Archive: Thomas the Tank Engine Costume

Fumbling for a Halloween costume idea? You can easily make a Thomas the Tank Engine costume.

Last year, my little guy wanted to be Thomas, but wanted to wear real clothes. (Hint: Look for a post of this years bizarre costume request in the next week or so...) Anyway, I had to figure out how to make this happen. Always up for a challenge, I went to Pinterest for inspiration.

A lot of parents built a Thomas out of cardboard and while those costumes were fantastic, they still were not clothes.

I went to Walmart and found a blue hoodie and gray sweatpants. Next, I hit the craft aisle and bought felt and puffy paint. 

I lined the jacket with red puffy paint. Next, I cut out circles to make a train look for the legs. I cut a number 1 and lined the inside with yellow puffy paint. I tacked all the felt items onto the outfit and was able to remove the train look from the pants so he could continue to wear the pants after Halloween. 

Here is the front of the costume:

And here is the back:

To complete the costume, my son wore a white winter hat and red mittens. Looking back, I wish I would have designed the legs a little better, but I was pretty pleased with the results! 

Project Sixteen: Pumpkin Fruit Cups

This was one of the easiest projects ever! My son's daycare has their Halloween party coming up and I signed up for fruit. One could say, "Fruit? How can I be creative with fruit?" But I found a way!

I purchased a 12 pack of orange fruit cups from Target. The only other supply I needed was a black sharpie. About 5 minutes later I had pumpkins!

Voila! I have a healthy and fun snack. My little guy LOVED watching me draw jack-o-lantern faces on the snack cups. Have fun creating your own pumpkin fruit cups! 

Project Fifteen: Banner

When my girls were younger, I made them name banners for their birthdays. My oldest has a "monster" themed banner and my middle has an "Annie" themed banner (as in, the sun will come out). They hang in their bedrooms to this day and turned out super cute. When I made them, the whole name banner thing was still a pretty new idea. Now, if you search on Etsy, you can get banners in all shapes, sizes and colors!

My sister-in-law and brother recently came to stay and saw the banner in my middle's room. This sparked my sister-in-law to ask me to make a name banner for my nephew's room. I was really excited about making a cute banner in a baseball theme, until I realized how nerve-wracking it is to make something for someone else!

I pondered and pondered... I even went looking on Etsy for ideas to "borrow." I finally decided I was creative enough to walk confidently into Micheal's and begin to shop.

I wanted to make the background into triangles to give the pennant look and feel. I downloaded a cute, sporty font (courtesy of dafont.com) and printed the letters. (I do not own a Cricut, as I am truly not crafty.) I also wanted to have a cute image for the beginning and end of the banner. I found a vintage looking baseball image from Google Images and printed it too.

To make the pennants, I bought single sheets of scrapbook paper. I picked rough paper bag looking paper to go along with my vintage theme.

All that was left was what to hang the banner on and ribbons. I picked out a blue and white polka dot ribbon and a red ribbon. For the line, I purchased jute (hint: this is used in quite a few upcoming projects). I was ready to start creating!

Below, you can see my supplies:
- Glue, had in my cabinet
- Hole punch, had in my cabinet
- Ribbons, purchased from Micheal's
- Paper, purchased from Micheal's
- Jute, purchased from Micheal's

 

While I was printing my letters and baseballs, I printed a triangle to serve as the template for my pennants. I cut out all the triangles, letters and baseballs. Next, I glued the letters and baseballs onto the pennants.

The next step is the dreaded hole punch... where all the work you have done can be ruined with one wrong move. Luckily, the holes lined up perfect and I could cut out both holes in one quick action. Phew! It was nice not to sweat so much!

Once the holes were punched, I strung the pennants through the jute. The last step was cutting and tying the ribbon on either side of each pennant. Unfortunately, I could not get a big shot of the whole banner, but here is a little teaser below.

This project was super easy. And while it wasn't necessarily inspired by something on Pinterest, I felt it was an important project to highlight. The banner looked super cute, was super cheap and it did not require any sophisticated and expensive equipment. Go on, wannabe crafters, and make your own banner!

Project Fourteen: Batman Cape

Holy cape, Batman! My little guy is all about Batman, so much so he spent last weekend wearing a Batman mask everywhere we went. I had wanted to get him a Batman cape, but I didn't want to have to buy a full Halloween costume or order one online. I figured if I waited and was patient, the cape would just happen. And, it did!

I had searched Pinterest for ideas on how to make a cape. And there are lots out there - and some of these ladies are CRAFTY. Much craftier than I am and ever claim to be... So I went out on a limb and came up with my own Pinterest project. 

Remember my Dollar Tree trip? Well, they had black, satin capes for $1. Woohoo! All I needed was a plan for adding the bat symbol. I went to Micheal's and purchased black and yellow felt. I also bought a new pair of scissors. My scissors are old and really do not cut fabric as good as they should. Batman should not have a cape with jagged edges!

