Long time no see!!

Goodness it's been a while since I've written anything!  Life has been super busy!

To start off, I had my darling baby girl, Mila! She is a-dor-a-ble and I love her and I call her Pookie Bear!  She and Lydia have kept my life hectic. I had Pookie Bear the end of last year, but I still feel like a zombie.  On top of that I was and currently still am trying to get myself back into shape and it's not so easy.  I know some moms bounce back well and fast.  I am not one of them.  Haha.  I've been trying to exercise, but time is not always on my side so I decided to work on my diet.  I've cut out rice for the past few months now (not completely as I have had some rice here and there) and try to get more fruits and veggies in.  So far, I've lost 13 lbs give or take some.  My wish is to lose another 20 lbs.  Must. Find. Will. Power.

With that said I decided on trying out the whole "mason jar salads" because I was finding that cooking every night to ensure that I had something to eat for lunch every day was too time consuming and tiresome.  I would end up eating junk or anything laying around because it was easier to grab that and shove it down rather than take the time to prepare something healthy and listen to my stomach growl.  I do have the option to buy a salad at work to eat, but it was costing me $4 for a salad. In a month I'd be spending at least $80 alone on just a lunch salad!  Crazy, I am not that rich. 

So I bought all my foods and mason jars and prepped everything on Sunday.  I decided to make a simple salad and only do 5 jars to see how things would go in case it was a total disaster. 

I must say it's gone well.  Pros are that I just grab and go in the mornings and do not have to worry about what to pack for the next so that means more time to lounge with the girls (yea...I wish).  The salads have stayed fresh and I do stay committed to eating the salads every day for lunch because I don't want to waste my food/money.  It does save me a ton of money because I think in total I must have only spent $8-$10 for the ingredients not including the purchase of the jars.  The only con I have so far is that after the 3rd day of the same kind of salad for lunch it's not so 'Yay salad!' anymore.  It does it's job of providing me nutrients and making me full, but I'll probably have to make more than one kind of salad to switch it up! Other than that I will probably continue to do this.

I did do some research just to get an idea of how to layer the salad in the jar and I think everyone has their own preferences on ingredients so I just used the foods and dressing I liked and didn't follow a recipe or anything.  If I come up with an awesome salad that works well in these mason jars, I'll do another post on it, but for now.....try it out for yourself!! Num num!

Car Seat Canopy

It’s been a while since I’ve posted.  I’ve been busy….getting big.  Lol.  My pregnancy has been progressing and I’m starting to slow down, huff and puff with every step I take, and eat like I have a bottomless pit. Yay…so fun!

Well, one of my projects that I put on the back burner, but wanted to make before Baby #2 gets here is a Car Seat Canopy since she’ll be born in the WI winter.  I remember with Lydia, we had to drop her off every cold morning and pick her up every cold evening so we just threw a thick baby blanket over the car seat to help keep her warm.  It worked for its purpose, but why not make a cozy canopy this time since I have the sewing itch? 

Last Fall, I had made my niece a canopy with a cotton outer and a minky inner piece that just drapped over the car seat and my cousin used it until it was warm enough not to use anymore (I love to see when my gifts are constantly used!)  She said that it helped keep it dark for when Baby Leila was still snoozing in the car seat and it did help with the warmth, but one flaw I did notice was that when it was windy, it kept flying around!  Who wants to deal with that right? 

So this time around for Baby, I added elastic all around to make it stay snug to the car seat.  No more flying!  I also used a cotton outer piece, but instead of minky for the inner, I used fleece fabric just for added thickness and warmth.  I hope she loves it!  I was going to add a peekaboo window, but now looking at it, I like the way it is now and the canopy is fairly easy to lift up and sneak a peek at baby or pull up and around without disturbing her. It didn’t take me as long as I thought it would to make it either (especially because it was a prototype kind of sewing with the elastic).  Num Num!

Fleece Winter Hat

Though I don't love WI winters...it's been on my mind and Fall is just about here so it won't be too long! Winter this year means Baby #2 will be here. Maybe that's why I'm such in a hurry to get to snowfall!

I was itching for something to sew and fleece is always easy and fun so a fleece winter hat for Lydia it is! I actually made it a size up so it's a bit big for her, but oh well. Not like I can't make more or she won't grow into it!

She wanted me to post this picture because of her cool facial expression. Cheese!! Love her!

My DIY drawer bins!

