Crafty Halloween

My little girl decided she wanted to be Jessie from Toy Story for Halloween this year. My mom never bought my costumes and I always said I wouldn't buy costumes for my kids either, but this one threw me for a loop! Such a detailed character - could I do it justice if I made it myself?

I decided to take some artistic license with it. Instead of Jessie's chaps and jeans, I wanted to make a cute ruffle cow print skirt and a blue tutu.  I haven't ever made a skirt from scratch before, so this was a super challenge!







This ruffle almost got the best of me...  but I won.

I bought a plain white shirt from Walmart for the costume. I had some lemon yellow vinyl lying around and used a craft knife to cut the shape from Jessie's shirt.  Then I hot glued red roping in the design from her shirt.  I sewed some big white buttons on it and (of course I don't have a picture) made a pull ring on her back (shower ring + ribbon!) 

 

I LOVE the way the bias tape looks in this picture! This is also something I've never worked with, but I couldn't be happier about how it turned out.

Of course, having a Jessie it only made sense to have a Woody too! I was lucky to find the most PERFECT yellow button down shirt at a local resale shop.  I made his vest by tracing a sweater vest that fits him now and adding a few inches for seams. It was a pretty straight forward project, and really the only thing I made for his outfit.  Both belts are made from fun foam!

My little Jessie!

Christmas is coming....

Time to bust out the homemade gift ideas again!  We didn't make this one for Christmas, but it would make a great gift for a grandparent, aunt or uncle!

For Father's Day this year (yes, I'm that behind on my blogging) E and I made Daddy a handprint calendar.

I found the directions HERE. I did change some of the poems for our calendar.

They made SUCH cute little pictures and Daddy LOVES it!

I would have liked to have had more time to coordinate the paper better, but we were on limited time, limited budget and had an infant around who 1) didn't like to sit still while we painted E's hands and 2) wasn't sleeping through the night!

"Recycling" crayons

Do your kids collect restaurant crayons like mine does? Or break her good Crayolas regularly?  I have been hanging onto them for an unknown reason, until I realized we could recycle them!

I decided to melt them down and give them as part of E's "treat bags" for her BFF birthday party!

Some of them were very beautiful on the bottom. 

But I haven't figured out how to make the TOPS beautiful yet :-)



All we did was take the paper off of the crayons and put them in silicone muffin cups (I don't like them to bake with, so they were donated to the arts this week.)  I put them in our toaster oven on 250 until they were all melted (about 25 minutes).  Let them cool and pop them out - voila! Recycled crayons!