Dollar Store Christmas: Footwarmer

Frugal Gift 2: Footwarmer

The husband of this gift recipient is being deployed to Iraq for a year with the army. She's a pretty skinny person and always cold, so when I saw the tutorial for how to make a "hot one" as the author called it, I knew it would be perfect.

Dollar Store Christmas: Crayon Rolls for Kids

Frugal Gift 1: Crayon Rolls for Kids

Life in Grace hosted an awesome tutorial written by Lindsey of The Pleated Poppy for how to make crayon rolls for kids that I followed to make these. I also made a taller version of this to hold colored pencils for a 13 year old budding artist.

"Dollar Store" Christmas Round Up

This year has definitely been a financially challenging one for us. My husband was laid off in January, we had a baby in May which involved a mostly unpaid maternity leave as well as huge leftover medical bills. God has been faithful throughout and we have always been able to pay our mortgage even if it had to be a little late.

But what to do for Christmas? I love giving gifts to people but our budget really didn't have any wiggle room in it to make normal gifts happen. We usually try to do homemade gifts, but this year was going to be a bit more extreme...homemade and inexpensive with an attempted budget of $3 or less per gift. Enter Dollar Store Crafts run by the fabulous Heather. Heather specializes in cheap and fabulous crafts made from dollar store (or other inexpensively acquired) finds. While all the gifts we did this year weren't necessarily from her site, Dollar Store Crafts was definitely my inspiration for this year's frugal crafting Christmas.

How I got $50 worth of FREE GROCERIES from Safeway delivered to my door

(these are my free groceries I got from Safeway...the Pepsi was full when it arrived. Joe got to it before I could take a picture)

I know what you're thinking. Too good to be true or sounds scammy (pop ups that say things like "Get a $1000 gift card to Walmart by clicking here!" run through my head when I hear outrageous claims on things like this.) But I saw it on the Hot Coupon Mamas blog, and I did it and it really works. Some of the coupons codes listed in the original post don't work anymore, and some amounts are wrong about the discounts, so I had a request to write up some simpler, updated directions.

Get 60 Free Photo Christmas Cards for Your Family!

I know a lot of you are way more on top of it than me, so you may have already ordered your Christmas cards for 2010, but if you haven't there is a sweet deal happening at See Here that you can combine with a rebate site called ebates to get 60 4x8 Christmas cards (or other photo cards...don't need to be for Christmas) for $4.90 or FREE including free overnight shipping but it ends on Sunday.

Fall Crafting

I'm such a bad blogger! I didn't realize how bad this blog has been neglected. In part because I've been blogging a bit...just not here. If you haven't checked it out yet, come visit my new blog: Not Really a Hippie which focuses more on parenting and family stuff. It's super new (I think I only have 3 posts) but will hopefully give me some space to write about mom stuff but leave this space free to talk about crafty things.

This fall I've been tackling some sewing projects. My mom is an A-mazing seamstress and has made all kind of fancy and beautiful dresses and projects. I sew mostly straight lines. BUT I have recently tackled some more advance projects. Wait. Who am I kidding? They are actually pretty non-advanced. They just involve some non-straight lines so I like to pretend. Ha!

Project #1: Baby Slings
I got an e-mail from a company I had previously bought a nursing cover from for a free baby sling on their new baby sling site. I've been wanting a baby sling so was more than thrilled to pay $12 shipping + handling to get a "free" sling. Bad news was that they didn't have any larger/taller sizes in and wouldn't until late November. Lame.

So...I got adventurous. I found a great tutorial on My Karma Baby about how to make a sling that looked simple enough. And even if I failed, I only lost 2 yards of fabric, right? I bought 2 yards of brown linen at Jo-Anns for about $8 and began.

Here's Joe wearing our son in his halloween costume (more on that in a minute):

The sling is a smidge big (I measured to the middle of my hip instead of the top of my hip) so we have to twist it to make it fit right when wearing him on our hip (Joe and I conveniently have the same shoulder-to-hip measurement).

I've since made 2 more: Once for my cousin Connie and her daughter and another for me that fits better. I just realized I don't really have good pictures of those, so I'll need to take some to put up later.


Project #2: Yoda Costume
We're on a tight Halloween budge this year, so we are making costumes. We already had some yoda feet socks (they are actually dinosaur socks) and brown clothes. We just needed a robe and a yoda hat.