Now that Lydia is older and her wardrobe is slowly growing, I wanted to get her and her sister some dresser drawers.  Lydia’s great at pulling her clothes out and changing herself, but I was currently using plastic drawer bins for her clothes (because when we had her we were still living the cramped apartment life) and her socks and such were stored in a bin in her armoire that she couldn’t reach.  I thought it was time to upgrade her and now that she’s such a big girl, getting a dresser for her baby sister would be good too because then she could help grab stuff for the baby if needed as well.   Plus side for me is that now I get to use the armoire for some of my sewing storage!  We ended up getting two white Ikea dressers and thanks to my SIL and her fast hands, she and my pregnant self were able to put Lydia's dresser together fairly fast. 

Because Lydia’s things are still so small, I could pretty much fit 2-3 different things in one drawer.  I wanted it to be somewhat organized and simple for Lydia to put things away and to get things so I thought it would be nice to get bins or some kind of divider/separator to put in the drawers.  Issue #1, bins are expensive! Issue #2, I couldn’t find anything to fit decently into the drawers without wasting space or to even fit period.  I searched the web for ideas on dividers for drawers and found some nice ideas.  Some people actually built dividers – which though was nice, I didn’t want to spend more money on wood and my knowledge and tools on wood working is very, very limited.  Some creative and or frugal people used cereal boxes or cardboard and some went farther and covered the dividers with wrapping paper to make it pretty.  This was a good idea and I liked the wrapping paper part to make it pretty, but I wanted it for clothes and I wasn’t sure how well wrapping paper was going to hold up to 3 year old hands.  It also looked like these cute, wrapping paper covered box/bins were used for small desk or craft drawers and were on the small side.  I needed something taller to clearly define the separation of things.  I contemplated a few nights and then a light bulb went on….why don’t I just sew something?  Duh! Fabric is a lot more sturdy than paper, but my other issue was how was I going to make the fabric stiff enough to stay up?  Again, I didn’t want to use any money so after running ideas back and forth in my head, I came up with this idea. 

I was going to use thick, sturdy cardboard to make a perimeter like box.  And I only needed to make the sides and duct tape it well so that it would stand on its own.  Then I was going to sew almost like a lining to go over the box perimeter so that it would look pretty instead of just having duct taped cardboard showing.  It’s quite simple actually.  I don’t know why it took me a few days to come up with the idea.  Haha.   

I still had the thick cardboard box from the dresser and my cousin had just moved to her new house so she had plenty of clean, thick boxes for me to use if I needed more. 

Then I remembered a while ago I purchased a couple yards of this fabric because it was super cheap and I was planning on making something with it.  I had started the project and then it came to a halt because I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had already cut up the fabric.  I hate it when that happens because I couldn’t find any other project to use the already cut up fabric for…until now. Yay!  By having to make lining for the smaller divided sections, I was able to use these randomly cut pieces of fabric instead of needing large yards of a piece of fabric.

 I’ve never sewn a bin or basket lining before, but I figured it shouldn’t be too hard because I was just sewing straight lines basically and I could use my new serger…bonus!  I measured the inside of my drawers and figured out my dimensions.  For Lydia’s dresser, I decided I only wanted to make bins for two drawers; one drawer would have three sections/bins (undies/undershirts/socks) and the second drawer would have two sections/bins (pants/shorts and skirts). 

I drafted up the dimensions of each section, added seam allowances, cut my pieces, sew/serged the pieces together, cut my cardboard pieces, taped them together, placed them in the drawer to make sure they fit well, put the lining on the box perimeter, and there you go!

My finished DIY drawer bins! 

Nice right? Now onto Baby’s bins!  She’s going to be a little more cutting, sewing, and duct taping because she’ll have all her little things I need to separate out!

Pillow Mat Tutorial

The kid loves to lie around on the carpet and takes her naps on her Dora sofa/bed in her princess tent that we have set up in the living room.  When I saw these pillow mats online, my first thought was why didn’t I think of this before and my next was I have to make it!  So here’s my tutorial on how to make your own pillow mat!    

I purchased 5 yards of this cute fabric and I had a coupon for 60% off so it ended up being about $16 and then I also purchased 4 pillows from Ikea a few weeks back when I saw the sign that said $2 each!  I must say though that these pillows are pretty thin so if you want something fluffier/fuller you could shell out another $4 for some Walmart pillows. Either way, you can switch your pillows out whenever you want so anywho material cost wise it all came up to about $24.  I even had some fabric left over so that’s always a plus!   If you have old bed sheets or you don’t care about the pattern, you could pretty much make it for even cheaper. 

