Pinned It and Did It: Convection Mittens

My boy's mittens...

Mittens I pinned...

                 Source: whipup.net via Jessica on Pinterest

It gets pretty cold here and I know my little boy plays outside a lot when he's at school in the morning. He has a pair of thin, cotton gloves that are hardly warm and kind of tough for him to put on by himself. So, as you can see from the pictures, I made him some mittens.

I used a great tutorial for the convection mittens that I pinned here. It's from a guest post by foxflat on whipup and I especially loved it because it was beautifully illustrated with hand-drawn images. You don't see that much these days in online tutorials and it was very refreshing! You should definitely take a look at it, even if you aren't going to make a pair of the mittens.

I loved the convection mittens pattern. It was clear and easy to follow. I mixed the colors up for my little boy's mittens. He loves blue. I had three shades of blue left over from the gnome hats. Perfect! I made two small modifications to the mitten pattern: (1) I used fleece for the inner and outer layers of the mittens. (2) I added elastic to the waist so they wouldn't slide of my little guy's hands.

I am so please with how they turned out...and my guy loves them. The convection mitten pdf pattern is definitely a success and I will be keeping it! 

☼

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Pinned It & Did It - Christmas Tree Skirt

My Christmas tree skirt...

Christmas tree skirt that I pinned...

Pinned via pinmarklet from curbly.com

I pinned a few Christmas tree skirts on my Christmas board because I knew I wanted to make one this year. The last few years, I've wrapped random pieces of fabric or table cloths around the skirt, but I really wanted a Christmas skirt that was special, festive, and one that we can use each Christmas to come. 

So, I followed this tutorial by CraftMel on Curbly. It was very clear and easy to follow. The most difficult part in making this Christmas tree skirt was choosing a snowflake design. I took about three days looking at differenty types of snowflake designs, and then cut out about ten (from our recycle paper) before finally settling on this one...

Cutting it out of the large piece of felt wasn't too bad and would have been much easier if I hadn't had four three-to-five-year-olds playing in the room, me constantly saying, "Remember, don't step in the hot lava!!" lava=felt 

I made one small, time consuming change to the method of making the Christmas tree skirt. Since I really want to use it year after year, and also because I have children running & playing around the tree from time to time, I decided to sew the white snowflake to the red circle. Lots of pins and three days of sewing for short periods of time and I finally finished!

We had our tree for two days without a skirt. It's much warmer now...and prettier.

☼

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Pinned It & Did It: Homemade Play Dough

It's getting darker earlier now, so it felt like dinner time, but we had a couple hours to kill before our actual dinner time. Making our own play dough was the perfect solution to my kids' boredom.

My Play Dough...

Play Dough I pinned...

                                               Source: favoritesandthings.blogspot.co.uk via Jessica on Pinterest

The play dough is a fairly new pin and I didn't expect to use it so soon after pinning, but it was the perfect activity to do with my kids yesterday afternoon. And I'm happy to say with very slight modifications to the original recipe, it was a total pinned it & did it success!

The original recipe is on Favorites and Things. I can't remember how I came across it originally, but her play dough recipe post has a few recipes for play dough and other types of modeling clay. I'm sure I'll try some of her other recipes on another dark and dreary afternoon. For now, I'll share how we made ours with the small modifications. 

What you need:

2 cups flour

1 cup salt

1 tbsp oil

1 cup water 

food coloring (optional)

glitter (optional)

(the original recipe used 3/4 cup water)

Step 1: Mix flour and salt

Step 2: Add food coloring to the water.

Step 3: Gradually add oil and water to the dry mix.

(add more water to make the dough stickier OR more flour to make the dough less sticky)

Step 4: Add glitter and mix and squish until it's all mixed in.

Step 5: Play with your homemade play dough.

My kids had fun mixing the water and oil in with their hands. Squishy! We were low on colours so we only used yellow. The play dough was not very colourful from the yellow. 

This inspired us to make it more exciting with glitter! We love sparkly glitter! The best part of sparkly play dough is that the glitter stays in the play dough. 

Roll it...squish it...mold it. Make a snail and show your little girl how to make a snail. It's great fun for the kids and great therapy for me.

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Pinned It & Did It: Mug Cozy Crochet

My crocheted mug cozy...

Crocheted mug cozy I pinned...

                                          Source: 3.bp.blogspot.com via Jessica on Pinterest

I love how pinterest tells me exactly when I pinned something. I originally pinned this crochet mug cozy 22 weeks ago from my mom's board Crochet and Knit. She's always finding great projects to crochet, knit, and sew. She shows quite a few of them on her blog, Jerry and Kay. Yesterday, I needed a quick, relaxing project and thought this mug cozy would be perfect...but I couldn't find the original pattern for it anywhere! So, after studying the picture above as well as some others, I attempted to make my own mug cozy without a pattern.

