Smocked Summer Dresses

I recently learned how to do smocking or shirring as seen in my premade fabric that I used on the sun dress I made for Genevieve. Now that I know how to do this technique...it opens up the fabric possibilities for making this style of dress. I've had my eye on this fabric at Hobby.Lobby for quite some time now and decided to use it to test out my new technique. I made a dress for both Genevieve and her cousin Margot with matching headbands.

Felt Egg Carton

I love, love, love felt play food! There is something about it...maybe that you are able to make it so realistic and it's washable (most of it!). I would love to be able to make all of Genevieve's felt play food...but I just don't have the time for that right now. I picked up a felt fruit and veggie set at Wal.Mart for around $10. They also have a few mini sets of felt food like pizza, snacks, sandwiches, hamburger, and ice cream. Genevieve got a few of those for her birthday.

So at the present time, I feel like we are pretty well stocked on felt food. I just now want to add a few accessory pieces. And then I saw this tutorial and bookmarked it a while back while I was researching free felt food patterns. Genevieve got a shopping basket with a few plastic food pieces and cardboard boxes (which are almost all destroyed) for Christmas. The thin, cheap plastic egg carton the eggs came in was gone almost immediately. In the mean time, I've been cutting our used egg cartons in half for her to store her eggs. But after a few weeks they are destroyed too. That's why I knew I need to make this felt egg carton! And I LOVE the way it turned out...and so does Genevieve!

• I followed pretty closely to the tutorial, except we already had eggs.
  
• I liked her color combo and already had the felt. (A local store was going out of business and I got 3 large bags of felt for $1 each...a steal!) You could have a lot of fun with the colors on this one!
  
• I did not purchase the special felt that she recommends, because I already had the felt (see above). And instead just cut out some super strong interfacing that I had from a different project and used that to make a few spots a little more sturdy & attached it with hot glue.
• I did not do a velcro attachment for the lid. I'm not convinced it needs it...but that may change.
  
• This project is TIME consuming!!! I have slowly been working on this project for about a week or so in my free time. I'm not sure I ever want to tackle this one again.
  

Hair Bow Holder

Back in October I created a Hair Bow Holder for Genevieve. I decided to also make one for my friend's baby as part of her Baptism Gift. I love it so much and so does my friend Laura. Laura likes it so much, she wants to make a duvet cover from the matching fabric of the ribbon (I'm totally for helping with that!!!). I wanted to share this project on my crafty blog. They were super easy to make...and are super cute!

All it took was 2 bottles of paint, 2 different wood pieces,
A "fat" patterned ribbon, and a "skinny" ribbon

The Hot Glue gun was my BFF for this project!

Addison's finished bow holder

Genevieve's finished bow holder
I made Genevieve's significantly longer since she has so many bows!

Flower Cupcakes

For Genevieve's 2nd Birthday Party two weeks ago, I decided that I really wanted to make the cake/cupcakes myself. I found cute flower cupcake molds and decided that would be great with our ladybug theme. I then found plastic ladybug toothpicks to add to the top of each one. I created both vanilla and chocolate cupcakes so everyone could pick which one they wanted. They were very tricky to make. But in the end, for my first time actually creating flower cupcakes...I think they turned out good. And I added a cute little toothpick #2 birthday candle to the center cupcake and that is what we used to sing to the birthday girl. Oh yes, they were yummy too!!!

Hungry Little Caterpillar Frame

For Mother's Day, I created this adorable little frame for Brady to give his Mommy. I watch Brady for Amy twice a week. I just knew I wanted to come up with something for Amy for Mother's Day. While I was contemplating the ideas I had, I knew I wanted to incorporate his finger prints...or something along those lines. While reading to my daughter Genevieve, I came up with the idea of a picture frame of Brady with his fingerprints as the caterpillar and the saying "Mommy's Very Hungry Little Caterpillar." After a trip to the craft store, I purchased an unfinished frame and rub on letters. While Brady was at our house today, I created this gift for him to give his Mommy and even took him out for a photo shoot! The caterpillar was created by taking Brady's big toe as the red head and his fingers for the green body. He loved making it! And Genevieve was very jealous...I see something similar in Genevieve's future!

Mommy's Very Hungry Little Caterpillar

And with the inspiration book!


Happy 1st Mother's Day Amy!
I hope you love your frame and enjoy your special day with Brady!