Felt Zebra Rug

Way before I found out I was pregnant I spotted a tutorial for this rug made out of felt and it immediately caught my eye. Once I was designing my nursery I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to make one. Zoe's bedroom has wood floors so it needed a little something down there.

Here is a link to the tutorial I used. I made sure to buy the felt at Joanns with coupons! If you can't tell from the picture I used a deep purple for the stripes. I also just used regular fabric glue to put it together. I thought about sewing around all the edges (stripes included) to give it an extra-finished look but I got to this point and I thought, eh... good enough. I'm sure we all feel that way sometimes!

The tutorial also calls for paper with gridlines on it. I hate it when projects call for specialty things like this and was reluctant to scour Joanns to try and find something like this. Luckily, while I was contemplating this, I bought some cheap wrapping paper from Walmart and on the back it had a grid of 1 inch squares on it! The tutorial calls for 2 inch grid so I made it work. As soon as the rug was finished I fell in love! I hope you like it too.

I'm not going to lie though, it isn't the most durable rug... it's already looking a little worn and fuzzy, but it has been a year.

It looks good though... right? :)

Homemade Stamps

For a while now I've been really interested in making my own stamps. I think this stems from my love of fabrics. Printing my own fabrics is a distant dream of mine. I ended up buying some rubber blocks and a lino cutter and went to town!

First I literally traced my image on some vellum off my computer screen. I used a soft pencil and then pressed the paper against the white rubber and the pencil left a very good reverse image. Now you may think, well it's backwards so it's no good, not true! Because it's a stamp you want the image backwards, true story. I did a little experimenting with the cutting tool and it was surprisingly easy and fun! Like cutting butter. The rest seems to be common sense, I carved the crane first, then cut off the excess and had enough to make an additional "Zoe."

Now I just need to get a better ink pad, lol. I guess the dollar store isn't always the quality choice.

I decided to use some fabric paint and make a little onesie for baby Zoe. I'm into paper cranes right now.

And here it is on an adorable baby model!

Feel free to comment with any questions.

New Format

I figured that since I spend so much time in the blogging world, I might want to start contributing to it.

I stopped blogging because I felt like it was pretty pointless. I post more pictures to facebook then my blog and I didn't think anyone read my blog that wasn't my friend there. Also I started my blog when I lived in Utah and was away from family and now we live in California, under a mile from my parents and Chase's parents are moving 1 hour away to Sacramento.

So I thought I would make a few changes. After a good discussion with a friend in Hawaii I decided that it might be fun to post some things that I have made for my home and family. The plan is to post mostly before and afters, some how-tos and maybe a full blown tutorial. If this isn't your cup of tea... well then just stick to browsing my facebook. :)

I'm starting tomorrow!

Watch this!!!

A Birth Story

I've been putting off posting about Zoe's birth because frankly it as too much typing. Well last night I made a little video that pretty much sums it up. Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/bHd_D8G00gc?hd=1

I had to link to it because the video would not fit in my blog. It's worth the copy and paste!

Surprise! Guess what we bought...

We bought a house! Chase and I are SO excited and we will be moving in sometime around the 16-20 of this month! Things happened pretty fast...

A family in our ward saw a really cute house for sale across the street from their son's preschool. Chase and I mused over the idea and I finally called the realtor for that house to see if we could get a tour. That led to a pre-approval for a loan and over the course of about 3 weeks we had looked at around a dozen homes and found this one! We put an offer down (this was the 3rd house we had offered on) and it was accepted! After that we were wavering a bit about going through it but everything has felt right and this house really is an AMAZING find.

It was built in 1951 and it has that "character" that I was looking for in a house. Great area, it is in my parents ward. We really wanted to stay in the ward we were in, but you know how things work out sometimes... it is only 1,100 square feet, but it is on a really big lot, .17 arces! It has 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom and two of the bedrooms are upstairs, dormer style. Our plan is to live upstairs with the nursery and the downstairs bedroom will become my craft room :):) Chase will get the entire detached garage for his space, which is huge and has tons of potential. The other day I was feeling bad that I claimed the room inside and justifying it in my mind. Things like, I'll have the baby and it makes sense that I have to stay in the house.... But then Chase mentioned how excited he was for the garage and I felt better! He actually preferred the garage. An old lady was selling the house because she couldn't take care of it anymore and the inside has been completely redone to sell it. New everything. The kitchen has brand new tile floors and granite counters, appliances, new bathroom, carpet, paint, everything! I particularly love the upstairs with wood floors and huge windows on the sides that let in tons of light. We couldn't be happier :)

Chase's New Truck

About a month after we moved to California, Chase got his new truck! He was very excited and put plenty of research into the decision...

(Here I am pregnant... about 18 weeks?) It is a Toyota Tundra and recently it has been adorned with the company logo. While it is a "work truck" it is still Chase's truck, he just gets a monthly allowance from work to pay for it.
We had to drive down to Visalia to pick up the truck which is only about 1 hour North of Bako, so we turned it into a weekend thing and had a fun time with Chase's family. It has been so nice to see them more often since we have moved to California.