I prewashed my fabric because cotton shrinks, but I hate wrinkles and ironing so a tip for minimal wrinkles and getting away with not having to iron 5 yards of fabric….once the drying process is done take it out of the dryer right away and lay it out flat. 

Also a quick course on sewing terms:

Selvage edges are the sides that are finished edges of the fabric.  Typically, fabric designers and companies print their names along one of these finished edges.

Raw edges are the edges that are cut and fraying.  It’s the edges that the fabric person at the store cuts. When you prewash your fabric, you’ll see all the threads all tangled together on those ends. 

Seams are where two pieces of fabric are sewn together.  We will be using 1/2 seams in most of this tutorial so from the edge, measure 1/2 and that is where you will be sewing the line to sew the fabric together.

Right side is the front (pretty if you have a pattern) side of the fabric.

Wrong side is the back (faded if you have a pattern) side of the fabric.

Now let’s get started!

I folded my 5 yards in half so that I could cut in in two and have a piece for the front and one for the back (you can get about 2.5 yards of two different fabrics, but I loved this pattern so much!) Because of the shrinkage, it wasn’t perfect and straight on all sides so I lined up one of the long selvage sides and straightened everything out as best I could.  My pillows were standard pillow sizes (20 x 26) so I measured out 80 inches (20 x 4) and then I laid my four pillows down for a helping visual.  The cut and where the pillows lined up to were a bit off, but that’s okay because the pillows need room to be stuffed into. 

Next, because I had folded the 5 yards in half, one of the pieces was upside down so I turned both pieces right sides together (the pretty sides facing each other) and also made sure the pattern on both sides were going in the same direction.  I lined up one of the selvage sides again and pinned along that side using lots of pins.  I then trimmed and cut the short raw edge sides (ends) so that I could have straight edges to work with and added a few pins along the raw edges near the selvage edge that I pinned to help hold the pieces together as I sewed. 

I sewed down the long edge that I pinned together (one piece of the fabric had the selvage edge thatshows the designer of the fabric so I sewed a 5/8 seam instead of a 1/2 seam for this selvage side to ensure that the designer label would not show when I turned in right side out).

  

I opened up my two pieces of fabric (right side up).  Starting with the piece that does not have the selvage side with the designer label showing and using the short, straight cut raw edge, I measured 26 inches out from the seam that was sewn and folded the long edge in.  I then pinned the raw edge fold down with a few pins.  I did this to the other raw edge end too and then going along the middle section, adjusted the fabric fold so that it was all at 26 inches from the seam and added some pins along the fold to help hold it in place.

Once that was done, I flipped the side that I folded and pinned over onto the piece that had the selvage edge.  Now here is where you will learn from my mistake.  Originally, I had just folded the bottom piece over onto the folded piece, but I realized after I was turning everything right side out that it was hard to keep all the folded fabric straight.    So I didn’t take pictures of this next part, but will explain it.  I hope it makes sense! 

You see where the top fold lays on the bottom piece?  I should have cut the bottom piece along where this fold was and then hemmed the long, raw edge of that bottom piece.  And I mean hemmed as in, folded the cut edge over 1/2 inch (wrong sides together), fold it again 1/2 inch, and then sewn it down.  This helps keep the raw edge from fraying too much later on after washes and it looks cleaner. And, be careful when cutting the bottom piece that you don’t cut into your folded piece!

Now back to the tutorial. 

I lined up all my edges and taking my pins that I already had on the first piece I folded, I pinned the bottom piece onto the rest of the pieces to hold everything together.  You should now have the something that looks like this. 26 inches from long side to long side.

Next I just sewed a 1/2 inch seam from raw edge (short ends) on both sides.  Then if you have a serger you can serg the ends to help keep the ends from fraying and I do have one, it’s just that my prego self was too lazy to go lug it to where I was because I don’t have nice huge crafting room so instead I took pinking shears and pinked the edges.  This also helps it fray less because of the zigzag way it cuts the fabric.  

After I took out all of my pins and turned the entire thing right side out.  It looked like a huge pillow case. I straighten out my fabric/folds and made sure that the width all along the case was 26 inches wide.  Then ironed it flat and I added pins to help hold all the fabric pieces together after ironing. 

From the top down, I measured 20 inches and marked it using my washable fabric pencil.  From that line I measured another 20 inches and marked it.  I did this until I had 4 sections for my 4 pillows. If it’s not exactly 20 inches, it’s okay and the pillow should still fit as long as it’s not way off.  Then I sewed all the way across from one long side to the other long side using these lines to separate out my pillow sections and stuffed the sections with the pillows!  Done!

