05/30/2016
I saw this idea on Pinterest a while ago and thought it looked pretty simple. Like most Pinterest projects, it took a lot more effort than I expected. I’m happy with the outcome though.
Steps: I bought a frame from Goodwill for about $1 and threw away the glass. I sanded it a bit to take off the coating over the wood stain, and then painted it with three coats of craft paint. I cut some strips of ribbon and hot-glued them inside the back of the frame where the glass had been sitting. I pre-drilled all the holes for the tiny cup hooks along the bottom and hammered a sawtooth picture hanger onto the back.
Full tour of our Double Nursery for Almost Irish Twins.
1 Comment | 
Art, Art: crafts, Art: new home nursery, Family, Family: Nutter Butter/JoJo | Tagged: baby hair accessories, crafts, headbands, nursery, organization, pinterest | 
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Posted by mahlbrandt
02/24/2015
I love art and doing crafts. I always have. It’s such a joy for me to see my daughter loving art, too. She got a big bucket of craft supplies and a booklet of ideas for Christmas. We’ve been having fun working on these together on these cold, dreary winter days. I’m looking forward to the days she can do these projects more independently so she can work along side me while I work on my own craft projects. But in this stage, I’m just delighted that she’s having fun and getting creative with these projects.
When our buddy Termain was visiting one evening they sat and did art projects together for a while. He’s an art lover too.
One day I was able to get almost an hour of sewing projects done while Ali played with Play Doh nearby. Glorious!
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: crafts, Family, Family: Precious/Ali | Tagged: Ali, alianna, Art, crafts, homeschool, kids, parenting, preschool | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
01/15/2015
Pacifier Strap & Clip
I bought these mitten clasps last summer when we had little Firefly but I never got around to making him a pacifier strap before he left. This was very simple to make. I cut a strip of cotton fabric, folded it in half with right sides together, pressed open a seam allowance on one end, sewed the sides together and cut off the scrap close to my seam. The only difficult part was turning the little thing right side out. Once I did that, I pressed it flat with an iron. I sewed a small piece of elastic into the open end, closing it off. I folded and pressed the other end of the strap and sewed in around the mitten clasp.
Since it was such a pain to turn the strap right side out, I decided to make a second one using ribbon left over from the suspenders of his coming home outfit. This one was even faster but I think it would have been better with wider ribbon.
Pacifier Storage Bag (inspired by this)
I could have made a simply bag but I happened to have this cotton pouch saved from a recent purchase of a queen sheet set. It’s a bit bigger than needed for pacifiers and paci clips but that’s fine. All I did was make two equal lengths of brown ribbon and sewed it onto each side of the bag. Pacifiers will be easy to locate at rest times and when baby boy is bigger, he can reach into the bag himself if he needs one at night time.
Door Latch Silencer / Soft Close Cover (inspired by this)
I used hair elastics like the inspiration link above but I found them very difficult to sew through. Next time I think I’ll just use elastic.
1 Comment | Art, Art: crafts, Family, Family: Froggie/Isaiah | Tagged: baby, baby boy, crafts, DIY, froggie, sewing | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
01/06/2015
In my excited anticipation of Baby Boy’s arrival in April I decided to start putting together an outfit for him to wear home from the hospital. I bought some black-and-white striped ribbon and sewed it onto a white onesie with faint blue stars to look like suspenders. I paired it with gray paints, no-scratch mittens and a hat that I made last summer for Firefly. I also made the bow tie for Firefly for a photo shoot. The onesie and little blue socks are the only pieces I didn’t make. Nothing inspires me to sew more than a new baby! Next up is a baby blanket.
6 Comments | Art, Art: crafts, Art: fashion, Family, Family: Froggie/Isaiah | Tagged: baby boy, baby froggie, crafts, fashion for kids, froggie, sewing | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
06/24/2014
I’ve been storing an olive green sheet for years, planning to sew it into a baby sling. Slings are great for a tiny newborn, which we’ve never had until now. In fact, Firefly is too small for our Infantino baby carrier or Moby wrap (or the ErgoBaby carrier I’m drooling over!). I found this sling tutorial via Pinterest and whipped up a sling for Firefly one Saturday afternoon. It’s perfect for him and I love the color.
While I had the sewing machine pulled out, I decided to sew some baby tube socks and mittens for the little guy using upcycled old socks. His little hands and feet are so small that baby mittens and socks dangle off of him. I used this trusty tutorial from Made By Joel, the same one I used 3 years ago for baby Alianna.
I love these ones made from a pair of Jason’s socks that got holes in the bottom. Baby business man socks. I’m tempted to pull socks out of Jason’s sock drawer to makes some more…
I spent another afternoon nap time sewing Firefly some baby pants from shirt sleeves. (Just like these upcycled pants like these I made for Ali.) They’re fairly easy and free if you have some old sweaters, sweatshirts or long-sleeve shirts you don’t need anymore. Jason had a striped hoodie that shrank in the wash—so much that it didn’t even fit me. I’ve been hanging onto it for such a time as this. I made Firefly some pants with room to grow since they’re really too warm for summer in Nashville. I also made him some lightweight pants from two gray long-sleeve t-shirts that I was no longer wearing. Since the pants turned out pretty well and I still had a lot of shirt leftover, I made him a hat and a pair of simple tube socks. The socks are perfect for his tiny feet but I’m guessing they’ll only fit for a couple weeks until his legs get more chubby. I’m glad I didn’t have to spend a penny on them.
