Nursing Cover

I was looking through my pictures I've taken of my numerous projects and I realized that I haven't yet posted pictures of the nursing cover I made for a friend.  So here it is.  

I picked up the material at JoAnn's on sale for $2.50 a yard!  The more I worked with the material, the more I fell in love with it and almost didn't want to give it away.  Too bad I had only purchased 1 yard of it and I didn't have any left over after making this nursing cover.  

I followed a tutorial posted by Kristyn over at Lil' Luna which you can find Here.  

 I really like that this cover is an all around cover.  Because if you have a squirmy baby little my Little Bear was, its nice to be covered from all sides.  I also like the boning in the color which makes it easy to keep an eye on baby.

This project is going on my to do list if and when we have another baby!

Super Daddy

I think watching my dear husband become a daddy has made me fall in love with him all over again.  And now as our baby is turning into a toddler and I watch my husband get down and play with our son and teach him things, my heart continues to melt.  

My husband like most typical males, loves superheros especially Dr. Fate.  So I thought it would be fun to make Tim and Little Bear matching superhero capes for a Father's Day gift.  Dr. Fate's colors are blue and yellow so I used those in deciding what colors to make the capes.  I found some great super hero letter templates I was able to use to make a "B" and "T" for the capes.  I couldn't wait for Tim and Little Bear to enjoy these so I actually gave them the capes a day early.  Tim loved them and periodically throughout this entire weekend, Tim and Little Bear have been chasing each other around the apartment with their capes on and yelling "WHOOSSH!".

Since Tim and I both love photography and we have a very photogenic son, last weekend while we were on a walk through the local nature preserve, I pulled out some cardboard letters and went to town snapping pictures of Little Bear holding a "D" and an "A".  I love how these "D" "A" "D" photo collage turned out, so much so that it was hard to choose just one collage to share. 

Happy Father's Day!!

A Day at the Zoo

In honor of Father's Day, Tim decided that he would like to spend part of the day at the Buffalo Zoo (since tomorrow is supposed to be rainy and such).  So off we set!

Little Bear seemed ready to go on an adventure perched in the new red wagon we got him at a yard sale this morning for a steal!  He is ready for anything as long as his faithful puppy Oliver is there with him. 

In the rainforest exhibit, Little Bear was fascinated by the bright pink birds that were everywhere!

And he was also fascinated by the piranhas. 

We tried to get another cute photo of Little Bear and I in front of the waterfalls at the rainforest exhibit like we had last summer when we were there, but he wasn't too into it this time. He couldn't wait until we were done there and moved on to see the monkeys!

And look - Monkeys! 

And Lions too!  Mr. Lion was being very lazy just sitting in the sun.

Little Bear decided that posing in front of a large tank of fish was a great idea.  He probably sat there for a good 5 minutes or so before he was ready to move along. 

It was a lovely day to spend at the zoo. :)

A Box Full of Lovies!

The other day while driving back from running errands, I happened upon a yard sale that looked like it might warrant a closer look.  I ended up scoring a Fisher Price plastic toy boy for $5!  Granted, it needed some serious scrubbing, but it had potential.  Last night, after Little Bear went to bed, Tim and I took the box to the basement and gave it the good scrubbing it deserved.  The bottom of it was a lost cause but for what I had in mind, no bottom wasn't going to be an issue.  

After cleaning it up, drying it off, I took it into Little Bear's room and gathered all of his stuffed animals and lovies up and gave them all a new home.  At first, I just put all of his stuffed animals in there, but there were too many of them!  So I sorted out his puppets and put them in their own basket.  Now what animals were left fit just perfectly.  

This morning, I went in to get Little Bear up and before I could even pick him up, he was pointing to the new box full of lovies sitting next to his crib asking "What's that?".  I helped him out of his crib and he was instantly over to the bin of lovies showing them the proper love they deserved. 

I think he would willingly choose to sleep in that box if we would let him.

I call that $5 and some elbow grease well spent.

Bath in the Hood

Since our Little Bear is getting so big (35" tall and off the charts at 18 months old), I decided it was finally time to make him some new hooded bath towels to take the place of the baby hooded bath towels we had been using since he was born.  I had seen the idea of hooded towels on Pinterest and figured they couldn't bee too hard to figure out.  I picked up a few towels at Target (bright green and blue seemed like good color choices for a little boy) and went to town making some hooded bath towels for Little Bear.  

I had some left over robot pattern flannel from a previous project and thought it would make really cute trim on these towels.  I also bought a hand towel in bright orange and appliqued a "B" onto the back of each towel.  Over all, I love how these towels turned out.  Little Bear still seems skeptical, but then again anything that keeps him from being naked and running around is evil in his book! 

Turtles, Deer, Hawk, and Geese - Oh my!

On Sunday, since it was such a beautiful and sunny day out, we decided to take Ben and go for an adventure at Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve which is about 15 minutes from our apartment.  And what an adventure it was!  We hadn't gotten more than 5 minutes down the trail when we ran into this lovely little turtle.  Looks like she might have been digging a whole to lay her eggs into.

 Little Bear wanted so badly to go touch the little turtle but Daddy said "probably not a good idea". 

As we continued on down the trail, I was in awe of all of the beautiful wild roses that were in bloom. I love wild roses - they are so delicate and simplistic. 

  Then, not another 5 minutes further down the trail from when we say the little turtle, we ran into this attentive doe standing alongside the trail just looking at us.  As we got closer, she jumped off into the bushes a little ways, but didn't go too far away. 