The robe was pretty easy...fold a piece of cream flannel (1 yard on sale for $1.99) in half. Lay baby on the flannel, lining up shoulders with the fold. Trace around baby, leaving 2 inches or so of ease for the top and flaring out to a dress/robe shape at the bottom. Cut out around outline, adding additonal half-circle cut for neck and cutting a log slit of the front to make the robe. Hem sleeves and bottom. Sew 2 from cuff-to-bottom seams. Sew 1 inch strip folded in half all around robe opening to make a collar-type thing. Iron. Done.

For the hat, I traced around the outline of a hat he already has that fits well onto a paper bag to make a pattern. I used a 1/2 yard piece of green fleece to cut out the hat and make some big yoda ears to attach to the sides. Added some forehead wrinkles. Wha-la! Yoda costume for about $5.

EDITED TO ADD: In fact, I'm linking my yoda costume up over at the CSI project for their "$5 or less" project week



Project #3: Baby Pumpkin Hats
The third thing I did was make matching baby pumpkin hats for the babies coming to our family's annual fall party. I just realized I am short on pictures (and this post is getting pretty long as it is) so this will be a topic of a future post. If I get organized I might even be able to make a tutorial!

Here's a preview:



Better pics (and tutorial?) to come soon!

Crafts I want to make: Modified clothing edition

While browsing some fun crafty sites this week, I have found quite a few fun crafts that all have the same theme: Clothes! Check out these awesome crafts:

Anthropologie-Inspired Ruffled Shirt

Tatertots & Jello is a new blog to me but I'm definitely adding them to the blog roll. A tutorial for how to make this awesome shirt using a basic t-shirt and supplies from the Dollar Store can be found here.


Floral T-Shirt Refashion


Also from Tatertots & Jello is this fun t-shirt re-do. I think it might be fun to do with scraps of chiffon instead of (or in addition to) an identical shirt.


Ruffled Peasant Shirt from an Old T-shirt

This tutorial from the Brassy Apple upcycles a plain-old unisex t-shirt and turns it into something totally cute and fun.


Cute Little Girl Bandana Dress
This is another one from Tatertots & Jello (anyone else noticing a trend?). Her tutorials teaches you how to take a kid's tank top and a bandana and turn them into a cute farm-friendly dress. She also includes directions fro upcycling an adult top to make the top part of the dress. Check it out here.


Toddler Leg Warmers

I suppose you could make leg warmers for adults following the same directions if you had a large enough sweater. She even claims to have another project you can do with the rest of the sweater (I can't wait!). Check out her tutorial here.


Do you have any other fun clothing re-fashions you are excited about? Share your links or blog posts in the comments!

Crafty Project Want-To-Make Roundup

I've seen quite a few blog posts lately with some super fun crafts that I can't wait to make. Here are my three faves from this last week:

Repurpose a Tank Top to Make a Fun Bag

Do you have old tank tops that you're just not feeling anymore? Tired of your purses but don't have money to buy a new one? This project is so easy even the most non-crafty crafter wannabes will be able to pull it off. Check it out here.



Make Cool Jewelry From Sea Glass
Gail's tutorial on Can't Stop Making Things makes these fancy and intimidating-looking pendants look super easy to make. I think these would make great gifts. Get your Christmas crafting started now!



Stenciled Canvas Bag

This project uses a paper doily as a stencil. Stenciling normally makes me yawn, but I really thing this bag is super cool looking. I can think of several people who this would make the perfect gift for. Check out the tutorial on TidyMom's website here.


Do any of these appeal to you, too? Have you found any sweet craft ideas lately that you can't wait to try? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

I'm back...I hope

As I posted on Facebook yesterday, I aspire to get back to blogging (I know, I know, I've said this before). Having a wee one has consumed most of my time, though, as I'm sure any parent can sympathize. I've also been a bit hesitant to blog because most of my blog ideas lately have been super baby related. And I'm supposed to be a "knitting, cupcake and misc. craftiness" blog. I'm not sure how many people want to hear rants about the 10 reasons I've recently been accused of being a hippie a parent.

The more I thought about it, though, I've realized that I've evolved as a person (I'm now a mom...and apparently a "weird hippie mom") and so my blog will need to evolve, too. I'm still crafty but I think about more than just knitting and cupcakes now. I hope you bear with me as I (attempt to) blog through my thought process and possibly even re-discover my blogging identity.