Quiet book: Do you wanna build a snowman?

Koala loves her Hello Kitty dress up page so much that I wanted to make her another page that was similar. 

Since it was cold and Koala loves snowmen, I looked up some snowman quiet book pages. There were a couple pages I modeled this 'build a snowman' page from but this was the only link that still worked. 

I wanted to add Olaf from Frozen to the page so it could be a 'Do you wanna build a snowman?' page. 

I found a picture of Olaf to trace and made this felt version that I sewed down. I put a little stuffing in between the background and Olaf's belly to make him look a little plump. 

I originally thought of making the pieces for Olaf for Koala to build but decided against that since it wouldn't give much of a variety. 

Instead, I put Olaf on the left side of the page and left space to build the snowman. 

For the background, I used blue stuff felt that I had bought and white regular felt for the back hill. 

I made the front hill into pockets to hold the snowman pieces and put pellon to reinforce the white felt so that it would be sturdier. I sewed it to the page leaving the top open and putting two vertical lines to create 3 pockets. Then I started stitching the words on the hill. In retrospect, I should have sewn the words on the front pocket BEFORE sewing it to the page lol! And I probably should have used a template or written it on first. It came out kinda crooked. 

I added three snaps for the snowman. This time I opted to use snaps instead of Velcro because it looked nicer and also because I've seen how Velcro can wear out the background felt. The snaps are still hard for Koala to put on by herself but it works. 

I contemplated making different noses, eyes etc for the face but decided against it because the pieces would be too small. Instead, I glued two googly eyes, made a carrot nose from felt and stitched a smile onto a small circle

I made two different bodies. 

One short body on the left and two circles on the right.

For the accessories, there are:

1 set of arms with blue mittens

2 scarves- a red scarf and a blue bandana

3 hats- top hat, beanie and a cowboy hat

The finished product:

So, do YOU wanna build a snowman?

Blog hiatus

It's been a while since my last blog post. I had a blog post started about my latest project- a playmat for Koala to play on that makes for easy clean up but have been hesitant to post it. 

Some of you may have remembered that I recently chronicled how I made a sleep sack for BBC in one of my last blog posts. 

Recently, I was contacted by the owner of the product and was told to take my blog post down because my blog post 'more importantly, does not comply with the CPSC standards and testing for baby sleepwear.' In not so many words she stated that she would pursue legal action and contact the CPSC if I did not take my blog post down (which I did take down). 

Honestly, I would have taken my blog post down if she had asked me nicely and didn't threaten legal action and I probably would have stayed a fan of the company (no longer a fan- I will never buy or promote this product ever again. I used to tell my new mommy friends about it and how I saw it on TV but I won't be doing that anymore.) 

After deleting the post, I thought it was ridiculous that she tried to act as if her main concern was child safety and that she threatened to contact the CPSC about it. It's not like I'm reproducing the sleep sack and selling them to people. I just made my own version for my own personal use at home.

In reality, she was upset that rather than buy her product, I made my own and the thought that my blog post gave the few people the idea of making their own rather than buying her product made her upset. I get it- she's protecting her company and I don't blame her. I just think she shouldn't have tried to play it off as though her main concern was that I'm not CPSC compliant rather than her loss of potential profits. 

Happy Baekil BBC!

Recently, we celebrated BBC's Baekil (백일-100 day). 

A Baekil is a Korean tradition celebrating the 100th day of a newborn's life. Back in the day when the survival rate was low, they celebrated a baby's birth after 100 days. I also heard that the time in the womb +100 days is roughly a year. (If the baby is not early or late).

When I was searching Pinterest for party theme ideas, a mustache & bow tie themes kept popping up for boy themes. I thought it was cute so I decided to do a mustache/bow tie theme with navy and orange colors. 

I went to Tiny Prints where I found the perfect invitation for a mustache themed party. It was for a 1st birthday so I had to adjust the picture so that it said '100 days' instead of 'one.'

The original picture and the edited version

Since it was a bow tie/mustache theme, I made BBC an orange bow tie.

I don't know if it was the material or because I've made a couple, but this bow tie was a lot easier to make than the previous ones. 

To go with the mustache theme, I made mustache shaped brownies, mini mustache shaped brownie bites (brownies dipped in chocolate), and crunchy Buckeyes (pictured below on the top left).

This was the Baekil table.

My friend made the banner and the bunting for the cake and we ordered the dduk (rice cake).

I had waited until the last minute to put together the party so the final products didn't come out as nicely as they could have if I hadn't been rushing. 

The colors of the party were blue and orange so I made a blue velvet cake as well as blue velvet cake pops with orange chocolate and blue velvet mini cupcakes with a mustache sprinkle on top. I wanted to decorate the cake pops but ran out of time. 

Pictured above: drink containers with straws and mustaches, the dduk cake, some of the desserts, the food table and the cake.

I also made fruit skewers that had '100' as well as a couple with rose strawberries and mustaches. I didn't get a good picture of the roses or mustaches but you get the idea from the picture below. 

This was the drink table with plates and the napkins/forks.

