It's A Sock Monkey Party!

   Little Ro is one!  This past Saturday we celebrated our little monkey's first birthday party.  This past week has been very emotional as we reflected over the past year and hit many different milestones.  We are bottle free, formula free, pacifier free, and now Ro can ride in the car facing the front!
   We've called Ro our "monkey" since the first week of her life when she would cling to things with her toes, so going with a sock monkey party was a no brainer! I found a wonderful party pack for the celebration from Printable Candee Designs on Etsy who created the pack for us!  I could not have been happier with how everything turned out!

Lesson learned...Some things are better bought than made.  These monkeys took hours!

JanJan and Mimi with the birthday girl!

Love you sweet girl! Happy Birthday :)

 

Birthday Tutu

   It's hard to believe that in a little over a week, little Ro will be one! After going to Canton and looking on Etsy for outfits for her first birthday, I decided to make it myself! $50 was a little hard to swallow for an outfit that she would wear for 2 hours.  I browsed tons of tutu tutorials (thank you pinterest) and did a little customizing to make the perfect one for us :).   This is seriously one of the easiest things I've made, and it was fast enough to prep and make while Rowan napped.

To make you will need scissors, 1" wide elastic, 6" wide spools of tulle, cardboard, a sewing machine (for the elastic, not tulle), and a movie to watch while you create :). I chose Harry Potter, and while I highly recommend it, feel free to choose whichever movie you prefer ;)

Start out by wrapping the elastic around your little one's waste and cut the desired circumference. Don't add to the length. Rowan's ended up being 16 1/2" long. Overlap the ends about 1/2" and sew together to create a circle. I went forwards and backwards over the elastic with my needle a few times to make sure the stretching wouldn't break the seam. 

I bought my tulle from Hobby Lobby who was having a 50% off sale of their tulle. Score! Since I wanted two colors I bought a spool of red and a spool pink with them being 6"wide and 25yards long. I ended up using 39 strips of each color, which left me a good amount of tulle left over. Now, to cut the strips...

Here is the super cool trick that I got off of pinterest thanks to Treasures for Tots.

First, measure your little one to decide how long you want the skirt, multiply by 2, and then add a couple inches to the number.  I decided I wanted Ro's skirt 7" long, then I multiplied to get 14", then I added two inches to get 16" tulle strips.  Here's the trick! Instead of busting out your huge cutting board and rotary cutter to cut your tulle, simply cut a piece of cardboard half the length of your strips. I cut my cardboard 8" long and then began to wrap my tulle around the cardboard starting at one of the ends.

Once you have a good amount of tulle wrapped around your cardboard, cut one end of the cardboard to make your perfectly sized strips! This saved tons of time!

                       

I used two strips for each knot to make the skirt more puffy.  Double knot the strips around the elastic.  I learned that the looser the first knot was, the less elastic showed through at the end.  You also don't want your first knot to be too tight because then the elastic won't stretch. Use your fingers to move the knots around so that they are towards the bottom of the elastic as shown below. Continue knotting around the elastic until complete! If you're using two colors like I did, alternate the colors after each knot.

                                          

Once you have tied all of your knots, rough the skirt up with your fingers to poof it out! You're done! Now stand back and admire your work :)