Glider chair revamp

Another project I ( well we... My mother helped) took on, was recovering the glider chair. I purchased fabric online at fabric.com. I found it in the clearance section and ordered 3 yards, for a total of $20.94! This covered the chair and the ottoman and we even have a bit leftover. There are tutorials all over the net on how to do it, but we basically traced all the actual cushions for a pattern.

We then simply placed the new pieces over the old, rather than ripping the whole thing apart. The only spot this posed a problem was the arms because they needed to clip back on the chair and placing the fabric overtop made the, a bit shorter. They took a bit of fiddling to get them back together.

On the ottoman, we made a cover almost like a fitted sheet for a bed. It can be removed and washed if need be. Also, we didn't need to rip it apart and use the staple gun.

It looks like a whole new chair now that it's done! And for less than $25.

 

 

Owl mobile

While putting together the new nursery I wanted to reuse as much as possible from little dude's nursery. I hated the idea of throwing anything out, but I also wanted something "new" for our new little guy. Always seems unfair that the second child (like myself) gets so many hand-me-downs. When I was going through all the baby stuff I found the old crib mobile and wanted to spruce it up.

Before, it looked something like this...

I really did not like it. I looked on etsy for some inspiration and really fell in love with all the felt mobiles. And honestly, they looked simple, but were so expensive... So as usual I decided I could do it myself. I went and purchased felt sheets (really cheap at dollar store or even michaels with a coupon) and embroidery thread. Otherwise, I just used old buttons, pillow stuffing and scrap fabric. For tools, I needed sewing scissors, embroidery needles and a hot glue gun.

I made a paper pattern for my owls. I had one for the main body, one for the stomach and one for the eyes. I used them as a template for each owl. I used felt for everything but the stomach circle, there I just used scrap fabric. After all the pieces were cut out I glued the stomach and eyes to the main body. I then added the detail to the back, the buttons and embroidery. I then stitched the front and back of the owl together, leaving about a 1 cm opening for the stuffing. Using a pencil to push the stuffing in tight and then finished sewing it closed. I then did the same for the stars and moon. I used the embroidery thread to hang it all from the mobile. I also took a long peice of scrap fabric to cover the long plastic bit. Just sewed the two edges together, flipped it inside out and slipped it on.

I love the way it turned out. It is however missing the moon now... Not strong enough for a 3 year old to hang off of...

 

Leftover pizza

How do you get rid of leftovers? I could not get anyone in my family to eat them! They don't want to eat the same thing again... So, I started putting everything ( well a lot) on pizza. They love it. Not only do they get something different. They also get pizza!!

I love homemade pizza, but I always forget to make the dough early enough, so I started using this recipe. It uses regular yeast, but is very quick. Also, I never roll the dough out anymore, I stretch is out. Pulling from the center. I get a rounder pizza and the bread gets us much nicer consistency when baked.

Almost any left over meat works awesome on pizza. Had a BBQ last night, take the left over steak and make a BBQ steak pizza. It works well to mix tomato sauce 50/50 with BBQ sauce for a great base, without an overpowering BBQ sauce taste. Fajitas on Monday? That filling is an awesome topping for a pizza, with a bit of tex mex cheese on top.. Mmm. Chicken and mushrooms left, throw it on...pulled pork? That could be an interesting flavor!

I hope everyone gets creative, has a great pizza night and that less food goes to waste!

 

Cloth diapers?! A Gdiaper review.

Not something I'd ever thought I'd consider. Definitely not something I did with my first little guy. Becoming a mom for the first time is so overwhelming. The information overload in unbelievable. All these products, parenting techniques, advice.... I learned what I could with number 1, but focused on the essentials, which was time consuming enough. Picking a Carseat for example; sounds simple, but there is so much to think about and five million options; and not with simple differences like, which colour do I like best, but type, weight range of the seat, handle options, weight of the seat itself, expiry date lengths (seriously Carseats expire)... I didn't have time to get into anything but the essentials...
Anyways, this time around, with much more time on my hands not learning boring stuff like the difference between powder and liquid formulas, I was able to explore some more interesting alternative options. In a prenatal class I took someone mentioned a product called gdiapers, a hybrid cloth diaper. They have a disposable and a reusesble option. This sounded right up my alley, I could do cloth without committing completely.