My sister printed up vinyl mustaches to put on the drink containers. 

Detailed pics

I like how everything turned out considering I felt like the party was just thrown together! Maybe I'll consider the mustache theme for BBC's dohl too! 

Quiet book: fishing page

It's time for a quiet book blog post!

This is a quiet book fishing page.

I modeled this page after a couple different fishing versions that I found. 

I really liked how this fishing page looked because it was so cute. 

But I also liked the idea of a Bible based book ie becoming fishers of men or Jesus and the miraculous catch of fish (John 21:6). 

There was this page with a net that I liked.

I took the ocean page from the first blog and added a boat at the top.

 I took the idea of the net from the second blog to store the fish when not in use. 

The net is actually a bag that some marbles came in. I put in a vinyl bag (also a recycled package from something) inside the net so that the fish didn't get stuck when trying to put them in. Then I sewed the netting to the vinyl bag just to keep then together and I weaved ribbon through the top of the netting so that it would close like a drawstring.

I thought that the fish on the first blog were cute so I made templates of those and cut them out of felt. I reinforced them with Pellon and stuck a paper clip in between before I sewed them together. I super glued the eyes on (which didn't stop some of the eyes from falling off. Oh well) 

I didn't get a picture of the fish before I let Koala play with them so two of octopus' legs are shorter in the picture.

I ran out of time before we went on our trip so here is Koala using a makeshift fishing pole which worked well for a while. But Koala used this page so often that eventually the fishing pole fell apart so she couldn't use it anymore. That's when I finally decided to make the real fishing pole. 

I took a wooden disposable chopstick that had a thick end and drilled a hole in it. Then I threaded some ribbon through the hole and tied it to the stick so that it wouldn't fall through. On the end of the ribbon, I attached a round magnet using a glue gun. Then I decorated it to look like a round fishing tackle/bobbin.

This is the finished fishing pole and up close pic of the tackle (which kind of looks like a pokeball).

Koala seems to enjoy this page a lot because no matter how many time she plays with it, it's still fun. She loves catching the fish over and over and it keeps her busy for a while. This page is definitely one of my favorite not only because I like how it turned out but because Koala loves playing with it.  

Calm down/Time out bottle

Lately, Koala has been getting frustrated more easily. I think that it has a lot to do with BBC being here. Don't get me wrong, she adores her brother- she gives his kisses and asks where he is when she doesn't see him. She tries to give him his binky when he's crying. But she gets upset when my attention isn't on her.

I decided to make her a calm down bottle to help her calm down when she's feeling frustrated. 

There are a lot of blogs that show how they do it like this one:

I pretty much did the same thing. 

Supplies:

Water bottle

Glitter glue

Hot water 

Funnel (optional)

I used a Fiji water bottle because some of the other water bottles are really made of flimsy thin plastic and I didn't want the bottle to accidentally burst open. I also used glitter glue from the dollar store.

Some blogs said to also add regular glitter but we only used glitter glue. 

I had Koala help me make it because I thought it would be a fun activity for her. I let her squeeze in the glue glitter.

I was going to have her only add one color but she had so much fun she wanted to put in all three. After we added the glue glitter, we added hot water. I boiled some water and then added some cold water to get water hot enough that the glitter glue would mix well but not too hot that the plastic would melt. I used a funnel so that Koala could pour the water into the bottle. 

After we poured in the water, I used a glue gun to glue the lid in place to prevent Koala from opening it and spilling glitter everywhere. 

The glitter glue was clumpy at first but after Koala shook it up, the glitter glue dissolved. 

Koala enjoyed watching the glitter and it seemed to help with the first couple almost mini-tantrums. We'll have to see how well it works for a full blown tantrum... 

Bow ties and Onesie Cardigan

My first project that I worked on after creating my new craft workspace was to make some bow ties to Baby Bear (BBC). 

I found some material that I had leftover from my bibs that was too small to make bibs with but perfect for bow ties. 

I found simple instructions on how to make a bow tie. I actually just looked at the pictures on a pin on Pinterest. But here's the link for that pin.

1. Cut out a rectangle. 

2. Fold the top and bottom horizontally about a quarter of the length

3. Fold the sides vertically so they meet in the middle. 

4. Some unpictured steps: scrunch the middle of the fabric and take a small piece of fabric and sew or glue it to hold the bow tie together. 

The pin showed a double bow tie. I only made one double bow tie because it looked funny with the other ones. 

Mustache bow tie 

Top: Blue plaid bow tie and chevron bow tie (you can't really tell that it's chevron)

Bottom: St. Patrick's Day bow tie 

The hardest part for me was getting the bow tie to look symmetrical. I still felt that the bow ties weren't symmetrical but I let it slide. 

I was going to add a snap to the back to snap onto a shirt but I decided to use safety pins so that I could use the bow ties on any shirt. 

In addition to the bow ties, I made BBC a cardigan from a onesie. This blog gave good instructions on how to make it 

1. Start with a onesie

2. Use a ruler and draw a Y shape on the front of the onesie. Cut on these lines. Also cut off the back collar 

3. Pin bias starting from the middle of the Y to go around the back collar (that was cut off) and then down the front to the bottom. 

