see this holiday as a day when I just send my kids out to collect candy for me, because they barely eat any and already have forgotten we have it hidden. Score. Jokes on you, kids!

Did anyone else make their costumes this year? Or am I the only crazy one with loads of extra time on my hands?

'tis my season

I love Halloween time! It marks the first holiday of fall and means that my other favorite holidays are close by. Of course, my kids love seeing all of the cool decorations and deciding what costume they want to try this year is a lot of fun.

We started decorating a little this past week. I am ready to add more and more as the weeks go on though. I can already feel Erik rolling his eyes, but I can't apologize for wanting this holiday to be fun, fun, fun! But, I am also excited at the idea of building up our decoration arsenal each year for these fun holidays. I usually buy most things at the 99 cent store if I can. I will splurge here and there for something cool from Target or Walmart though. When I'm all done with our decorating, I'll share some pics of our creations. For now, I'm still browsing the web for cool DIY crafts that the kids can help with. I added a bunch to my "Halloweenie" board over at Pinterest, so feel free to take a look. Here are a few snapshots of the crafts I recently added to my new board obsession.

Happy Decorating!