 As we walked up the trail, we saw the same doe off in the woods a bit and right before us, not 20 feet off of the trail, was a red tailed hawk pecking around in the weeds! 

 I had never seen a red tailed hawk quite so closely before and they are quite the impressive birds.  After about 5 minutes or so, the hawk must have decided it was time to take off and off he flew!  It was quite an amazing site to watch such a large bird take flight.

A little further along, Tim saw a Gardner snake, but alas, he escaped the gaze of my camera.

 Little Bear seemed to be having a great time playing in the weeds - I think he had just thrown something of our into the tall weeds at this point.  "Yay, Ben!"

 The trail that we were walking along took us along a large pond and on the trail were a gaggle (is that right?) of Canadian geese with some of their goslings.  In general, I'm not a fan of Canadian Geese (Little Bear mutually dislikes them after they hissed at him on several different incidents), but who doesn't love to see little fluffy geese? 

 And who can't admit that there is an inherent beauty in a goose 

swimming on a still and reflective pond? 

 Oh look!  Another turtle!  He has munching on some grass near the pond, just minding his own business.  Happy turtle!

 As we were coming to the end of our hike, the trail brought us back to the first pond we walked past and off to the side of the trail right next to the water's edge, we spotted this empty nest of turtle eggs!  Oh, I would have loved to see some little baby turtles, but this is a nice reminder of the beauty of the circle of life.

 Last nature picture of the day was of the beautiful pink water lilies just coming into blossom.

 As we got near the parking lot where our car was parked, Little Bear got so sad to be leaving all the fun critters, sticks, stones and mud puddles behind. 

 

Into the Woods Baby Shower

I love babies - who doesn't right?
I love that I get to share the joy with close friends as they expect their new dear sweet bundles of joy!

I love planning parties too!  

And I love being in the woods. 

So what could be better than to combine all of those things into one lovely baby shower?  

Yup, that's right.  A dear friend of mine is expecting her first little one here in a few more months, and I had the privileged of being able to host a baby shower for her at our church.  

The theme for their son's nursery is Woodland.  So I took that idea and after churning it around in my creative brain for a bit and scouring Pinterest for inspiration, I had a fantastic idea to do a woodland theme inspired baby shower! 

This was such a great theme to work with since so much of the decorations draw right from nature.  Thus a trip down to my parents and a visit to my basement yielded most of the supplies I would need for virtually free!   

Enjoy the photos of the end result!

For the Buffet Table, I used white table clothes, and I lined the back of the table with wood chunks, glass canning jars that held a tea candle, and pine cones scattered in between everything.  

I also added a few small sparrow figurines I had by placing them on top of some of the chunks of wood.  I hung a banner I had made for my friend to use later in her nursery on the wall being the table to add a little extra splash of color.

I found these darling birch pattern paper straw on Amazon.  I love how they add just a little something extra. 

Since we were expecting around 30 guests at this baby shower, I decided to create one long table for everyone to sit at so we could all enjoy each others company.  Plus, it was a lot of fun creating one large dramatic centerpiece. I covered the tables in white paper table clothes and down the center of the table I used some burlap fabric I got on sale at Walmart to create the base for a large dramatic runner.  On the burlap, I placed dried wood that I collected from my parent's woods and black river rocks I pulled from their creek.  Then I mixed throughout all of that, pine cones I'd picked up at the park and different sized glass canning jars that held tea candles (the canning jars were from my ridiculously large stash of canning jars I have in the basement).  I also added some green dried moss I picked up at JoAnn's (again on sale!), and I'm glad I added the moss because it added a lot of color to an otherwise neutral centerpiece. 

Finally, for the centerpiece, I added the four flowering plants that were going to be used as game prizes.  I love how the Red, Orange, Purple and Yellow flowers really popped in the centerpiece. 

Oh, and yes, I also added to the centerpiece some more little sparrow figurines that I had to give it all a little more character.  

Around the edge of the table at each place setting, I set out the napkins and utensils alongside the favors that I had put together for everyone as a thank you for being a part of this special day.

The favors were a lot of fun and so easy to do.  I had 3 dozen jars of grape jelly still down in the basement from the last time I went a little crazy canning.  In my defense I was 7 months pregnant at the time and not quite in my right mind - although do not tell my husband that. ;)  

But anyways, I digress.  For the favors, I took some grape Jelly, placed a red gingham cupcake liner under the canning ring, tied brown twine around the rim, and added a small tag that said "Thank you".  I then put those jars into a wooden quart basked with some brown paper filler and tada!  I just love how rustic these look and how much they added to the overall table layout.

Since some of the invited guests were under the age of 10, I set up a Kids table for them.  I had a little burlap left over from the main table and just set out something simple for their centerpiece. 

This was the activity table at which I asked people to write their names and addresses on envelopes to make it easier for the guest of honor to send out thank you notes.  And I also had a basket of new born diapers and asked that people write a cute little note on those to encourage the new parents at 2 in the morning in the not too distant future. 

And last but not least, is the amazing cake that was made for the shower.  

A dear, sweet mutual friend who is great at making caking, made this for the new parents.  

It captures the joy of having a little boy, it included the new daddy's love of sports, 

and of coarse their little pug "Lucy" had to make an appearance as well!  

Oh, I would also like to say a huge and heartfelt THANK YOU to Angela who without her help and effort, the decorations for this baby shower would have fallen far short, the baby shower wouldn't have been half as fun, nor the food nearly as delicious! 

Thank you!!