Felt Sushi

Ahhh. Sushi... It's never too early to introduce our children to other cultures I guess. So I made some felt sushi.. Very simple, the hardest part was hand sewing the roll shut...


What you need:
1 sheet of green felt
2 - 3 sheets white felt
Felt for fillings ( could be colors of your choice)
     * I used half of a sheet of both orange and red*

Cut felt:
Cut green and white felt length wise.

Cut each piece every two inches width-wise, Do both the green and white.

Layer Pieces:

I also trimmed my white with pinking sheers to create a texture to mimic the rice. ( Not see in this photo though)

Create Filling:

Cut a three inch strip lengthwise from your sheets of felt for filling.  

Cut every two inches again so that it will fit inside your roll.

Roll fillings into small tubes, pin to hold for now.

Assemble and finish:

Place filling on top of white and green stack, unpin fillings, and roll into sushi roll. Pin to hold in place.

Trim off excess white felt.

Repeat until all felt is used, will make 6.

Hand sew roll closed. 

And thats it! What a fun little addition to any toy kitchen!

Guitar String Bracelets

When I was in high school, I began taking guitar lessons, and I really liked it a lot. Then my teacher decided to coach soccer instead, so my lessons stopped and so did I.  Over the years I have gone back and forth wanting to play here and there, and I just took it up again recently.

I began by changing my strings, and after pulling the old ones up. I just left them on the counter, thinking I wonder how I could reuse these? After a couple days I came up with this...

What do you think?

Felt Donut Tutorial

Gather Your Supplies:
2- Sheets of Felt
Sewing Supplies ( Thread, Needles, Machine, etc)
Pillow Stuffing

Cut your pieces out:
Layer your felt together and cut out four circles, making eight circles total. ( I used a plate, l that fit four times per sheet)

Optional Step:
If you want "frosting" cut out a third circle and trim to create rounded edges. Sew to one circle.

Assemble your donut:
Line up one front and one back ( may be same colors or two different)

Sew and Cut Interior hole of donut:
To sew your inside circle line up the edge somewhere on your machine to make a circle, mine was the last notch on my silver plate. I just kept my outside edge on this notch turning until the interior circle was complete.

Cut out the center of our circle.

Stuff and Finish Donut:
Stuff and pin edges, I find the more pins the better! Sew outside edge closed.

Repeat until you have used all your circles!

The donut on the right is without the optional step in the beginning. I used Blue on the top, and ivory on the bottom.  It creates a simpler looking donut, but my son plays with it just the same!

Enjoy!

Easy Hair Bow Holder

My god daughter was turning one, and she is just starting to be able to wear hair bows.  So of course, I wanted to make some, but I didn't want to just do that.  So I got thinking, how could I give her something to hold them...  I've seen the bow holders, made out of picture frames before ( a good example would be here) but i never find any great frames that big so... That idea was out. But I did have a simple frame that I could jazz up too.. So here is what I came up with...

I used a 5 x 7 wooden frame that was flat.  I spray painted it gold, and then glued pretty pink scrapbook paper on the flat part of the frame.  Using and Exacto knife I cut out the center after it was glued down.  I then sanded the edges with an emery board to clean up them up.

Next I added the ribbon, buttons and flower to the front for decoration, and cut the paper to go inside the frame.

I cut three ribbons for the back of the frame and glued them on too.  And can you believe what I am about to say....Done! It's that Easy!

What I really like is that it can use this as a dry erase board too, maybe for notes about missing bows?

Dry Erase Board

After we moved into our house, I purchased a dry erase board on sale.  After three years, it had finally decided it was no longer going to clean itself off.  After saying, well this is silly to throw out, why not take it apart? So I did, and found out it would not clean off because it was just a piece of shiny poster board in picture frame, over a piece of sheet metal ( to make it magnetic).

So... Here's what I ended up doing, I tried the dry erase markers with the sheet metal, and ta-da it cleaned off better and easier than the poster board! So, seeing as I do not have any shiny metal anywhere inside, I sent it out to the garage, where my husband works on cars, and he could have his own board to make lists and what not.  I would love to show you this, but I am pretty sure if I brought my camera out into the garage, I may never make it back...

With my board gone, I needed a new one for my kitchen, and didn't want to go out and buy one right away... And I had this frame empty in my kitchen already... And got to work.

All you have to do it fill your frame with a piece of scrapbook paper...And it cleans off easier than any store bought board I have ever had!

Hopping on the STEAM wagon!

First a confession, I do not have the slightest idea when it comes to cleaning. I am serious. Ask me to mop, and I am pretty clueless. I just do not get it. Here's my thinking behind it. If you take soapy water and use a mop to push it around, then regular water, how do you dry it?

