Valentine's Day

I may have gone a bit overboard on Valentine's Day for Emmett. Especially considering the fact that my husband and I always agree not to celebrate it. I blame it on working Mommy guilt. I may have overdone it, but the look on Emmett's face every time he checked his valentine box was totally worth it. I spent less than $10 on the whole holiday!

Truck Valentine Box

Emmett would check every few hours for new surprises.

One of my favorites was making a monster. The supplies were in his box and he said "We're gonna PAINT!"

He loved gluing all the eyes on the monster.

Worth it!

See the rest of the valentine surprises in part 2!

Bookshelf Wall Hanging

I saw this idea on Pinterest quite a while ago, and the project really appealed to me. Combining two of my favorite hobbies - reading and sewing. Count me in! Then, I decided to take it up a nerdy notch and decided to find fabrics that in some way represent my favorite books. So, I spent way too much time in fabric stores and online looking for the perfect fabrics for my books. This was really hard. We have had a ton of snow days in January, so I decided it was time to get it done. The strips for the books had been cut months ago.

I'm really proud of this project for a few reasons:
1. It's something I made just for me, and I really enjoyed every step. Especially choosing the fabrics.
2. It's the most technical project I've ever done, and I think it came out pretty darn good. All those straight lines killed me. Perfect? Not even close. But I'm proud.
3. I took some "me time" to get it done. I didn't worry about cleaning and stuff for a few days, but it was worth it to get my creativity fix.

Can you guess the books? I'll put a picture of the real books at the end of the post. I found the tutorial for the project HERE. I didn't want to do my quilting this way, so I looked on Pinterest again and found an idea HERE.

First attempt at adding the shelf - too thin and crooked.

Found a quicker way to do the quilting via pinterest!

Finished project - It looks more crooked than it really is, I swear!

Finished back - I put a wooden dowel in the pockets to hang it.

The books - in order.

Rag Quilt

My kids LOVE their flannel rag quilts. I love them too, because they wash well and they're the perfect thickness for every season. My son has caught me (many times) using his blanket if it's sitting on the couch. So I decided it was time for mommy to have a blanket. I decided to try squares. I like it, but in hindsight I would have worked out some sort of strip pattern but adult size. The seams are bulky in the corners of the squares. But, it works and I love the colors.

Superhero Capes

I wanted to make something for my nieces and nephew for Christmas. I was originally going to just make my nephew a superhero cape, but my sister said that all three kids would love one. So I got on Pinterest, found a few different tutorials, and finally decided to make them from adult t-shirts, with velcro at the collar. I used felt for the lightning bolts. I think they turned out pretty well, and she said that the kids LOVED them. Now I just need to make one for E!

Car Seat Cover

This is a cover I made for a sweet little baby boy!

DIY Snow Globe

I loved this idea when I saw it on pinterest and I just had to do it! You take a picture of your child, cut it out, laminate it and leave an edge around the photo to seal it. Then, I put it in a jar with a little tree, some glitter, water, and glycerin (found in the pharmacy section - it makes the water "thicker" to help the glitter float around). I superglued the lid on the jar, and now Emmett has his very own snow globe! He loved it!

The photo we used - it was SO hard to get him to make this pose!

Supplies

Finished!

He loves it!

Build-A-Snowman

I figured we wouldn't have much snow this year, so I made a snowman out of felt. Emmett loved dressing it up. I sewed the white circles to the background, and I put the rough velcro on the back of all the pieces so they'd "stick" to the snowman. Emmett had fun dressing him up!