It worked. It's not exactly the mug cozy pinned, but I love that I got inspiration from my pin. Making this mug cozy made feel very productive, even though it was a small, quick project. And I  really enjoyed taking a step forward in my crocheting ability by making something without a pattern...something I've mostly been scared to do.

So, another successful pinned it & did it attempt has been made! ...and I think I'll be crocheting more of these mug cozies soon. And if (when) I feel up for another challenge, I might even attempt to write a mug cozy pattern!

**UPDATE**

My mom found the original pattern (click here for it) for the pinned mug cozy. Thanks, Mom!

☼

I'm linking up to these fabulous parties!

I'd love for you to follow my pinterest board.

Pinned It & Did It: Braided Scarf

My braided scarf...

Braided scarf I pinned...

                                                                    Source: nettevivante.blogspot.co.uk via Jessica on Pinterest

I absolutely loved this braided scarf when I came across it and pinned it immediately. I love the color and the style.

I've been on the lookout for some great fabric to make this scarf, but haven't had any luck (slim pickings where I am). However, I did have a few stained, ill-fitting shirts stored away to make something on a rainy (or sunny) day. I thought I'd use them to make something for my little girl or guy. Instead, I made something for me! Wow...I can hardly believe it. I made something from my actual "things to make for me" pinterest board that has been more of a place to dream than a place where dreams come true. When was the last time I made something for me??? Maybe this hat. That was a while ago.

Nette describes how much fabric she used here and gives some sort of instructions here. I had to do some fiddling since I used a shirt instead of purchased fabric. My adjustments included adding two seams in order to make long enough strips to braid. I used lace like Nette, but wrapped it around all the lengths in two spots instead of one so that all my stitches would be hidden. 

Another difference was the type of fabric: mine was cotton and hers was viscose. The cotton worked well, but doesn't seem as full as hers. Next time I'd try to make my unbraided length wider but couldn't here because I was limited to the amount of fabric in my shirt.

Overall, this was a success! Hooray! It was easy to make, I got to reuse a lonely shirt, and I now have a new cute scarf to add a little bit excitement to a plain shirt any day!

☼

I'm linking up to these fabulous parties!

I'd love for you to follow my pinterest board.

Pinned It & Did It : Frozen Balloons

This edition of "Pinned It & Did It" makes me laugh when I think about it because unlike the gnome hats, this was pretty much a complete failure. I pinned this idea months ago via my sister...

Source: Uploaded by user via Jessica on Pinterest

The title of the pin reads is as follows: "Fill balloons with water, freeze and use and reuse them instead of ice! Good idea for birthday parties!" 

How clever, right? 

I was waiting and waiting to have a party that I could use the idea. The day of the fairy party was perfect - not too hot, not too cold, not too sunny, but not too grey either. So we needed cold drinks. I asked King Damascus (read About Me to find out who he is) to fill the balloons and freeze them. Easy. Ten fit in our freezer...plenty for our small party. Before the guests arrived, King Damascus cleaned a wheelbarrow that I thought would be cute to hold the drinks in the garden. Then we added the frozen balloons...

Snap...crackle...pop!

The balloons popped. All of them.

What a contrast to the festive idea that was pinned. I just made myself laugh because I realised there is a contrast in our beverages as well. Ha. At least we had some really large ice cubes to keep the drinks cold!

☼

Update:

I've linked up to these fabulous parties!

Pinned It & Did It

I've been on Pinterest for about a year and a half now which means I have a good little collection of pins for crochet, sewing, baking, upcycling and so on. I thought it would be a satisfying and attainable goal to start completing tasks I've pinned and have a regular post about them: Pinned It & Did It. 

Some will be successful and some will be failures. I thought I'd start on a positive note with a pin I just completed that was a success!

                 Source: etsy.com via Jessica on Pinterest

I pinned these gnome hats as possible favors to have for the boys at my daughter's fairy birthday party. I loved how the weren't just a plain cone shape like so many I have seen. I also love the beard...can a gnome hat get any cuter??

                                                        Source: etsy.com via Jessica on Pinterest

I spent a while just staring at these pictures, trying to figure out how I could make them. I noticed there weren't any side seams, which I liked. And even though I absolutely love the beards, I decided to leave them off of my hats so that the boys could possibly wear them on a daily basis and not just for play. 

I also wanted the hats to fit a bit looser and floppier than the pinned gnome hats. 

I drew a couple rough sketches on some paper, cut them out and taped them together to get a feel for what the shape of my pattern needed to be. 

Once I felt comfortable with my pattern, I sewed a test hat. It turned out really cute, but really small! Small enough to fit a baby, but definitely not any of the kids coming to the party. 

So, I made another test hat that was larger and loved it!

I made enough in different shades of blue chosen by the birthday girl and her brother. I'm hoping the kids will love them enough to wear them for warmth in the winter. 

 

Peek-A-Boo! 

When asked, "How many chocolate marshmallows did you eat at the party?"

He coolly answered, "All of them."

Update:

I've linked up to these fabulous parties!