I have tried everything, I have tried the Swiffer, and they always dry out and your just rubbing your floor. I have tried the Orange Glo system for hardwoods, and same thing, if I am spraying my floor with this wash/wax stuff, and its not getting sucked up with something where is it going? I even own a Rainbow vacuum with the squeegee attachment, and still I am confused.

Until now!  I made the leap and purchased a Shark Steam Mop.  I got the basic model and LOVE IT!  I have steamed my kitchen, and it looks wonderful, even a couple days later. Before within hours my floors would look yucky.  I have steamed my hardwoods, and they too look great. But now the icing on the cake.. I steamed my tub. Yup. I did it. I stuck my Shark in the tub and steamed away all the soap scum! I swear my tub wasn't this white when we bought our house but it is now...   My only complaint, is that I cannot use it on the tub sides. The water won't steam at that angle. They do however have a handheld device  so you can do all sorts of things, but for now I am loving STEAMING my house...

A little Late in the game...

So, I may be the last person in the world to figure this out... But I finally figured out how to email videos! Normally I would go to upload a video and it would say "Error: File too large" Ugh. So disappointing. Well today was the day that I finally figured it out!  As a mac user, I have iMovie and I finally did it! I compressed my file so that I can email it to a friend. Yay!

I followed these directions, which could not have been easier... Hope my friends do not mind that I will be flooding their inboxes with cute videos from now on!

Birthday Recap!

In an effort to make sure that I have shared everything with you, I have decided to do a recap. Some things may have gotten their own posts and others have not, but this way I know I have shared everything!

The invitations:

Your o'fishally invited

To an Ocean ONEderland

To Celebrate Carters

First Birthday!

Come have a whale of a time.

(Insert Details Here)

Please RSVP 

Or Mommy will get Crabby

The Menu:

Sticking with the ocean theme, I had:

Goldfish crackers, Swedish Fish, and Gummy Sharks on each table

Shells and Sauce

Sausage and Pepper Submarines

(We also had salads, chicken etc that were not ocean theme)

Homemade Candy ( 8 lbs of it!) Molded to look like seashells, fish, sharks, starfish, and the sun.

Remember, I got twice as many bags for my buck?

Octopus Cake, made by my wonderful sister... who gives you an idea of how she made this cake, here!

The Decorations:

Balloons, Balloons, Balloons (Which are still flying high in my living room! Love Mylar) 

Remember to check out bargainballoons.com, the prices are unbelievably cheap compared to other sites, and the quality of balloon is there!

Goody Table:

Lastly, I had a table with my fabric favor bags on it, tutorial found here. With my hats, and scrapbook too. It was a nice way to greet our guests as they came in from the cold!

Alright I am pretty sure we are all birthday'd out. But I am also pretty sure that is everything I did for my son's first party. We had a great day... I would love to know if you make anything like this!

Fast Fabric Favor Bags Tutorial

 I'd like to introduce Fast Fabric Favor Bags... An All Things Fee Tutorial!

 Now, this is a first, so bare with me!

(Finished favor bag is:  4 1/2"wide by 5" high) 

As you may already know, I am in the middle of planning my son's first birthday party.  I want to give out little goodie bags out to his "friends" that will be at the party, and I haven't found any that I am in LOVE with and want to buy... So I made my own!

Supplies ( Makes 8):

Fabric  11" by 22" ( I used ocean themed baby flannel)
Iron
Sewing Supplies ( Sewing Machine, Scissors, Thread, etc)
Ruler


Whats really nice about these favor bags is that this tutorial is easily adaptable to other sizes. Want a deeper bag?  Make your fabric 22" x 22", that will make the bags roughly 4 1/2" x 10".  Want wider bags? Don't fold and iron so many times.

Step 1:

If needed, iron your fabric and cut your fabric down to size.

Step 2:

Using a ruler, iron a 1/4 or 1/2 inch hem onto long sides of fabric. If you want a cleaner look, fold over 1/4 and then fold that again to have no raw edge showing. ( I left my raw edge, as I doubt these will be washed and reused over and over...)

Step 3:

Sew these hems.

Step 4:

Fold in half, iron to create bottom of favor bag.

Step 5:

This is the "trickiest" and longest part. But very do-able.  Take your fabric and fold it in half length wise. Iron a nice crease.

Then fold each end towards the middle.  And again and again until you have created 8 squares divided by creases.

Step 6:

Sew first edge as usual, lining raw edge up to presser foot.  Then move to first crease.  With first crease I lined up the left side of the presser foot to the crease, then sewed.

Then I moved to the right side of the crease and sewed.  This creates where you will cut the bags apart.

Repeat to the end.

Step 7:

Cut along all ironed creases ( should be in between two seams)

Step 8:

Flip right side out and your done!

Wasn't that sew easy?

I have enough fabric left over, and I am thinking to make more and these could be used for balloon weights too!

Want to see how everything was pulled together? Tomorrow I am doing the birthday recap.. Make sure to come back so that you can see everything all together!