4. Sew the bias to the shirt. Sew the two sides of the shirt back together under the bias. (It looks crooked in the final picture but it's not that crooked.)

Add buttons to the bias and viola- you have a onesie cardigan. 

DIY Baby Shortall

I searched for my next project on Pinterest and saw this blog where you can make shortalls from an adult shirt. I remembered I had some of Hubby's polo shirts I wanted to get rid of so I looked up tutorials for polo shirts. This one showed how to resize an adult polo to a kid size. 

I skimmed both blogs and decided to try to make a polo shortall from Hubby's polo shirt. It was an old shirt so I didn't mind if I messed up. 

On Saturday when both kids were napping, I busted out my sewing scissors and started to cut. 

I'm not very good at reading directions or working with patterns so I skimmed the blog pictures and grabbed one of BBC's shortalls to use as a template. 

I cut about an inch around the shortall on the left side then folded the shirt in half and cut based on the other half so that they would be symmetrical. 

I ended up with this cutout. 

I detached the collar by pulling out the stitches. 

Then I sewed the edges of the leg holes and arm holes to create a hem. And then I sewed the pieces together at the tops and the sides- leaving the section in between the legs open so I could add snaps later.

After everything was sewn together, I had to cut the collar to fit the head opening and pinned it to the shirt.

 I cut the collar from one side thinking I could save myself from having to sew both sides. I learned that next time I should cut from both sides so that it's symmetrical. 

I added the snaps using this snap kit. The kit was easier than when I tried to attach snaps without the kit for the quiet book, but it was still pretty frustrating. 

This is the final product- not too bad for an evening project. It would've gone by faster if my thread didn't keep bunching and breaking- just a reminder that I'm still not crafty lol! But easy enough that I'm excited to try it again with other shirts! Next time I'll have to make the legs a little slimmer and longer. I think I will also cut the crotch a little higher so the pants are longer and the torso is shorter. 

Pretty cute to see BBC wearing outfits that Hubby wore. 

Quiet book: Itsy Bitsy Spider

I came across this cute quiet book page for the itsy bitsy spider.

I liked how this blog had the spider go up and down on a string. I searched on Pinterest for other ideas and came across this blog. I liked this version even better. It was cuter and I liked how it had the flip to go from sunny to raining. 

For my version, I did a little bit from both blogs. I pretty much modeled it after the second flip blog. I made the template for the water spout from that page (tracing it from my computer) but I decided not to do the flip for the spout. 

I spent a little extra time on the house- I decided it needed to be a brick house lol. I'm not sure why I decided to make it so complicated but it turned out nicely. 

Work in progress 

For the spider, I just cut out a black oval from stiff felt and then free styled some legs and sewed the legs to the body. 

I stitched in a smile using red thread and on the back of the spider, I sewed on a black strip so I could slip ribbon through. 

I had googly eyes so I used those instead of sewing eyes because I think they look cuter than beady sewn eyes.

Work in progress: spider with some of the bricks for the brick wall 

I threaded a ribbon through the back of the spider and then attached the ribbon to the top and bottom of the water spout. 

For the background, I used simple green felt for the ground which I fringed the top to make it look like grass. I cut two squares- one light blue and one dark blue and I sewed one edge of each color together. I then sewed the opposite edge of the dark blue to the top of the page and the other edge of the light blue below the grass. Then I sewed the middle of each color to the Pellon beneath it so that the square folded and created the flip.

I added grey clouds to the dark blue side. I just free style cut the clouds and added a red stitched smile and googly eyes before sewing it to the page. I liked how the one blog had the ribbon as the rain and originally I was going to make it like they did with felt raindrops. But when I cut out the raindrops I decided it wouldn't look good once it was stitched to the ribbon because it was too small. Instead, I decided to use the light blue heart beads that I had leftover from the abacus page I made.

In retrospect, I should have sewed the ribbon under the clouds BEFORE I sewed the clouds to the page. But I didn't so it was a bit more challenging to add. I had to tuck the ribbon in between one of the stitches and the try to sew the ribbon down by going over the stitching in the clouds. It was much more complicated than it needed to be. The lesson here is plan out your page BEFORE you start sewing to avoid making extra work for yourself. 

For the light blue side, I added a sun, which was just a yellow circle with a red stitched smile and googly eyes. I was going to add sun beams but it looked dumb. The page seemed pretty bare so I added a white cloud and a flower to it. I wanted to add a bee to the page as well because the sunny page still looked bare even with the flower but if I added the bee, the rainy page just like chaotic since it had the raindrops as well. 

Since the flower had to be on both the rainy and sunny page, I basically cut out two of each shape/color and then sewed them to each page. I tried to make them look as identical as I could. I added googly eyes to each flower and one stem for both pages.

This is another page that Koala likes but she mostly plays with when I play with her because she likes when I sing the itsy bitsy spider song. Although these days, I sometimes catch her playing with it and going through motions of having the spider climb up, then the rain falls and the spider falls down. But she still enjoys it best when I sing it to her.