Making Memories - Stage Two of Four

When I started creating Nicholas's First Year Album I completely forgot about the album itself. For a couple weeks I shopped around the local craft stores but honestly couldn't find anything I liked. While many of the albums were beautiful and would have worked just fine, every album I picked up I found myself putting it back down because in the end I felt there was something better. Of course it took me a while to figure out what and where that something was but luckily I found it.

A few years back when I first discovered scrapbooking, I bought an all black 12 X 12 album that was on clearance for about $10. Up until this point I had put all my scrapbook pages into this album including Nicholas's First Year pages. After creating my wall letters for the Nursery one night I found myself with a good amount of fabric left over and tried to think of ways to use every last bit. First I thought about using the fabric to make closet dividers since I still have to look at the tags to know what onsie is for what age, then I thought about making pillows and even a blanket out of them. Before I could decide though I wanted to know how much fabric I had so I laid out the pieces on the table to get a better idea. And then it hit me. As I was laying out the pieces one of them happened to get placed on top of the scrapbook album and from then on I knew that the search for an album was over.

It only took 30 minutes to turn my once all black album into a customized one for Nicholas. The process was so easy that I think this will be my method of obtaining the perfect album from here on out.

What you need:

• 1 album (I used a 12 X 12 one)
• Fabric (I had 3 different patterns)
• Ribbon
• Hot-glue

  

How to make it:

This tutorial will varying depending on how many pieces of fabric you are using, the size of both the album and fabric as well as if you decide on using any accessories like ribbon or maybe a flower? No matter what you choose this is a quick and painless project for getting a great customized album. I'm going to go ahead and lead you step by step on how I created my 12 X 12 album using three different fabrics.

1. Iron out the 3 pieces of fabric.
2. The first two pieces of fabric (the white fabric with animals) will be 13 X 15 and these will be the front and back cover.
3. The third piece of fabric (green polka dots) will be 8 X 15.
4. The last two pieces of fabric (blue stripes) will be for the inner panels and will be 15 X 15.
5. Once our pieces are cut, gently gut the entire album.
Note: My album was easy to separate so I gently removed the rings along with the inner panels and set them to the side leaving me a bare front and back cover. Being that the album was originally black, I also had to paint my album rings brown to help coordinate with the rest of the album.
6. Take your first two pieces of fabric and drape it over the front of your album.
Note: You should have about an inch of extra fabric hanging off three sides.
7. Glue the edges of the fabric to the inside of the album making sure to glue one side after the other while pulling the fabric as you go to get a wrinkle free look.
8. Repeat step 7 to for the back cover.
9. Take your third strip of fabric and glue to the middle part of the front and back cover.
Note: This will lay in between your first two pieces of fabric on the cover sides.
10. Glue the edges of the fabric to the inside of the album making sure to glue on side after the other while pulling the fabric as you go to get a wrink free look.
11. Take your last two pieces of fabric and drape them over the two inner panels making sure to glue the fabric to the back of each panel.
12. Glue a strip of ribbon overlapping the two fabrics on the front and back cover.
13. Take your two inner panels and glue them to the inside of the front and back cover.
14. Glue the album ring back in the middle of the album on top of the panels.
15. Add any accessories or details to your album and enjoy!

The Result...

Though I only added a ribbon to the album, I'm considering adding his name to the front cover. For now though here are a couple before and after shots of Nicholas's First Year Album.

Before:
Sorry about the before photos, I don't know what I was thinking taking a black album and placing it on top of a black table. Definitly not one of my finest moments.

After:

How to Organize a Closet - Master Bedroom

Where to put everything and how to keep it organized is an ongoing question throughout our house. Before I got married many knew me for my extremely organized closet as the clothes were organized by color and item. Today though, I tend to find myself pulling out my hair while pacing around in circles. Why you may ask? Beside the fact that our house has teeny tiny closets, I also had to venture back to those kindergarten years to re-learn how to play nice with Alex and ultimately how to share. Laugh all you want but when you marry your opposite in terms of their organizational likes and dislikes it's enough to make this girl break down in tears... I place 99.9% of the blame on my hormones rather than my OCD of course!

