Happy Memorial Day! and More Party Prep

Happy Memorial Day, everyone. Here's a little picture from this morning. My parents pulling my son in the wagon to watch the parades in town. These are two amazing people. I am incredibly lucky to have the family I have.

Thanks to all the men and women who have served our country, and to their families. It is so appreciated. Thank you!

Now, more birthday preparation! I found both of these ideas on howdoesshe.com which is an amazing resource for fun crafts! Here is my version of the birthday board (we are doing a countdown to the party since his birthday is several days before his party)
His meals: (I should have made them smaller since they overlap the celebration part)

And a balloon wreath that we will certainly be reusing every year! It was so fun, and incredibly easy and cheap! He really loves it too.


Not too much longer until the big party. And tomorrow my baby will be 4 years old!!! EEK.

Mailbox Cover

I'm getting ready for the big party! Only one week from today and we'll be partyin'! I made this mailbox cover today. I think it turned out really cute! I didn't do a great job with the tutorial pictures, though- it gets pretty time consuming and I was trying to hurry!
First, measure your mailbox across the top (curved edge) and across the bottom. I drew this on a paper after I measured and then drew out what my cut piece of felt would look like, since I needed to account for the flag attachment. My mail box was 21" across the top and 18" across the bottom length. I planned on adding 2 inches to the long side so when it went across the box it overlapped at the bottom, but I forgot and it worked out better without it actually.
Then I cut my felt 18" by 21"
The cut piece:
Measure up and over for the hole where the flag goes. Mine was 2.5" by 2" and 2.75" up from the bottom. Cut the flag square out.
I wanted baseballs and stars on my cover, to go with our ball theme. So I traced a lid onto white felt and cut out 2 baseballs.
One for each side:
I used the lid to make the lines where the laces go and then I used red thread (4 strands of regular thread because I didn't have red embroidery thread) to make the laces by hand.
Then I left out where I cut out the stars and sewed everything on. I also added super strong magnets to each corner (you can see where I sewed squares) I just cut squares of felt a little larger than the magnet and sewed 3 sides then stuck the magnet in and sewed it shut. Now it just sticks to the mailbox! Much easier than my original plan of sewing ribbons to it.

This was really easy and could be done for any themed party! I think it will be too cute outside with some balloons, of course!

Birthday Shirt

I made my son a shirt for his birthday (And myself a matching one). We're doing a baseball theme, and I fell in love with some baseball fabric a while back, so this is the result:


Here's how I did it. I think it's called reverse applique. First, I got some cheap shirts at Walmart. Then I had my baseball fabric and some fusible interfacing.
Start by removing the pocket on the shirt if there is one. My shirt didn't have a pocket, but his size did. It's much easier without the pocket! They really sew those babies on there!
Here is the after: (You can definitely see where the pocket was, but I ironed it and then it was fine)
I used Publisher (have I mentioned I love that program?) to make a number 4 the size and font that I wanted. I printed it out and cut around it, so I had a stencil.
Place the "stencil" on the shirt where you want the number and trace around it with a washable fabric pen (The best things are washable crayons in my experience. I have several different washable pencils specifically for sewing and they aren't good)

Now cut a piece of the ball fabric that is larger than the number/design you want on your shirt. I allowed lots of extra space just to be safe.
Iron the fusible interfacing to the wrong side of the fabric.
Place the fabric right side up inside the shirt (because you'll be cutting the shirt away and don't want to see interfacing!)
Put lots of pins in so that your fabric doesn't move around. I tried to arrange mine so that I could sew around the number without hitting or removing pins.
Sew around your lines. I made 2 rows of lines, and made them "messy" because I liked the not perfect look better.
All sewed:
Now cut a little hole in the Tshirt and be sure not to cut through the 2nd fabric. Then cut next to your sewn lines leaving the patterned fabric showing through!
The inside of the shirt looks like this, so trim around the interfacing/lining in order to remove bulk. I didn't take a picture of the inside after I did that.
Here it is:



And look how cute it turned out for his birthday pictures! (Sorry about the edited picture, but I'm not sure I'm ready to plaster my baby's pictures all over the web)

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