Cloth Wipes

I think I am in the majority when I am changing a baby's diaper...

This is my diaper-changing process:
- Lift baby's legs
- Wipe the baby
- Put the wipe in the dirty diaper
- Roll up the dirty diaper
- Throw dirty diaper in bin

It is the most natural thing to put the dirty wipe in the dirty diaper.  Well, what do you do if you are cloth diapering?  Do you wipe baby, then look around for the trash while you are holding the dirty wipe in your fingers extending your arm away from you as far as possible, then go back to baby to wipe again and do the whole thing over?

Why not just cloth wipe too!?  You get to keep the same process of just wipe and put it in the diaper, then wipe again, and so on.  You are doing the load of laundry for the diapers anyway, so now everything will just go in the same place.  I love it!

I did some research (this wasn't my original idea) and decided that I wanted to use flannel receiving blankets to make the wipes.  Thankfully someone from work gave me about 7 old ones!

Here's what I did...

- I cut the blankets up into 8.5in x 8.5in squares -

- I chose which fabrics to put together (I tried doing a design side and colored side) -

- I put the right sides of the 2 pieces facing together (it looks like it's inside out) and sewed a 1/4 in seam almost all the way around.  You want to leave about 4 inches or so, so you can then pull all the fabric through the little hole so it's right-side out (not inside out) -

Now we are here: 

There is a little hole where you had to pull the fabric
through to make it look like this

Tuck that hole in so you have a clean seam

Press all of your sides down to
make sewing cleaner

Then sew around the entire wipe (all 4 edges)
to make it look nice

There you have it, a stack of cloth wipes!

Now you fold them in half and put them in
your wipe warmer, along with the wipe solution
(water, baby wash, baby oil)

If you fold them a certain way, you can even use this little guy.
They will pull out like tissues do out of a box!

Ta Da!

Christmas Card Display

Well this is a little late, but I still wanted to share the idea because I loved it so much.  I love getting Christmas cards from friends and family.  I want to save them and look at them, but they never have a nice place to go.

One of my favorite blogs, or potentially my favorite, is iheartorganizing.  She had a post on how to organize your Christmas cards.  And along with just about everything else she does, I loved it!  It was so easy too!

I bought a big snowflake from somewhere, Walmart maybe, and some thick red ribbon.  Hot glued them together.  Put that on a 3M strip on our pantry door and used tape to stick the cards on the ribbon, and VOILA!

We will do this every Christmas :)

Not-so-artsy-but-practical picture of
what it looks like

Kate's Christmas Present

It is ridiculous how much Kate does for me!  She is always writing me letters and sending me cards and gifts in the mail.  It's very overwhelming because I can't keep up with being as good of a friend to her as she is to me.

So for Christmas I wanted to make her something myself.  I saw a really cute DIY toiletry bag tutorial on this Skip to my Lou website.  I had already been at Hobby Lobby that week and saw a fabric that I thought she would like, so I went back and grabbed it, along with a PUL fabric for the inside (this makes it sort of water-proofy.)

I followed the instructions (the best I could) and came out with this:

That's a little loofa in there.  I was going to pack it with
bath stuff but I decided to go with some other goodies

The picture actually makes it look nicer than it really is.  I wrote Kate a little Christmas card with it and explained to her not  to unzip it all the way because the zipper kind of gets stuck.  Even when I pin 2 fabrics together, I still struggle to keep them in line.  This bag is all sorts of crooked, but it comes from the heart!

Rice Bag

Well, the big day of Addison's arrival is any day now (due January 16!), and along with the coming of a child is LABOR!  What woman doesn't want to be as most prepared as possible.  Our hospital bags are packed, an email is ready to be sent out to let people know it's time, and phone calls to parents are ready to be made.

I have received numerous pieces of advice, all of which I am very grateful, and a few of those tips were around back labor.  If you are having back labor, one possible mode of pain relief is heat, so I made a rice bag!

A rice (or sometimes corn or beans) bag can be put in the microwave for a minute or two and then placed anywhere for pain relief.  Or you could just put it at the foot of your bed at night to keep your toes warm until you fall asleep.  I guess there are multiple things you could do with it...

Be careful though, there are certain things that are better to be put in the bag to keep it from moistening up when it's heated, and eventually mildewing... or even worse, getting maggots... (thanks for the warning mom!)

My Rice Bag

Thanks Mom!

Well, since my mom is my number one fan and the only person I know will read my blog (other than Kyle), I just want to say THANK YOU for my Sewing Machine!  I have done so many things with it already!

My Christmas present from Mom

My mom :)

Oh you know what, I want to thank my wonderful husband too!  Thanks to his Christmas gift, I actually have a very cute place to store my machine - a sewing machine bag!  Who knew?  THANK YOU Kyle!

My Christmas Present from Kyle

Kyle (he doesn't like this picture but I love it)