After a day of going through all the closets within the house and figuring out just how much stuff Alex we have, we realized this wouldn't be a quick fix. Organizing closets can be approached in a couple ways depending on the space you have. First we wrote down each room that we wanted to organize and from there we listed the different storage options we have available.
  

Getting Started

In terms of our master bedroom, we have two dressers in our room that should hold some clothes but right now they are holding a lot of bathroom products since the bathrooms in our house lack any storage capabilities. Because of that, most everything we own in terms of clothing has to be hung up in our closets. Though our closet is somewhat long the problem lies with the little black holes that have sprouted on the far ends. For me personally this was a huge problem because a lot of my clothes got trapped in this space and it was hard to get anything out. In our closet the left half has all of my clothes while the right half has all of Alex's Navy uniforms and between the two of use there was no room in between. We also have a long shelf above the closet rod and this space used to hold some shirts and shorts for Alex but we soon realized that the space wasn't appropriate as piles of clothing came falling down on a daily basis.
  

Organizing the Closet

The first step we took in organizing the closet was to pull everything out and donate anything that wasn't being worn. Once we did that we then made sure that all the hangers were the same size and color to help balance everything out. We were fortunate that we had the help of my mom because she found some great storage systems at Marshalls that worked perfectly for this space. She sent us a 10 shelf system typically used for shoes as well as a 6 shelf system that we are using to store all of Alex's works hats along with some uniform accessories. The last part of organizing our master closet was to make a DIY hanging pant rod for my side. Literally taking but 10 minutes to create and only $3 to make, I was able to hang all of my pants below my shirts giving our clothes some more breathing space.
  

The Result...

The first picture to the left is my side of the closet with my shirts ontop and pants on the DIY hanging rod below. I also used the 10 shelf for a couple of my everyday shoes, sandals and slipplers along with my belts in the lower three. The second picture to the right is Alex side of the closet with all of his Navy uniforms. We also used the entire 6 shelf to store his PT gear in the first two shelves, his uniform accessories in the black basket and his work hats below. We still have the entire shelf above the closet rod to use but we want to buy a couple baskets before putting anything up there again. A mess full of clothes in the face is never fun!

DIY Hanging Closet Rod

As mentioned in our How to Organize a Closet posts, we figured a great way to add space to our Master closet as well as Nursery closet was to make a simple and affordable hanging rod. Literally taking but 10 minutes to create and only $3 to make, I was able to hang all of my pants below my shirts giving the clothes in our Master bedroom more breathing space as well as adding more space to our smaller Nursery closet.
  

 What you need:

• One 3/4" X 48" rod (I found mine at A.C Moore and cut it in half to make two rods)
• Thick ribbon
• Paint
• Hot-glue

  

How to make it:

Note: Step 1 is optional and even though I had black paint on hand for the rod we put in our bedroom this project I figured wouldn't need it since every square inch of the rod would be covered. The hanging rod in the Nursery was a different story though; you can actually see the rod so we went ahead and painted it brown to help coordinate with the hanging shelves.
1. Paint the entire rod in a desired color.
2. While drying, measure the length of 2 pieces of ribbon that will be used to hang both sides of the rod making sure to leave some extra for tying a knot and bow.
3. Glue one end of the ribbon to the painted rod; once dry wrap the ribbon around the rod a couple times making sure to add some glue every now and then.
4. Repeat step 3 for the remaining side of the rod.
5. Hang in the closet making a double knot and finishing with a bow!

The Result...

Pretty simple project which honestly not only saved us some money considering most hanging closet rods cost about $20 but also gave the closets some character. Below is the picture of the Nursery closet as it shows the hanging closet rod the best.

DIY Wall Letters

Along with finding a common theme of having a mobile within a Nursery room we also found wall letters to be a popular addition to the room. We found that while many stores and websites create custom wall letters they honestly post a hefty price tag that go along with them. For us personally spelling out Nicholas would definitely cause a dent in our wallet. The solution you may ask... DIY wall letters of course!

We looked around at different ways to creating our own wall art and in the process we came across this example:

8 letters in this style = $145

Realizing that an 8 letter name like Nicholas would be a costly addition to the room we decided that we would make on our own wall letters. When we saw the above example we knew that this is the look we wanted. We figured this would be a great way to add texture as well as emphasize the colors in the Nursery. So with my coupons in hand I ventured off to our local Michael's and A.C Moore in search of the supplies.

