The Wonder of [Homemade] Play Dough

I'd sorta forgotten about making my little guy some play dough. My MIL made him some a few weeks ago...he liked it and was sad to leave it at her house. So I made him some for home using the same recipe I posted last winter. Try it out! Ours turned out to be a weird shade of chartreuse...but he didn't mind.

It kept him occupied for almost an hour while I made dinner.

And he probably would've played with it even longer had it not been time to eat dinner.

Dry Erase Calendar: Finished!

Before we start, can I just say it is super hard to take a good picture of something with glass in it?

This is the best I could do!

I was so excited to finally finish my calendar!

Briefly, all I did was measure the width and divide by 7. I cut out 35 pieces of scrabook paper. Then I used a glue stick to glue them to a big piece of brown paper (it was a middle of a wrapping paper roll). Then I put them behind a big piece of glass my husband got for me from Lowe’s. It can be written on with a dry erase marker!

Tutorial: Repurposed T-Shirt Bag with Iron-on Animals

My kids got tons of toys for Christmas. Way too many. It drives me insane when they all end up in one big jumble…I like to group like toys together. I made a few repurposed bags last summer (small ones from t-shirt sleeves and large ones from t-shirts).

I used an old t-shirt that had some oil stains on it that I couldn’t remove. It was size 2T.

I just cut it off below the armpits. (I saved the sleeves & neck for another project!)

Next, it was time to do some embellishing. I used heat-n-bond to attach an elephant and a hippo to a scrap of white jersey fabric.

Ironing on the hippo:

To make the bottom of the bag, I measured the perimeter of the t-shirt. Then I cut out a rectangle.

I sewed the rectangle to the bottom of the bag, making square corners.

I used the original hem of the t-shirt for the drawstring’s casing. I just pulled out a few stitches and then backstitched with my sewing machine to prevent any more from unraveling.

I made the drawstring out of jersey fabric. I cut a length about 2” wide long enough to go all through the t-shirt’s hem. I sewed a tube and then turned it right-side out with a safety pin.

Then I simply threaded it through the hem with the safety pin and tied a knot at either end! Simple, yet very cute!

Dresser Revamp

What a change! It goes well with the rest of our bedroom.

My super-wonderful husband and I redid this dresser. It was devastatingly 1960’s-esque.

Here is the before:

My mom said it was the very first piece of furniture she bought; she thinks she paid $50 for it back in the 1970's. She & my dad upgraded their bedroom furniture and my husband and I got a free dresser.

I've always disliked it.

These were the handles.

These were the legs.

My husband made new legs for it. After attaching them, we primed it.

We stripped and restained the drawers, filled the holes where the old hardware had been, and painted the outside. (The top was plastic and not wood, so we couldn’t restain it.)

I love it now.

Also, my super-amazing husband parked his car in the driveway instead of the garage for the entire month of December so we could work on the dresser in the warmth of the garage. He also stored all of his clothing in a plastic tub because of the lack of drawer space in our room while the revap was taking place.

He's a keeper.

Cardstock Garland

I made this from cardstock scraps; the scraps were left over from this project. This means it matches my littlest guy’s nursery!

Tutorial coming soon!