While I am artistic, I am not practiced at drawing the bat symbol. I found a picture using Google Images and pasted the symbol into a Microsoft Word document. I made the image a little bigger and was ready to print. Since it is just a template, there was no need to print in color or use good paper.

Here are all of my supplies:

I worked on this after the kids went to bed, so yes, that is my blanket in the background. No need to be uncomfortable when creating a cape! 

To start, I traced the oval on the yellow felt and cut out the shape. Next, I had to cut the bat out of the template. Here is where I failed to plan... I had a black ink pen and black felt. Not my brightest moment. Since it was late and I was not feeling like walking back downstairs and thinking of a new idea, I traced the black pen on the black felt. Luckily, it left a sheen, enough so I could carefully cut out the bat.

I am very adverse to using my sewing machine. Yes, I do own one. It probably has 8 years worth of dust layered on the case, but I really hate to sew. I cheat and use glue or stitch witchery whenever I can. Unfortunately, I was going to have to sew for this project. Instead of pulling out the sewing machine (which would take me an hour to remember how to even set it up), I just hand stitched. I first stitched the bat onto the yellow felt. I used black thread of course (and my needle and thread set came from the dollar store YEARS ago - still going strong!). Next, I pinned the yellow oval with the bat now attached to the cape to keep it in place. I stitched the bat symbol to the cape using yellow thread. 

The whole project took about an hour and cost $2. Take a look below... Sometimes I even impress myself!

Archive: Bathroom Remodel

This project was not mine. Well, it happened in my house, but I had very little to do with the project itself. You see, it started as just "updating" a few builder grade items - the mirror and the lighting. The mirror was one long big mirror and the lights I affectionately refer to as "circus lights." They were the round ones all on one long track. Blech!

So we bought mirrors at Big Lots. Yes, you read that correctly - Big Lots! They are beautiful and big and different than what you would find at a hardware store. The lights we purchased at Home Depot. Did I mention this project started about 3 years ago? I didn't? Well, that is important to the story too.

My hubby hung the lights and mirrors and that's where the project stopped. He didn't paint the walls, which were riddled with patch spots. He didn't seem to have any plans on finishing the project. I would nag him here and there. He would tell me that he had more to do and then he would paint. That process took about 2 years.

Fast forward to February of 2014. I went to Dallas for work and had a really late flight. I got home at about 2 a.m. and went into the bathroom to take out my contacts. There were tools everywhere. The light fixtures were hanging off the walls and the mirrors were taken down. I guess having the wife out of the house is enough to light a fire? Who knows! But what I do know is for 7 months my bathroom was torn up. Unrecognizable. Demolished. Not usable. This meant all 5 of us shared the kids bathroom. And I use the word "shared" loosely.

As my son's 3rd birthday was approaching, which meant a party at our house and family staying, I tried to scream and yell politely encourage my husband to finish the project. He did and the outcome is beautiful. Here is the inspiration I had from Pinterest:

And here are his finished pictures. The supplies came from Home Depot. He made the shelf for me. The picture frames were from Target, but were cream. He painted them to match the shelf.

Personally (and I might be biased), I think his turned out soooo much better than my Pinterest inspiration! What do you think?

Please enjoy pictures of the entire project below:

Project Thirteen: Dollar Store Fall Table Decor

I love fall. I really do. I love the cool crisp air. I love all the activities that fall brings... pumpkin patch, hay rides and haunted houses. I also love to decorate for fall and Halloween. So I decided to go through Pinterest for some fun and easy ideas.

I found a post (that I'm certain I have pinned about three times) about finding fall decor at the dollar store. Here's the picture that inspired me:  

Thanks to Laurie at Passionate Penny Pincher. Use this link to see Laurie's original post: http://passionatepennypincher.com/2012/08/the-friday-fluff-up-decorating-on-a-dollar-at-the-dollar-tree/

Well, I just had to go to the dollar store, specifically Dollar Tree. I went on my lunch break and immediately had to grab a cart! I will definitely have a few new posts from my 30 minute trip.

I really wanted to make the pretty fall table decor, similar to Laurie's picture. I gathered the following supplies (all $1 each):

- 3 small grapevine wreaths (2 of the wreaths were bigger - accident, not on purpose)

- 3 candles (2 orange and 1 red)

- 3 candle holders

- 1 package of yellow and red leaves (loose leaves... Laurie used garland)

Doesn't look like much, right? Just wait! 

To get started, I removed all the tags, stickers and wrapping. I plugged in my hot glue gun and grabbed the first wreath. I decided to glue a red and a yellow leaf together. Here's the first one:

I tried to make the second wreath look just like the first:

The smaller wreath I decided to do a bit differently. I wanted to put it in between the other two wreaths and thought it should stand out. I placed the leaves all the way around, in a pattern of 3 yellow and 1 red. 

And here is the final table decor: 

I am very happy with how it turned out. It looks pretty classy on my table. It took me about 20 minutes to complete this project. If you are craftier or willing to spend more than $10 or head to a craft store, you could really make this sizzle. But I like the simplicity... And I have leaves leftover for another project!