Creative Friends

This week I got soooo many ideas from creative friends. Megan threw me a baby shower and now I'm even more excited for little Annie to come (tomorrow)! Most of these ideas can be used for boys, for your own families, or for great gift ideas. ENJOY! I did!

Laura made these adorable booties and burp cloth. She said she got cloth baby shoes online and said, "I also wanted to share this blog I like to check out when I need a good craft or project to work on. It has tons of ideas and fun things to try."







Annie got some fun books at the shower. I found some fun bookplates on the craftpad blog to put inside each of them so I can remember who gave them to her. I love that all of them can be downloaded free. The first vintage bookplate comes from the doe-c-doe blog.



Here are some girly bookplates by Emily Martin of The Black Apple via Craftsanity.



Simple Gift Book Plates from Nested.






Belize made these darling headbands. She sewed the felt flowers onto the band. Check out her Etsy site.







Katie put together some cds of kids songs. Apollo and I have been listening to them every day. I love the envelopes they came in. Katie has always had great style. She made square envelopes using different designs of paper. Katie told me she didn't use a template, she said she just folded the paper around the cds. On top of some she cut out pictures to put on the top. She covered everything with packing tape.









When Janae had her little girl, she went to a nice store to get her burp clothes, swaddling blanket, and wipe/diaper carrier then thought "I could make these myself".




For the burp cloths, she just took normal burp cloths and sewed material to some and ribbon onto some. So simple and so cute!



I love how she has the swaddling blanket instructions pinned to the blanket. Her mom designed it and printed it out.






Megan threw the beautiful shower and made some yummy and beautiful chocolate covered strawberries. She said "hey, okay so my recipe is so super easy...

1 bag of milk choc, 1 bag of semi-sweet and 2 Tablespoons of Crisco in microwavable bowl

microwave for 1 minute

stir

microwave for an additional minute

(time may vary so just make sure not to over cook them)

Dip and twist strawberries

This makes a ton, so you can always cut the bags in half. Also I love to drizzle a little white choc on top. You do the same thing to melt it."

Christy made the design on these cute onesies! She said she designed them on photo shop (you could find a cute picture off the web too) and printed them out on iron-on paper and then put them on white little onesies. They turned out so cute.





Brenley taught me how to make hairclips. Since I found out I'm having a girl, I feel the pressure to have cute hair accessories. I was excited to see how easy and fun they are to make. Here are the beautiful models Anna, Ally, and Eden to show off some of them.






How to make these hairclips:

1. Hot glue ribbon onto the on all the surfaces of the clips (they can be found at Sally's, Target, etc.).



2. From here, you can hot glue flowers (you know the fake ones you don't take much notice of at Michaels or other craft stores), stickers, buttons, beads, brads for scrapbooking, or bows. Julianne showed us how to make bows so I'll have to try some out on my own and then I'll post them.


Here are some that we finished.



Brenley's sister-in-law made this cute bow-holder. It's a frame with two ribbons that are glued to the back.





Karen and Rebecca made this blanket. The material is so fun.

Good Idea Dad

Carleton made a little space on the bottom shelf especially for Apollo. We keep his library books and some toys in there for easy access. He is in there a million times a day. Carleton also made an art space in a bottom drawer for Apollo's paint brush, construction paper, crayons, etc. Good idea Dad!










For Valentine's Apollo and I made the easiest and yummiest cookies! Here's the recipe for the cookie part (there are two cookies with frosting inside):

1 box of cake mix
2 eggs
softened butter

Mix everything together and put on a cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.



I found the cheesecake frosting on allrecipes.com. My sister uses just the top rated recipes from this site (and she's a great cook). Carleton said it was the best cheesecake frosting he had ever had (and he's had a lot of frosting). Here's the recipe:

2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a medium bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter until creamy. Mix in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the confectioners' sugar. Store in the refrigerator after use.

My sister-in-law, Kimberly, told me how she involves her kids in cooking and teaches them things like counting at the same time. Apollo's always my little helper in the kitchen. It's fun to see him getting better at stirring and pouring things out of the measuring cups. His favorite part is tasting everything.

Be Mine
For one of our projects this week, Apollo and I worked on our Valentine cards. I downloaded some free cards, cut them out, and Apollo scribbled on the back. He gave them to some of his little buddies this week and we'll take them to Dad's coworkers on Valentine's.




Here are the Zebra Valentine Cards from Bunny Cakes



and Sweetheart Valentine cards from Bunny Cakes




and Snail cards from Zakka Life.




You can download these Valentine's cards from Yoonie-at-Home.


Here's another card you can download for free from How About Orange. I went to a family birthday party and used this for the birthday card. I had some foam stickers I used instead of buttons ($1 for a container of them at target).





Fun creative blogs to check out:
http://www.craftpad.com/
http://thelongthread.com/
http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/
http://soulemama.typepad.com/soulemama/
http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/
http://blairpeter.typepad.com/weblog/

Shoes and Beads

These shoes were on a friend's blog and had to get some for Annie. I read the reviews and everyone that got them liked them.


















We saw these necklaces at the Armani store in the mall and loved them. I wanted to remember what they looked like. Carleton told me to take pictures of them...so I did.
































And was inspired to make these using some of the beads we found at a fair in Santa Fe.









Meanwhile, Apollo wrapped himself in all the strings and had fun playing with the beads.