What you'll need:

• 8 X 10 canvas (I found a 10 pack at A.C Moore for $20 but used a 50% off coupon)
• 5" pre-cut wooden letters (I found all my letters at Michael's for $2 a piece)
• Fabric (Our bedding set has a pack of 4 matching flannel blankets for $10)
• Paint (2 fl.oz bottle in brown for about $2 at A.C Moore)
• Ribbon (10 yard in brown for about $2 at Michael's)
• Hot-glue

This project took me a whole day to make and I blame that on having to paint my letters. When I went to Michael's to get the letters I of course fell in love with the letters that were already painted white. No-joke each letter took about 7 coats of paint. In the end though it was oh-so worth it!
 

How to make it:

This tutorial will vary depending on how many letters you have as well as how many different patterns of fabric you are using. I'm going to go ahead and lead you step by step on how I created my 8 wall letters using 4 different patterns of fabric.

1. Iron out the 4 pieces of fabric.
2. Cut 2 squares measuring 12 X 14 from each fabric.
3. Take 1 piece of fabric and glue to each of the 4 sides of the canvas making sure that the 12 X 14 piece of fabric sits on the 8 X 10 canvas in these dimensions.
Note: To get a wrinkle free look make sure to glue one side after the other while stretching the fabric as you go.
4. Secure the fabric to the back of the canvas by gluing again.
5. Cut away any unwanted fabric.
6. Take the ribbon and glue around the side of the canvas in one long strip.
7. Paint your wooden letters.
8. After your letters are dry, glue each letter in the center of your 8 X 10 fabric covered canvas.
Note: Step 9 is optional and while I did not do this, I am debating on whether or not to add ribbon to the top of my wall letters. We thought it might look too girlie but will have to do a test with one of them to see if we like it with or without it.
9. Add a piece of ribbon to the top left and right of the canvas.
10. Hang you wall letters!

The Result:

Being the perfectionist that I am I have to go out and buy a leveling tool because I have an odd feeling that the last three letters L-A-S slant downwards. Too funny I know but I stood there for a good 5 minutes with Alex saying "You're kidding right?!" We have yet to have built a tool-box with all the essential tools but hopefully one day we will tackle that.

DIY Nursery Mobile

Once Alex and I found our bedding it was on to the fun part of creating our Nursery; accessories and decorations baby! Possibilities are endless when it comes to adding colorful and stimulating decorations to a Nursery that we honestly had to make a top-five list since we didn't want to crowd the room with too much stuff. While this particular project wasn't at the top of our list I couldn't help but make it first!
   
While researching and finding inspiration of Nurseries that other parents had made we came across a similar accessory in almost all. A crib mobile. We later learned that our bedding set actually had a matching mobile that was not available the day we went to the store but actually ventured back the next week to check it out. At $24.99 the mobile itself was pretty cute just not something we had to have I guess. It has 1 alligator, 1 bee, 1 giraffe and 1 turtle and spins around while playing music making this a great addition to the room. The biggest issue we had with the mobile though was the fact that it was made to attach to the crib and the frame was plastic.
   
The matching crib mobile:
   

While we really wanted to add a mobile to our Nursery, we ended up opting out of getting this crib mobile and decided to make a DIY mobile that we hung in the corner of the room. Here is our step by step process of how to make your own mobile...

   

What you'll need:

• 9 pieces of 12"x12" cardstock
• 2" circle punch
• small hole punch
• 8mm jump rings
• needle-nose pliers
• hot-glue gun
• 2 embroidery hoops (8" and 6")
• fishing line
• 1 screw hook

   
It took me a good solid week to make this but I found out that it would have been made a lot faster if I had bought a 2" circle punch. Not being pressed on time though I decided to hand draw my 2" circles and cut them out by hand.
   

