DIY: Gift Bows!

I posted a bow I made on Instagram and had a few people ask me how I did it so I thought I would make a tutorial! It is super easy, all you need is wrapping paper, scissors, a stapler, and tape. You can use a ruler too, I will add measurements, but they don't really HAVE to be exact.

Step 1: I cut 4 one inch strips of the paper. I didn't measure it when I originally started making the bow. I decided where to cut based on the pattern, it just happened to be 1", so if it's not a perfect inch that shouldn't make much of a difference.

Step 2: Next I cut the strips into different lengths. My roll was 30" long, I cut 1 of the strips in half (15"). I cut 2 of the strips at 2/3 of the length (leaving 20" and 10" pieces). And the last one I cut 5" off the end leaving 25". So now I have 8 pieces:

• (1) 25" 
• (2) 20" 
• (2) 15" 
• (2) 10" 
• (1) 5" 

Step 3: Take the ends of the strips and meet them at the middle with the pattern on the outside. Staple to hold it. Complete for each piece, except the 5".

 Step 4: Take the 5" strip and make it into the circle for the middle.

Once you are done with that you are ready to put them together.

Step 5: Place each piece on top of the other. Start with the longest on the outside, slightly turn them to fill in all the gaps, and tape them together.

Step 6: Optional* Cut 2 small squares, then cut a triangle out of each and place them under the bow. It just adds a little bit of  decoration to it.

Step 7: Attach the bow to your present, YOU'RE DONE!!

Halloween 2014!

I am not a very big fan of Halloween. I just don't enjoy being scared. My husband on the other hand LOVES Halloween, it is pretty safe to say that it is his favorite holiday. Aidan seems to like being scared too, he thinks it is hilarious. Don't get me wrong I'm all for adorable little costumes and some candy but that is about as far as it goes. Luckily, Brian limited the body parts and decapitated head decorations this year.

This was the first year Aidan decided what he was going to be for Halloween. His first Halloween he was 6 months old and I dressed him as a bat. The next year, at 18 months, I dress him as Mickey Mouse. In 2013, at 2, he and Daisy went as Tod and Copper from The Fox and the Hound. This year the only thing he wanted to be was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle! Leonardo to be exact. I had a hard time finding a TMNT costume that I liked for him. There were some cute toddler ones but he was too big for them, and the older kid ones had really thin material with a 1990's plastic mask for $30. (And I figured I would have to buy some thermals for him to wear under the costume because it never fails that Cincinnati has frigid temperatures on Halloween.) 

So, I decided I was going to make his costume! Have I mentioned I don't didn't know how to sew? Well I have never really sewed, I never took a class in high school, no one taught me how. I just read the manual on my moms sewing machine (that I'm not sure if she has ever used) and used Google and Pinterest to teach myself. I also didn't have any patterns. I made my own patterns using some of Aidan's clothes as an outline with some directions from these two sites:
http://littlestonecape.blogspot.com/2012/05/diy-toddler-pajama-pants-pattern.html
http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/post/845273/347663103
The pants were super easy! The shirt I had a harder time with, especially the sleeves. Then for the shell I completely improvised. I used an oval serving tray to trace the shape. I cut out a hexagon with my Cricut Explore to use as a pattern on the shell, then used some satin stitching to dress it up a little bit. I was thrilled with how it turned out! Could it have been better? Of course, but I don't think I did too bad for a first timer! I bought 6 yards of fabric, 2 of green fleece, and 2 each of tan and brown felt. I had the elastic for the pants, but did have to buy a couple spools of thread and some velcro. I spent around $20 and the costume was plenty warm for him, plus he loved it! Here are some pictures of the costume progress...

I also made him, and my nephew (also a Ninja Turtle), personalized Trick or Treat buckets out of $.44 sand buckets from Michael's and some vinyl I had on-hand! I got the svg to cut the vinyl from this site: http://www.kraftynook.blogspot.com/search?q=tmnt She makes a ton of awesome svgs! Look up her blog if you have a Cricut Explore, you won't regret it!

Every year my in-laws take their camper up to Eastfork State Park for their big Halloween camp out! They usually invite all of my family to come for Trick or Treating as well so Aidan and Landon were able to Trick or Treat together!