Let me explain for those, like me, who are completely confused about this whole concept. These diapers are considered pocket diapers. They have a soft outer shell, called the gpants, a snap in plastic part- the pocket and the insert. The insert, is stuffed into the pocket. Gdiapers sells cloth inserts, which are washed and reused, as well as disposable ones, which can be thrown away or flushed.

They can be purchased online at www.gdiapers.ca, or in Canada at London drugs. If you're not picky on colour you can buy 6 diapers for about 85$.I bought one pack of cloth inserts and then made the rest. Here is a tutorial you can use. Their cloth inserts are really expensive,but doing them yourself is so quick, easy and really cheap! I also purchased a few extra plastic inserts because they tend to get dirty. 6 gpants is more than enough because they done need to be washed each time. The plastic liners and the inserts are what get dirty.
I thought I would use disposables while I was out but I don't find I need to. I purchased a wetbag at a Canadian online retailer called snugglebugz. It's a fabric bag with a plastic liner and you can simply throw all the dirty inserts into it and when it's time to wash, just dump it all in the washing machine and wash the bag right with it. It holds the smells quite well and they come in fun patterns. There are a few reasons I find its working better than I thought. One- exclusively breasted baby poop is water soluble, no rinsing required, just throw it in the wash. Two- babies have a lot of laundry anyways, as a result of poop explosions, puking, ect... So throwing an extra load of diapers in at night really isn't a hardship. Three- I let myself use regular disposable diapers at night, this means that baby doesn't need to be changed as often and less chance of having leaks at night. Lastly, cost! I love that we are barely spending any money on diapers. And when we are done we can actually resell them all... Oh and we are heling to save the environment...
Overall, I love using these cloth diapers. We are pretty much doing exclusively cloth during the day and disposables at night. I find them extremely user friendly (even hubby is one board) and are easy on the wallet as long as you buy the value pack of gpants to begin with.
If you have any questions about your gdiapers, drop me a line :) I'm not an expert yet, but I'm working on it!

Little dude turns 3!!

This year for little dudes birthday we were very busy. I had just finished my last semester at university, I was working full time and I was 7 months pregnant. I didn't have a lot of time to make a huge time consuming birthday cake. When I saw someone do a similar version of this cake I knew our little dude would love it. He's obsessed with machinery.

I went to walmart and found a cheap set of construction vehicles. Then I made a box (! I know shocking...) chocolate cake and iced it with a simple chocolate buttercream icing. After it was all iced, hubby took a knife and simply chopped out a chunk from the side. We positioned the vehicles on the cake and added some Oreo cookie crumbs to the cake to make it look more like dirt. And tada... It was that simple.

 

 

Little Dude #2

We welcomed our newest addition just a few weeks ago ( a story I will tell later) and I'm very excited to show all the projects we did for his nursery... Which he has yet to sleep in....

Being cheap, I wanted to reuse everything for baby #1. At the same time, I wanted this little guy to have an equally impressive room. So, we (a lot done with my mother's execution and my ideas) took almost everything and revamped it. Just a bit of fabric and time for Most things.

After scouring Pinterest for ideas, I had a plan. I really wanted to do owls and use grey, mint and yellow... Hubby wanted monkeys, and this is what you get.... My inspiration board!

Oh, in case your interested, I used dulux paint app to make my board. It lets you colour match anything, add photos and write stuff. It's a great little app.

The top right photo shows the decals I purchased from Etsy at this shop. They were a great find. The lady had a similar design with just the owls and trees, but hubby really wanted monkeys, so I asked her to add some in and she made them custom for us. I did spend a bit more money on them than I would have just buying them in a local store; but these are such a great quality and look like paint once they are up. They also won't leave any marks on the wall when removed, yet aren't peeling at all. They were super easy for hubby to install ( I supervised and gave direction).

The walls were the first big project and then it lead to all the other little ones. I find that when doing a room, I find a jumping off point, a colour, theme, ect. And build from there. This time I started with colours, yellow, mint and grey and then went on to find a theme, owls. I'll blog about all my other projects separately and share some links and/ or give some DIY instructions where I can.

 

I'm back!

This past year was one of the busiest of my life. I graduated university, finished renovations, worked a new full time job and prepared for a new little one, who arrived July 15! So, now I am one maternity leave for the next year (yeah canada!) and I am able to update on all the projects I have completed this past year. Yes I have still done a lot, but just haven't been able to blog about it. I'm so excited to share all my new projects... I've attached a little photo preview to get you all a bit excited... Stay tuned :)