Under the Sea Felt Board

I did this cute felt board for my daughter for Valentines Day.  I'm all about the made with love gifts, especially on days like Valentines Day.  No don't get my wrong, I'm completely in love with the box of chocolates that I get as well but it is a day to help remind the ones we love that we do love them, even when said two year old repetitively tells me they don't want to be my Valentine (she did change her mind immediately once she found out presents were involved).

First off I made my own felt board using part of a cardboard box and hot gluing felt around it. I'm always looking for a way to use up cardboard boxes since where I live, they do not recycle them.  It feels like such a waste to just throw away something like that.

I don't know why it amazes me as much as it does that you do not need anything to make the pieces stay up on the felt board.  The felt just naturally sticks to other felt though sometimes you do have the buff the pieces a little bit just to help them stick a little better.

I found a similar felt board online but it was on someone else's blog that spoke another language and because of that there was no real instructions. I did look at the picture they posted and cut out similar shapes.  I find for me, it is much easier to hand stitch the pieces together than it is to sew them with sewing machine. I give mad props to the people that can do it with the machines but for me it just turns out to be one huge mess.  Doing it by hand also gives me something to keep my hands busy at night when I am sitting on the couch with my husband after a long day.   I hope you all enjoy my yellow submarine and here is a 2 page template so that you can make one of your own. Page 1 and Page 2.

Free Crochet Giraffe Hat Pattern

The first step is to make a basic crochet hat with ear flaps or you may choose for your hat to have no ear flaps at all.  There are a lot of online patterns and directions to make a basic hat in different sizes.  For the braids I took 15 strands for each braid and latch hooked them to the end of the ear flaps and braided them down. 

Horns

(yellow)

Row 1: magic circle with four stitches (leave enough string at the start to attach each horn to the hat)

Row 2: 4 single stitch, connect

Row 3: chain 2 1 double stitch in each sing stitch connect (repeat 3 times)

Switch colors (orange)

Row 4-5: cs 2, 2 ds in each cs, join with a sl st.

Row 6. Ch 2, 1 ds in cs, skip cs, 1 ds in cs, skip cs, repeat, join with sl st and end  while closing hole with another sl st.

EARS

(make 2)

Magic circle with 4 stitches

Row 2: chain two, 1 ds in each cs, join with a  sl st.

Row 3-4 : chain two, two ds in each cs, join with sl st

Row 5-7: 1 ds in each cs, join with sl st.

Row 8-11: 1 ds in next 2 cs, skip cs, 1 ds in next 2 cs, skip 1 cs, repeat join with sl st at end

Finish off and leave enough yarn to sew to hat.

Eyes

Magic circle with six stitches. 

Row 2: chain 2, 2ds into each cs, join with a sl st.

Nose

I forgot to write down the instructions for the nose but what I did made a large circle like you do when you are first making  a hat and then I folded it in half and sl st it close along the seams.  I think made very small black crochet circles for the nostril holes. I’m sure that there is an easier way to make a half circle but that is how I did it and it gave a little depth to the nose area that I like.

Mane

Latch hooked the size and width that you think looks best.  I have seen many giraffe hats online that don’t have a mane at all.  It’s up to you to make this hat the way you want it to be.

For the spots, I just crocheted various size circles and placed them together in a pattern that I liked best. I tried to not make it symmetrical because in real life, they would not be.  That’s what I wanted for my hat. Various different shapes and sizes would really add a more authentic look as well.

  Once I was done making all the elements, I hand sewed them onto the hat.  Once down, I was left with this precious little giraffe hat.  I hope you enjoy making this hat as much as I did.  The one thing I wish was that I could have found a way to make the horns stick up more and not flop down as much.  I guess the way to go about it is find some way to support them up (pipe cleaners perhaps?) or maybe even stuffing them a bit would have helped some.

Hair Bow Lamp

I wish I could take credit for this project but I found this idea on pinterest but I made it my own.   I started by striping the fabric off a lampshade and then taking some steel wool in order to strip all of the fabric glue off the metal.  I ended up getting my lampshade at goodwill where I could get a lampshade for two dollars vs going to a store and spending 10 dollars or more.  The fabric was unimportant to me since it was just going to be ripped. It was more important to find a lampshade that had a good solid frame.  After that, I painted all the metal on the lampshade and the lamp with a rose pink paint and varnish.  Then it was just a matter of hot gluing my ribbon. I put two ribbons per section of the lampshade and an orange ruffle ribbon on the bottom of the shade.  I’m so happy with the end results and it just shows that pinterest projects can go right!

Princess Party

For my little girl’s second birthday, I scoured the internet for princess ideas for the party. It was important to me for her to have a great second birthday because we are about to enter into the time of her life where she will actually start remembering some of the things we do.  I feel like up in till now it was about us forming memories but now it is about her memories and what she will remember.  I have hopes that this birthday maybe one of those memories for her. 

For her first birthday I made little fleece owl cozies and they were a big hit with the kids.

I wanted to make some more this year but I decided to make them better by crocheting them.  Since it was a princess birthday this year, I crochet little crowns to go on them.

After I finished make the cozies, I moved onto birthday hats for the kids.  I found a website online that offered patterns for fleece birthday crowns. I thought that this would be perfect and fun for her friends.  I knew that there would be some boys that came as well so I got to designing boy crowns to go along with the princess crowns.  I tried to channel King Arthur and what kind of crown he would wear. To go with the crowns, I made magical wands and knightly swords. 

Another take away for the kids that I did was to make this cute little kissing booth.  In case you can’t tell, the shoes are filled with Hershey kisses.

What party doesn’t need a game?  I knew that most of the kids at the party would be too young to do a complicated game.  I decided to take an old favorite, pin the tail on the donkey and make it into a felt board that the kids could enjoy. I also changed it to pin a kiss on the frog in order to stay with the theme of princesses. It was a good game to have because there were also older cousins there that we were able to be blind fold so they could play in a more traditional manner.    

While I was deciding on what all the decorations should be, I got to thinking about how blah all the cabinets looked. I wanted a way to cover them and make them a bit more festive. I was looking around the internet and found all these tulle table cloths and thought if I could figure out something like that, it would be perfect.  I ended up buying 10yds of pink tulle and cutting it into thin stripes. I then tied them onto precut string and formed a tutu covering for my bottom cabinets. This was very tedious work, but in the end I was very happy with the result. I wish I had figured a way to fasten it to bottom of the cabinets better than tape. I had to refasten it several times in certain places. I was hesitant to tack it but that would probably have led to better results. 

All in all I think my little girl and all her guest had a very magical evening.