How to make it:

1. Cut 189 circles (I know it's a lot!) with either a 2" circle punch or by drawing and cutting by hand.
2. Punch holes about 1/8" from the top and bottom of 7 circles.
Note: For the top and bottom circle, only punch one hole.
3. String together the 9 circles using jump rings and repeat until you have made 12 strands.
4. Hot-glue the top circle of each strand to the 8" embroidery hoop; space them about ¼" apart.
5. Make 9 more strands and repeat with 6" hoop.
6. Glue fishing line to three equidistant spots on the inside of each hoop.
7. Hang from hook, with 6" hoop about 5" lower than 8" hoop.
   

The Result:

Our mobile that matches the colors within the Nursery. We choose to do three different shades of both blue, brown and green and hang them from darkest to lightest. All in all we absolutely love our mobile!
  

Making Memories - Stage One of Four

After a couple trips to Michaels and A.C Moore along with a weeks worth of actual scrapbooking, the pages for Nicholas's First Year Album have been designed and created. Like I mentioned earlier, I tend to break my projects into stages and this Album has been based around that. Today's post is all about stage 1: desinging and creating the page layouts.
   

Stage 1 of 4

Part One - Designing the Page Layouts

I created this nineteen page album to highlight the important milestones and moments in Nicholas's first year and overall the album has 19 - 12 X 12 pages and can hold up to 45 photos.

Pages are as follows:

Page 1: "It's a boy!" - room for one double mat photo along with a journaling area for birth information and a circle mat for a footprint stamp.

Pages 2 & 3: "New Little Boy" - room for five double mat photos along with two journaling areas that will be filled with tid-bits from his early days and a quote reading "A brand new baby boy, to fill our lives and hearts with joy."

Pages 4 & 5: "Mommas Boy/Father & Son" - room for six double mat photos.

Pages 6 & 7: "Sleepyhead" - room for four double mat photos along with two journaling areas and a quote reading "Sleepyhead just close your eyes, listen to the lullabies. You are safe cuz mama's here. Dream sweet dreams my little dear."

Pages 8 & 9: "Making a Big Splash" - room for four double mat photos along with two journaling areas, a mat for a rubber ducky embellishments and a quote reading "Happy as a Duck in Water!"

Pages 10 & 11: "Messy Face" - room for four double mat photos along with two journaling areas for his favorite and least favorite foods, a mat for a highchair embellishment, three mat circles for other embellishments.

Pages 12 & 13: "A First Time for Everything" - room for seven double mat photos labeled with important milestones (First Haircut; Before & After, First Tooth and First Steps).

Pages 14 &15: "Family Ties" - room for six double mat photos and a quote reading "The best thing to hold onto in life is each other."

Pages 16 & 17: "How I Grew... and Grew" - room for twelve double mat photos for each month.

Pages 18 & 19: - "The Birthday Boy" - room for four double mat photos along with a journaling area, a mat for a birthday cake embellishment and a mat for a 1st Birthday tag.
  

Part Two - Creating the Pages

After making a blue-print like structure of how I wanted the pages to look it was off to the store. Though I have only made it to stage one of four, the album thus far was created using Me & My Big Ideas "Baby Boy" papers as well as some various solid color papers by Bazzil.

Page 1: "It's a boy!"
 

Pages 2 & 3: "New Little Boy"

 

Pages 4 & 5: "Mommas Boy/Father & Son"

Pages 6 & 7: "Sleepyhead"

Pages 8 & 9: "Making a Big Splash"

Pages 10 & 11: "Messy Face"

 

Pages 12 & 13: "A First Time for Everything"

 

Pages 14 &15: "Family Ties"

 

Pages 16 & 17: "How I Grew... and Grew"

Pages 18 & 19: - "The Birthday Boy"

Making Memories

Aside from cleaning the house and doing my daily chores, I have started to find myself with less energy and mobility. Blame it on being pregnant or by caring a baby in the left horn of my uterus I honestly view this new-found laziness as a positive. In the last couple of weeks I have not only planned out a nineteen page scrapbook album for Nicholas and all his first year moments, but I have also completed stage one of the overall book. I'm kind of a nerd in that I typically plan before I do, but I find that I work best this way.

For the scrapbook itself, I divided the book into four stages... 1) design and create the page layouts, 2) design and create the front and back cover of the album, 3) add decorative accessories, and 4) add coordinating pictures. While this project will be "in-progress" for some time, it has honestly been a fun and exciting way for Alex and I to think about all the wonderful memories that are to come.