First Pets and mommy projects

My little little nugget just had his first birthday!  I can't believe it's been a year already and it's so amazing and sad at the same time.  He is literally doing something new everyday.  I am so proud but it's bitter sweet.  <3

A week before he was to turn 1 I decided that I NEEDED to make him a handmade gift.  I also wanted to make him a banner that read "Happy 1st Birthday Qais!"  The latter did not get completed because I didn't realize how much work designing and sewing letters really was.  I also kept elaborating on the original idea.  When I realized that it just was not going to be finished I put all my energies into completing his gift.  After much contemplating I came up with a stuffed fishbowl! 

The body of the bowl is made out of vintage hounds tooth blue fabric that I picked up from someone on freecycle! Yay!  Also included in that batch was a lot of wool fabric, some kind of heavy duty off white fabric and other various interesting vintage fabrics that I have been making use of.  The heavy duty off white fabric is reserved for a straight jacket that my sister asked me to make.  It may sound odd,  but if you knew my sister, you would totally understand ;-P




Everything else is made from felt that I picked up at the thrift store that I used to volunteer at.  It came with several 8" x 10" sheets of various colors all for a mere $1.49!  The stuffing was left over from old couch cushions that I picked up to use for the floor cushions that I made a few years ago.  I still have tons left that I have used for several more pillows I have to show you soon. :-)

Here is the starting of the banner.  The idea developed into having the letters being attached to the string by buttons so that it can be changed for any occasion.  That will resume progress once I have finished with some tailoring for my better half.  So far 95% of the banner has been constructed out of old clothing owned by myself and a friend.  Out of the things that I owned, all of it was pre-owned as well.  So I must say that it is reusing at its finest!  The other 5% has been from the batch of freecycled fabric that I got and used for the fish bowl as well.

My last post was about re purposing and we have furthered that project as well.  Our trunk as officially turned into a place to hide the little little nuggets toys.  Early on we decided that we didn't want the fact that we had a child rule our living space.  We knew we wanted to try and keep our place, "our" place and have visible toys and things to a minimum.  I have to say, so far mission accomplished but who knows how long we can hang on!  

Everyday the toys come out and every night, or mostly every night, the toys go back and we have our space back.

I am currently finishing up this post while Daddy feeds LLN his lunch and I can tell that my assistance is needed.  Back to motherhood for me, but I look forward to sharing more projects with you in the near future!