3 Comments | Art, Art: crafts, Family, Family: Firefly | Tagged: baby, crafts, DIY, firefly, foster care, sewing | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
04/22/2013
Have you ever made your own bubble solution? It’s cheap, very easy and makes awesome bubbles! I’ve seen a lot of pins on Pinterest with homemade bubble recipes but this is the one I tried. I cut the recipe in half and used Dawn dish soap and light corn syrup. I found it to be too thick so I added more water.
With one breath and a simple little 1″ bubble wand, I can make 20-40 bubbles! Ali is thrilled. We’ll never be wasting our money on the “miracle” watery bubble solution at the store again. I’m hoping to try this out with a bigger bubble wand soon. Even with my little wand, I can get a bubble about 4″ in diameter.
Usually we do bubbles outside but sometimes if Ali is well behaved in the tub (in other words, not soaking me with splashing…) I’ll reward her with bubbles in the tub.
Dog photo bomb! (By the way, Ali is not crying in the background, she’s gasping/laughing because of the bubbles popping around her face. No children were harmed in the making of these photos. 😉 However… Warning: it’s soapy and it will sting the eyes. She tends to get it on her hands from exuberant bubble decimation and then sometimes rubs her eyes.)
4 Comments | Art, Art: crafts, Family, Family: Precious/Ali | Tagged: bubbles, child, crafts, DIY, homemade, kids, parenting | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
01/29/2013
Maybe it’s part of my nesting urge. While I was cleaning out the future kids room, I found an old poetry book at I was going to put in the yard sale pile. Then I got inspired and remembered a project I saw on a blog a few years ago. I made a banner with cut out hearts, stapled with pink staples onto rainbow colored yarn. I hug it over the dining room windows, by the front door, and I love the shadows the hearts cast on a sunny afternoon. There is a heat vent on the floor under the window so when the air is running, the hearts flutter around. I’m in love.
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: crafts | Tagged: Art, banner, crafts, hearts, valentines day | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
11/21/2011
A couple weekends ago, I totally got my craft on. I like crafting and I enjoy sewing but it’s been a loooong time since I’ve had my sewing machine out. It used to belong to my Granny who was a wonderful seamstress. She made my junior prom dress. I named my sewing machine Dorothy after her. Rabbit trail, sorry…
There has been a Pinterest challenge going around to actually make something that you might have pinned as a project to do. I wasn’t officially participating but I’ve had these baby socks from Made By Joel on my project list for a long time. It was a quick and easy project with great results. I made 3 pairs, 1 of which I gave to our friends for their new baby boy.
I saw a tutorial a while back for making baby pants out of an old sweater (my favorite) and another DIY for making them out of a t-shirt. Precious has an abundant supply of pink pants so I’m trying to introduce more colors in her wardrobe. These three websites already do a good job giving DIY instructions so I’ll just show some (or a lot of) pictures of my processes and the finished products.
I loved this sweater but it had several holes in it and a stain.
I used one of her pink pairs as a reference for size.
6 Comments | Art, Art: crafts, Family, Family: Precious/Ali | Tagged: baby pants, baby socks, crafts, precious, sewing, upcycling | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
09/14/2010
I know—like I have time for another hobby, right? Wasn’t I just saying last week how I didn’t have time to blog because I had so much freelance. (Freelance isn’t really a hobby, I guess…) Regardless, I’ve decided to start knitting. I bought this soft gray yarn last week …
and turned it into these fingerless gloves!
Just kidding. They’re from H&M. But I think I did get a pretty close match with yarn.
What I plan to make is this scarf this from Pickles:
I’m hoping it’ll match the fingerless gloves…
And also kinda-sorta this headwrap/earwarmer/topless-hat that Jason bought me from the Faroe Islands.
Not quite but maybe I can pull it off. Or else my next project might be a teal blue scarf!
1 Comment | Art, Art: crafts | Tagged: crafts, knitting | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
08/26/2009
It seems like every few weeks I find out another friend is pregnant. Does that just happen at my age or are A LOT of people pregnant right now?
The best part of having pregnant friends is, of course, babies! Last week I got to meet 2 new babies!
Mikaelyn:
and Benjamin:
I had to patiently wait 2.5 weeks to meet handsome little Benjamin. (He lives out of town.) But it was worth the wait! Mikaelyn, on the other hand, I had the privilege of meeting 1 day after she was born. How cool is it to hold a newborn baby?? I’m so AMAZED at the miracle of life — to be able to hold a little bugger that just INSIDE my friend the day before. It blows my mind. God is so awesome!
I sewed Mikaelyn a fleece elephant pillow:
Her room is decorated in an elephant theme and I really wanted to come up with a design that was an “M” and also an elephant. (Can you tell I’m a graphic designer?) After a couple of days of searching and sketching, I found this inspiration finally:
I hope she likes it!
Jason and I look pretty good with one of these, don’t you think?
Though I do have to say, if our future-someday-theoretical baby comes out with a full head of dark hair like these 2 did, I’ll be completely shocked!
I was making the elephant pillow WHILE Mikaelyn was bring delivered so I didn’t pause long enough to take step-by-step photos. However, if anyone is interested, I can draw up instructions. Just let me know!
1 Comment | Art, Art: crafts, Family, Family: Extended Family and Friends | Tagged: babies, crafts, elephant pillow, sewing | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
myMCMlife.com 