Up-cycled Baby Stuff

Time is passing quickly, and before we know it, our new baby will be here.  In the meantime, I have the world’s longest list of projects to complete, birthday and Christmas gifts to buy, and a nursery to put together.  Needless to say, I’m finding myself quite busy!

For Ryder, we did what most new parents do… go to Babies R Us and pick out the perfect overpriced bedding set that comes with more pieces than we’ll ever find a use for just the right stuff.  We LOVED what we chose.  It was gender neutral (because at the time, we didn’t know he was a he), it was educational, and it was something we could live with staring at every day for at least a couple of years (although we intended to be able to use it for all subsequent children… HA!).  Here’s a look back at how his nursery turned out:

You may remember that the laundry hamper in the bottom right corner was up-cycled quite some time ago… Reminisce by clicking here.  And we actually had to cut the crib bumper apart, leaving only the piece at the head of the crib, and the long piece against the wall.  The first night Ryder slept in his crib (which was our third night home because it took that long for me to be able to walk up the stairs!), Nikki freaked out because she couldn’t see him and tried to jump in.  Nothin’ like an 80lb. ball of fur and teeth lunging into your baby’s bed in the hope of protecting him from the monsters in the closet!  Once we removed the unnecessary pieces, she was content to stay firmly planted on the floor, just as watchful as ever.

Now, fast forward nearly two years…  Ryder has quickly and successfully transitioned to a twin bed, and no longer needs his crib bumpers.  The new baby is coming in December, and will need crib bumpers.  And since Nikki is still around, and still uber-protective, we figured we’ll be faced with the same predicament in the very near future.  Why go out and buy brand new stuff if we’ll just have to cut it apart?  (And let us not forget about the ever-useful diaper stacker, hamper, and quilt!)  So… (almost) super-mom to the rescue!  :)

I agonized over finding the perfect fabric upon which to base all future nursery decorations, and ended up with a fun array of stripes and polka-dots in various shades of teal and brown.  I re-covered Ryder’s old crib bumpers, and in a day, they went from this:

To this:

And the dust ruffle went from this:

To this:

I still plan on making a valance, and I’m sure there will be other fun things to create along the way.  But for now, I’m pretty happy with the results, and I’m super-excited to begin to put it all together.

And for those of you who  may be thinking, “But what about Ryder?  Doesn’t he get anything new?”  Of course!  I’m currently awaiting a shipment of some awesome transportation-themed fabric for his new big-boy room.  I’ll be whipping up a fun comforter and valance… and just wait till you see the shelf I scored from NapervilleYardsales.com to go on the wall in place of the quilt pictured above.  Speaking of that quilt, I have a really cool project in mind for that as well… so stay tuned!

Tags: refashion, up-cycle

Lamb’s Wool and Easter Bunnies

At 18 months old, I’m fully aware that my son doesn’t yet grasp the “reason for the Easter season.”  But I figured that he’s old enough to have a great time picking up plastic eggs and jamming them into a basket or bag of some sort.  I’m trying hard to reduce the amount of clutter in my home overall, and make things easier to organize and keep tidy.  For that reason, I knew that a regular store-bought Easter basket just wasn’t gonna cut it.  They’re WAY too hard to store without causing some sort of damage.

I searched everywhere for patterns, but didn’t find anything I liked until I stumbled upon this tutorial from Reuse, Recycle, Resweater.  How cute is that???  It looked simple enough, so I headed to Goodwill to see if I could find any sweaters.  I was very disappointed in their selection… guess I’ll have to wait a few more months till people have donated their winter wear.  I ended up bringing home three very different sweaters, but apparently didn’t pay too much attention to “the rules.”  I should have bought a children’s sized wool sweater.  I had one wool sweater and one children’s sweater… but it wasn’t the same one  :)

I tried my luck with the (cotton) children’s sweater, and it just stretched itself into oblivion on the first seam.  So I abandoned all the cotton ones and went for the wool cardigan.  I almost felt guilty cutting it up.  It probably belonged to some sweet old lady who sat in a rocker with a vintage hand-sewn quilt over her lap.  But the guilt didn’t last that long, and my scissors and I made quick work of cutting off the bottom of the sweater.  It didn’t take long for me to determine that I wouldn’t be able to use this particular sweater the way the afore-mentioned tutorial directed me to.  From then on, I was on my own.

With some brightly colored buttons from my stash, some leftover denim from my hamper re-do, and some red bias tape, I turned this:

into THIS:

It’s slouchy, and soft so it’s easy to store without the fear of permanently damaging it.  There’s plenty of room for LOTS of eggs… especially if he shoves a couple extras in these handy pockets.

I’ll have to update this photo with one of Ryder actually hunting eggs, but in the meantime, it’s a hit!  Luckily for me, you can’t inspect it too closely from your computer, so you won’t know how imperfect it is.  But it’s certainly made with love.

I’ll be keeping my eye out for the perfect sweater, and maybe someday I’ll successfully create the basket I set out to make in the first place 

Tags: Easter, refashion