My Christmas sewing projects are DONE!!

I have finally finished all of the sewing projects I planned for the girls' Christmas presents!  Actually there's one I haven't done yet, but it's a minor thing that I may just not do.  I'm kind of burned out now when it comes to sewing... I got my sewing machine and got so excited, and I decided to attempt these projects even though I haven't sewn in over 10 years, and even back then, it was on my mom's ancient machine with her help.  So I really had no idea what I was doing, which made every project take me 10 times longer than it should have.  Nothing turned out perfectly (not even close!) which frustrates me, because I am a perfectionist.  I made SO many mistakes.  But I'm still pretty happy with how everything turned out! 

My first project was Naomi's owl.  Naomi has got a thing for owls.  I was just playing around on Pinterest one day, and Naomi came into the office and saw the picture for the stuffed owl tutorial, and she immediately wanted one.  After that day, she continued to ask me every few days about her stuffed owl.  I finished it a while ago, and it has been really hard for me to not give in and just give it to her early.  I'm so excited!!

The tutorial I used for the owl stuffie is found on a blog called Hammer & Thread.

My next project was a stuffed animal for Aleta.  I didn't want to make the same animal, (and I ended up having a ROUGH time making that silly little owl, so there was no way I was making two!) so I picked an elephant for her.  The elephant tutorial was from a website called Birch Fabrics.

My last sewing project was a little tote/book bag for each of the girls for their library books.  Naomi recently got her own library card, and we love the library, so I thought it'd be fun for each of them to have their own library bag.  I found a pretty simple tutorial on 30 Minute Crafts (although I think it took me closer to 5 hours to make mine... definitely NOT 30 minutes for me!).  I did add one little thing to each of their bags--I wanted their initial on it, so I sewed a 4-inch felt letter on each of their bags.

You can't really tell from the pictures, but the fabric is NOT a solid color.  It's a pretty teal color with a cute, small, white pattern on it.  I think the bags look so much better in person since you can see the pattern on the fabric.  Here's a close-up so you can see it better:

See?  Pretty!

I found all of the tutorials by searching around on Pinterest--it's a gold mine for free tutorials and patterns!  Also, I spent a total of 18 dollars on ALL of the supplies for these projects.  I have only shopped for fabric/sewing supplies on big sale weekends (usually a holiday weekend), and I use coupons on top of the sales so I get pretty good deals.  I saved 19 bucks on all of these supplies when I only spent 18.  And with those supplies, I have made these 4 things, a hot air balloon pillow for my niece, and I still have almost the entire bag of stuffing and probably half of the fabric left!

Playroom Project!

When we move, we are going to have a playroom!  I am ridiculously excited.  A 100% kid-proof room dedicated only to toys and play... yay!  I want the playroom to be bright and colorful and cheerful, and I got an idea on Tuesday of something I could make to hang on the wall.  I started my project that night and finished it last night!

I started with a broken cardboard box that looked something like this:

Then I measured/cut/folded/stapled and made 4 square cubey things like this:

And then I made them pretty with scrapbook paper and mod podge, so they looked like this:

I am pretty happy with it!  They turned out almost like I had pictured in my head.  The broken box was free, obviously, and the scrapbook paper/cardstock only cost me a few bucks, so it was a super cheap project!  I can't wait until we move!!