Here’s my chubby cheeks enjoying her new pillow mat.  Nummy isn’t it?  I was going to make her a blanket to go with this pillow mat, but she still loves her fleece pah-pah that I made for her when she was 1 so no need! 

You can fold the top pillow under to prop the head up.  Or you could roll it under twice to prop it even higher to be more in the reclining position. 

Hope you enjoyed my tutorial.  Happy sewing!!!

Fleece Bow Muffie

Over the humid/hot weekend, other than opening up my Nummy Shop on my blog and on Etsy (OhSoNummy), I made Lydia a scarf out of fleece.  Lol.  I know…crazy...it’s still too hot to be thinking about keeping warm, but it’s been one of the various projects floating around in my head and since I wanted to make something that wasn’t going to take long, I thought and then I did.  As always, I love it.  I think it’s super cute!! There’s a bow on one end that acts like a button and the other end has a button hole.  So you just wrap it around the neck and pull the bow through the hole to secure it in place.  Simple and stylish, don’t you think?  And I found out since it’s a short scarf, it’s technically called a Muffler.  The things I learn while I teach myself. It doesn’t sound Oh So Nummy though so I’m going to call it a Muffie!  Lol. Here’s my little princess modeling her new Fleece Bow Muffie for me! 

Check out my Nummy Shop if you’d like to place an order for a Muffie for a little girl in your life!  Maybe I will have to make one for myself too, although I don’t think I will look as cute as Lydia!

Washcloths and bibs

So I wanted to write a post of what ran through my head as I was preparing washcloths and bibs for Baby and the Kid. 

Initially I had made some washcloths to get ready for baby #2 because the ones bought from the store just never worked for me for Lydia (even now).  They were so thin or rough and every time we hung them on the towel rack to dry, they always ended up on the ground somehow.  Annoying!  So I figured this time around I should make some with flannel and terry cloth WITH a ribbon loop for easy hanging to dry!  I made them big like a normal adult sized washcloth too.  Lydia of course was my tester and I mainly used the washcloth in the mornings for her face.  The flannel side was great because it was soft on her kid skin and the terry cloth side was great for those mornings where she needed a little extra scrubbing.  I found after a while though that her face was so small, I only really ended up wetting a corner section of the washcloth so I thought….what a waste.  Ding ding ding!  Why not make a smaller washcloth for her little face?  Hence, the creation of a baby/kid face washcloth…perfect for her little hands to hold and use on her own little face.  The big washcloth is still good for bath time or food time messes so that didn’t really go to waste.  Oh and how or where do I hang the washcloth?  If you have not yet used these 3M Command hooks….find them and use them! 

They are awesome and I use them throughout my house for various things…to hang keys, decorations, etc. And if you find the plain white is too boring for you….spray paint them so they match your décor! They are easy to remove and are reusable (you just need another sticky strip).  Anyway, I just placed one on my wooden cabinet in the bathroom and using the ribbon loop…hang the washcloth there to dry.  Simple. No more washcloths on the floor! 

If you are interested, I have some sets of face/body washcloths in my Nummy Shop.  They’re a nice baby shower gift or something wonderful to use on your own little one.  You can even use it on yourself!

Now bibs! Lydia was not a drooler or a spit upper *knock on wood for baby #2*.  However, I’m a stickler for food on Lydia’s face or her clothes.  Lol.  If you’ve meet Lydia, I’ve somehow instilled this habit in her to always wipe her mouth clean after messy bites.  Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing, but because I’m so ‘clean’ about it, I thought, I should make baby #2 some nice, cute ones.  I always hated the ones I found at the store too.  Plain, thin, ugly, small, rough…you name it.  I mean some of them served their purpose, but I wanted something to fit all my needs.  When Lydia was a newborn we just propped the bib under her chin for feedings without putting the velcro together, but because both the straps met in the back, we always had to tuck both straps down.  Or if it was velcro together, it was in the back so taking it off was a pain because it woke her up.  I could have just left it on, but then she’d be sleeping on a small lump from the straps coming together.  Hence, I made bibs with a side snap.  I can just fold one side under for infant feedings.  It’s soft on the skin and thick enough to absorb dribbles and since the snap is on the side, I can just unsnap and slide off.  I think these bibs are so cute!  I can’t wait to use them on my baby!

I also have some of these (they match my washcloths) in my Nummy Shop!