Little Bags and Big Bags

I seem to have a thing for bags.  And really, can you ever have too many bags?  Big bags, little bags, medium bags.

Well here's a little linen-look bag that I whipped up for a quick birthday present for one of my favorite neighbors.  I found the inspiration piece over at Periwinkle Pincushion.  Cute, cute, cute!  She calls it the French Country Zipper Pouch - I call it super cute.  I found the linen-look fabric over at Hobby Lobby.

And the lining is a favorite from one of the Riley Blake lines.

And here's the stack in progress - I decided to make teacher thank you gifts for all of the boys' teachers this year.  I knew I needed to get an early start.  So - - - I have one all done, and quite a few more left to go.  I'll show more when they're all done.  Easy!

Happy Birthday Wood Decorations

It is coming up to Birthday season at my house - my boys' have birthdays in May and June. Last spring I came across this cute Happy Birthday felt banner HERE from a local crafter's ETSY shop. Love it! I had seen these fun wood balloons and presents on other blogs and noticed that they were from a local wood craft shop. I finally had a chance recently to stop in and pick them up. A little bit of paint, some scrapbook paper, and some glitter and now I have some great additions to my Birthday decorations.

Here is a close up of each present - three sizes. Here is the small:

The medium:

And the large:

I might go back and tie on some ribbons with the colored wire (which I loved to work with - so easy and colorful!). And here are the two balloons (there were three, but I thought two was plenty for me).

And the polka dot one - can't go wrong with polka dots!

So the plan is to put these out on the mantle along with the banner for our birthdays - very festive and fun - - and easy!

Lots of Pink - Baby Blanket

Wow - can you say pink? I live in a house full of boys - including the dog. I'm not used to seeing very much pink. But I needed another baby blanket for a gift and went to my enormous useful stash of fabric and found this incredibly cute pre-pieced quilt top and matching backing fabric. A quick seam around the edges, turn it right side out, top stitch all around again and there you have about the cutest little girl PINK blanket I may have ever "made". (I'm not sure I can really even say that I made it since it came pre-pieced - it wasn't any work at all.) The great thing about this line of fabric (from JoAnn's) is the variety of textures and the 3D effects. I hated to give this one away but a cute new niece is now the very proud owner. The backing is the green dragonfly fabric. Oh sooooo cute!

More Car Play Mats

I've posted before (here and here) about play mats that I've made for my boys. Well, we have a cousin's birthday party to attend next weekend and my boys decided that the perfect gift would be a play mat. So son #1 and I headed out to one of my favorite fabric stores that always has a great selection of pre-printed play mats. They didn't disappoint. Son #2 has this very panel already, but it is a great one and the fabric quality is excellent.

We found this new fabric panel as well - and although it wasn't my favorite, son #1 talked me in to getting it and using it to back the panel above. So now, a quick trip to Target to get some hot wheels and we're good to go. I've had this panel for a few months now - I found it at a cute fabric shop in Richfield, UT last fall. I finally took the 10 minutes to get it sewn together (the back is the same cute black/white check that you see in the pre-printed border). This one is all about mountains, cabins, camping, etc. I'm sure it will find a fond place in my boy's hearts just like their others.One day maybe I'll attempt one from scratch rather than using the pre-printed panels. But for now, these are PERFECT and easy and well-loved, which is the point.