Baby Size Referee

A dear friend of mine contacted me because she wants to have her baby boy be a referee for Halloween.  The only problem is that it's a really hard costume to come by in a size 9 months.  Luckily she had an old referee shirt that could be transformed.

I started with this adult sized shirt.  I pinned in the collar at the seam to shrink it down to baby size (using a 9 month shirt as a guide)

then I turned it inside out and sewed along the existing seam where I pinned.

I trimmed off the excess and grabbed my 9 month shirt again to use as a pattern.

I lined it up to the center of my collar and pinned it in place.  Next I cut around the shirt (through both top and bottom layers) leaving about 1/2 inch around it to allow for seams.  Here's where I am so far. Notice, I cut the bottom in a curve like the original shirt.  To get it right I cut it out on paper first, then pinned it on.  I also made the length of the shirt about 3 inches longer to allow for the curve.

Next, I used the existing sleeves to create smaller sleeves. Lining up with the top side of the sleeve. ( I used my 9 month shirt to cut out a little template of the sleeve)

Although I didn't take pictures of the next part, you basically just sew all the pieces together at this point.  I opened up the shirt and pinned on the sleeves.  You sew the top of the sleeve on first then sew up the bottom (like in a standard pattern).  Once I had the sleeves on, I sewed up the sides of the shirt and hemmed the bottom.

The end product is a miniature referee shirt.  It even looks store bought with the tag still in from the existing shirt.

Hope it works out well, Annette.  Super quick and fun way to get a costume together.  You could use this same method to turn just about any old shirt you have into a baby sized one.

Eek! The Bats Are Back!

The kids have been waiting to get to put up our bats again.  We found time and put them up today.  So fun.  For a tutorial and pattern see my post here.

Fall Clothes

It's getting a little cooler (or at least it was last week) and my baby girl is moving up to a new size so I got my sewing on and made her some leggings.

I made the black pair shorter like capri pants.  The nice thing about making them myself (other than saving a little $$) was that I could pick the color and length.  I also gave her a little extra length in her caboose so they stay up over her diaper better.

I used a pair of her pants to make a pattern. You can see my tutorial here to find out how I made them.

Autumn Treats

Holiday time starts in October for me.  One of my favorite things about the holidays are the treats.  Our family does dessert twice a week (one for family night on Monday and one for Friday night).  That way my kids don't expect dessert every day after dinner.  So I put together a little Holiday Goodies Chart to make sure we get in all the good stuff.  

Each Monday and Friday, they get to pick one of the treat cards out of the chart to make together and eat. 

This past Monday we made these Orange Kissed Cookies.  It's a new recipe I got from Our Best Bites blog that I wanted to try out.  I added some black sprinkles on top to make them a fun Halloween Treat.    They were oh, so good that I wanted to share them with you.

More yummy treats to come. . . .

I finally did it!

I started an etsy shop for some of my stuff.  I've lagged on this for so long, but I finally decided to just go for it.  Couldn't hurt to earn some money to feed my crafting habits. Check out the link on the right side to see my shop and what I'm selling now.

 

Halloween Lights

I've been saving up my milk jugs just so that we could do this fun project on our porch.  By Halloween time we hope to have many more jugs with silly faces.

My kids had fun helping me design the faces.

Headband Holder

Instead of a free for all mess on my daughters dresser, I saw a perfect solution for keeping her headbands organized.  ( I need to make myself one next).  I used an empty Countrytime lemonade canister.

I covered it with some cute paper using mod podge

Then I hot glued some lace around the top for a little added frill and it's done.

The headbands fit snugly around the canister and stay put until you need them.

This is a much better feature on her dresser than a jumbled mess of headbands.

New Skirt For Me!

I saw some cute fabric screaming to be sewn into something wonderful and I made myself a new skirt.

For this simple skirt, I darted the top all the way around to fit my waist and inserted a zipper.

Homemade Crayons

I've been wanting to try this out for a while and I finally got around to doing it.  We made our own crayons! 

I started by gathering up all of our crayon stubs and removing the paper.  I sorted them by colors and broke them up a bit.

As you can see, the shades of the crayons vary a little even if they are the same color.

Next, I pulled out an ice cube tray that I got at Ikea years ago.  It is one of those rubber ones as seen on their website here.  Mine are puzzle shaped and sadly I've never found occasion to use it until now. 

I let the kids fill the puzzle pieces with whatever colors they wanted.  I even made a few of my own.  Then we popped them in the oven at 250 degrees.  The directions I had said to melt for 25 minutes. I took them out after 15 minutes (and 10 minutes would have been more than enough).

They make for a really fun way to color  - especially making rubbings!  We will definitely be making more of these fun crayons.


(You can also use a cupcake pan lined with foil for making these.)

Ice Cream Cake

I had an idea for my hubby's birthday.  I have always been a big fan of ice cream cake - the good ones with the cake and ice cream layers.  So I came up with my own spin off using a similar recipe to cake balls.

I started by baking a regular chocolate cake according to the instructions on the package. Then I  broke it up and put it in my mixer.

  I added about 6 scoops of cookies and cream ice cream

Mix it together until it's well blended.  You want a consistency about like cookie dough.

Next, I layered them into my dish.  I used a glass 9x9 square dish and was able to fill it to the brim.  For thinner layers, use a 9x13 pan.   Start with a layer of your cake on the bottom. Use 1/2 of your mixture.

Layer some softened ice cream on top.

Repeat layers finishing with ice cream on top.  Freeze overnight.  Serve how you like.

Our pieces were huge and yummy.  As you can see the layers are not perfect.  It tastes really good though.  The cake is cold and chewy.  The ice cream is creamy.  I'm totally going to do this again.