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!!

Curtains and Puppy Dog Tails

For those of you who might not know, my oldest sister is a large and small animal veterinarian.  Presently, she is in the process of building out and opening her own small animal clinic.  And being the good sister that I am (*wink, wink*), I want to help her out with something even though I couldn't be there in person to do any of the cleaning, painting, etc.  So, she asked me to sew together some curtains for her to help spruce up the office.  Back in January, after the made rush of Christmas presents, I had some spare time and was able to put together the curtains she asked for. 

 The curtains were made out of a cute purple patterned material with a purple daisy trim along the bottom.  I lined the back with an off-white just to give them a little bit of weight.  At the time that I made them, I didn't get a chance to get a good picture of the end result.  Over Memorial day weekend, we went down to Arkwright to visit my sister and my parents for the day and while there, I got a chance to see my sister's new small animal office (which is almost done!).  She had my curtains up and they looked to pretty!  So I snagged a few pictures in order to share them here with you.  Enjoy!

Velcro Anyone?

Can I just say how much I love my Little Bear and would do just about anything for him?  

Can I also just say that I love how much money we are saving by using cloth diapers for Little Bear?  

Now can I say, I absolutely dislike the fact that the Velcro tabs that hold the cloth diapers onto Little Bear have completely given out on me and I have been forced to replace said Velcro tabs?  

Yup, this is one of those projects that sit next to my sewing machine and haunt me every time I want to make something new and beautiful because I know that although the end result will be diapers that once again stay on Little Bear, I'm not creating something beautiful, new and shiny.  I have been plugging away on re-doing the Velcro tabs on Little Bear's diapers for several weeks now, working on a few at a time.  The pile of fixed diapers is slowly growing and thankfully the pile of "broken" diapers is slowly shrinking. I think I only have about 10 out of our 40 diapers left to do!  I'm so close to being done and being free!  Wish me luck.

 Oh, and if you ever get the idea to ask me to fix the Velcro tabs on your cloth diapers - just don't, because I'll say no even though I'll feel bad for you and then we will both end up being sad.  Sewing Velcro - especially very sticky Velcro - is not something any sewing machine likes to do. 

Baby Car Seat Blanket

I had quite a bit of this lovely grey forest flannel print and green minky left over from making a friend's baby blanket, so I thought I would put together a hooded car seat blanket for her as well since her little one will be a fall baby, and with the cold Buffalo winters we get around here, this would be just perfect to keep the little one nice and warm. 

I used a combination of patterns from A Handmade Childhood, Life Ordained, and The Complete Guide To Imperfect Homemaking.  All three tutorials were excellent sources of inspiration as I tweaked their patterns to give me what I wanted.  

 

 Don't you just love my model?  My little Bear is simply too big to model this for me, so one of his stuffed animals had to do it. 

Minky Baby Blankets

With so many dear women in my life having sweet little babies in the future, I've been sewing like crazy all kinds of different little baby gifts.  Here are two baby blankets that I put together recently.  The one on the left has a green minky back to it and a lovely flannel print that I picked up at JoAnn's.  The baby blanket on the right has a vibrant orange minky backing with this adorable animal print that I also picked up at JoAnn's.  Both blankets measure approximately 40" square which I think is just the perfect size to wrap up a new little on in.