diy wedding gifts

We are officially deep into wedding season! I've been trying my best to make a majority of our birthday, anniversary and wedding gifts this year, though a tad of a challenge it's been so fun! Handmade gifts, big or small, seem to be the ones I treasure the most.

My first gift for the wonderful Matt & Mollie was in hopes to be a monogrammed pillow to display in their living room. I purchased 10 of these 10x10 inch pre-assembled pillow cases at Ikea years ago with hopes of finding a project, and I was pumped to pull them out of the archives to use them.

I've never used freezer paper for stenciling so I thought I would give it my first go, well that first go was a fail! It took me way too long (or I wasn't doing it right...) to cut out the letter with my xacto knife to prepare the stencil to paint onto the pillow case.

So, the stenciling didn't work which led me to believe I might be able to freehand draw with pencil the date? That was also a fail. Don't judge now!

After searching my craft room for help, I found a set of trusty stencils that worked out great! I then traced the date with a fine tip sharpie and added some embellishments with fabric scraps.

I think I should make myself one?

The second part of my gift was appliqued dish towels to share in their kitchen. I've always wanted to make these for onesies for baby shower gifts but never trusted my sewing machine, but Mother's Day gifted me with a beautiful new Janome machine and wow was this super quick and easy!

The last part of their gift was a print to hang in their house to always remember what the most import of their wedding, and wedding date was, Love.

I created the print in Illustrator and printed it at our local Officemax. Stopped by Hobby Lobby for a frame and made sure the display was exactly what I was looking for!

Have you been making any wedding gifts this year? My next project is try the glass etching on a casserole dish perhaps or a trifle bowl? We'll see!

homemade diaper pail cakes

We're crazy and cloth diapering! But...it's going great and so far so good. We are learning all of the tricks and testing as we go. One thing for certain is that care and upkeep of them is the hardest part.

We use a small garbage can with this handy liner and generally wash every 2 to 3 days (that all depends on how many messes that is.) With that comes a bit of a smell. I whipped up these easy little cakes to toss in the bag as we go, they disintegrate and get washed with the diapers as well which makes it even more fun and functional.

Start off with your supplies. We currently use the lemon and its magical. Yes, magical. Line your mini muffin tins with prefferably paper not foil linersl I pop them out of the liner when I toss them in our pail. You could probably just press the mixture into the pan as well, I'll try that next round and let you know how it went.

After your water has boiled (or if your using distilled, just add to your mixing bowl), slowly combine your baking soda. After roughly one cup of mixture add your drops. The number of drops all varies on your personal scent taste, we used 8 drops. I bought my oils from Swanson Health Products, there is quite the assortment. Stir, stir, stir. Add the rest of your baking soda. You may need to get your hands in there to really mix this well. Next step, just push it into your cups. Easy!We let ours sit overnight and put them in a little rubbermaid to keep hidden behind her diaper pail for quick refills.This recipe made approximately 24 diaper pail cakes and I would guess we go through 1 or 2 a week. Add this to the never ending list of wonderful uses for baking soda.