As you can see above Aidan had some trouble with his mask. So we put it on his forehead so people would know he was Leonardo and he could still see. :)

The weekend after camping we went to the Cincinnati Zoo for their annual HallZOOween event. Local vendors hand out candy and coupons and the animals usually join in on some fun with "Pumpkin Pandemonium" their own special version of Trick or Treat. We have annual passes so we only went for a few hours, picked up some candy, saw some animals and rode the train. The zoo is always crazy for holiday events! Some people were waiting a considerable amount of time for two tootsie rolls... We passed. It was the absolute most beautiful weather the weekend we decided to go so that didn't help with crowd control either; but we still had fun.

Aidan has never been one for pictures!

In fact, he was standing on a rock wall for this picture- about 3 feet up- as soon as I snapped the picture he said "Okay, I'm done." Then stepped right off of the ledge, before any of us could stop him, landed on his face and busted his lip open :( there was quite a bit of blood! It was not the best way to start the day, he still continued to enjoy his time there.

Leonardo checking on Leatherhead! (I watch TMNT waaaay too often these days!)

The black bears eating their pumpkins!

And last but not least, on Halloween night we had some of Brian's family over and did Trick or Treating around our neighborhood. Brian and his dad took Aidan and Brian's cousin's little boy Blake out and his cousin and I handed out candy. It was great meeting some neighbors but it was FREEZING outside!

Thanks for sticking around to finish reading this novel that I wrote today! I will be posting again soon! :)

Letters D & E!

It has been a few weeks since I have posted, but we have still been doing our projects! We started going to story time at the library this week too, which was a lot of fun! We will be doing that in the upcoming weeks as well. For now here are some of the things we have been working on...

D is for:

DOG! I cut out the letter D, a circle for the nose, an ear and rectangle collar for each of the boys to glue together. I also had some shiny circle pieces (I really don't know what they are called or what they are actually used for :)) that I thought would work perfect for the tag! 

 They were being silly!

DUCK! For our duck we used yellow paint for their hand prints, an orange marker for the feet and bill and a googly eye. Simple enough. :) I also helped them finger paint the work "duck"!

DAD! What is more important of a D-word than Dad?! Both of these boys are blessed with amazing daddies so we made them a little paper weight out of salt dough. I googled the recipe and I wasn't really thrilled with the results, it didn't turn out very smooth on top and the bottom is still soft. I plan on making some Christmas ornaments out of salt dough and will be trying a different recipe for those. (If you have one that has turned out great please share!) 

I printed a coloring sheet with the letter D and a dolphin on it for another day but forgot to get any pictures ooops! I honestly don't know what moms did with their children before the internet. There are so many great resources, especially Pinterest! 

E is for:

EYES! We glued a bunch of googly eyes (from the Dollar Tree) onto our letter E! I haven't been using my Cricut to cut out the letters. It's really just as easy to cut them out myself, they aren't perfect but as long as the boys can tell what letter it is my job is done! 

EARTH! We do so much with capitol letters I realized we needed to start doing some lowercase as well. I saw this "earth" craft on Pinterest and thought it would be perfect!

EGG! I felt a little weird doing an Easter egg craft so close to Halloween but I don't think it really mattered to them. :) 

Next week I plan on taking a break from our letters to work on some Halloween fun. You will have to see what we come up with!

Letter C!

This week was the letter C! I have to admit, I always have great intentions about taking pictures, but a lot of times I get so wrapped up in the stuff we are doing that I forget. I also am notorious for walking out the door and forgetting my camera. I am trying to get better about it, but you'll see one day this week where I forgot to get the camera out until after we were done, whoops!

C is for:

CORN! I just cut out a shape that looked like a corn cob, popped some popcorn and let them glue the popcorn on. I think they had more fun eating the popcorn than doing the project! Landon was even trying to pull a Billy Madison and use the glue as a yummy dipping sauce! :)

CUPCAKE! I baked some cupcakes and let the boys decorate their own! We also did a cupcake coloring page. This was another day where they liked eating better! Next time I will probably try a lighter color icing.

COW! We glued some black spots, ears and horns on a paper plate to make our cows. (As you can tell all of our projects are super easy to prepare!) On the crafts that don't have the actual letter involved I write the letter as large as I can on the back so they are still learning to recognize the letters too.

CATERPILLAR! This was the day I forgot to get out the camera. We took puff balls and formed them into the letter C and added some googly eyes!

Some of the snacks/food we ate this week to go with the letter C included: CHEESE CUBES, CANTALOUPE, CUCUMBERS, CHIPS, CHERRIES, and CELERY!