Home Made Playdough Recipes

Play-Dough-Making Tips:

• Try using baby oil in place of cooking oil in play dough recipes- it smells better, won't mold, and remains soft for a long time. (Unless your kids tend to eat the play dough... then you'd better stick w/ cooking oil!) 
• Another way to make your play dough smell better is to use some vanilla or orange extract.
• To make play dough last longer, use cream of tartar and/or store it in the fridge. 
• For colored playdough: add food coloring, Kool-Aid or Gelatin mix to the water. To make several colors out of one batch, divide the finished dough into balls, then drip liquid coloring in a well down the middle (you can use a straw for this) and knead it in. 
• For brown colored playdough: add Crystal Light Original Iced tea or cocoa with the water.
• For sparkly play dough, add in glitter during the hand-mixing/kneading.
• Store all play-dough in an air-tight container or Ziploc bag.
• *All recipes on this page are non-edible! (You can google for an edible play-dough recipe, but I'd rather use cookie dough if we're going to eat it!)

Hoppy Halloween! (Frog & Tadpole Costume Tutorials)

Here are the costumes I whipped up for my boys this year:

DIY Baby's Sleep Sack (Sewing Tutorial)

When our little guy outgrew his 0-9 mo sleep sack at age 6 mo, I came up with this pattern for a new one that will be plenty long for his growing little legs. 

CLICK HERE TO VIEW OR DOWNLOAD TUTORIAL!

 
One of my readers, Sarah S, used my tutorial to make a sleep sack for her son. She wrote me back, glad for the  "super easy sleep sack pattern". She's a beginning seamstress and thought it was very easy to make. Here's hers, modeled by her sweet little Sammy:

Thanks for sharing Sarah!

No Sweat Sweat Pants!

Want to make some pajama / sweat pants for yourself or the kiddos? Here's how to do it without buying a pattern!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW OR DOWNLOAD TUTORIAL

Fleece Hat with Ear Flaps - Tutorial and Printable Pattern!

This is one of my favorite sewing projects... it's cute, warm, practical, and so so versatile. I have a downloadable pattern available to print for babies to adults!

Above I added little pom poms but you can add simple animal eyes or ears, or any number of variations to make each hat unique and fun. I used this same pattern when making the hat for my son's frog Halloween costume... 

Rag Quilt Sewing Tutorial

This is the quilt that anyone can make, even if you've never sewn before! If you're at all intimidated by making traditional quilts, then this is the quilt for you! It's very doable. And you can make it in any size you want- for babies to adults.  

Here's what one of my quilts looks like:

DIY Custom Artwork for the Nursery

Just because you're not using a store-bought set doesn't mean you can't have some coordinating artwork in the baby's room. In our first son's room I accented with Curious George, who was on a wall clock, some fabric I used in his quilt, and displayed a bit on a shelf. For the artwork, I used a couple Curious George calendar pages, trimmed them to get rid of the little nail hole, then glued them down to a piece of 12x12 scrapbook paper which looked like matting. Then I painted wooden frames, and voila! Curious George artwork! 

Another option is to make some custom artwork, using Mod Podge and a little creativity. For this project, I found a pack of coordinating scrapbook papers that also coordinated with the fabric colors I was using in in my second son's nursery.  I bought a 12x12" paper pack to cover the 8x8 canvases, since I needed extra inches to go around the edges. Then I drew out the designs I wanted  (based on my favorite images from a google image search), cut them out from the scrapbook paper, and mod podged them to art canvases. Here they are:  

Have you made your own cute nursery wall-art? Email me your photos and I'll share them here!