DIY fitted crib sheet.

I couldn’t find any decently priced orange crib sheets anywhere, so I figured I’d try my hand at DIY’ing one.

I bought a flat twin sheet at Walmart for just $5 – cheaper than I could buy fabric, plus I had some leftover for other projects. I also picked up some elastic at JoAnn’s, and that’s basically all ya need for this project…

I referenced a bunch of different online tutorials and combined different parts of them to give it a shot. First, I folded my fabric in half and measured one side to be around 35” {you want a rectangle of fabric 70” x 45”}…

Then the other side I measured to be about 45”…

Then, with my fabric folded into quarters, I cut a 9”x 9” square out of the corner.

Once opened, this left me with all four corners cut out…

The next step is to gather the corners together and pin them. This is hard to explain, but easy to figure out. See where the scissors are above? On each of the 4 corners of your unfolded fabric, you take the point that’s above the handles and match it to the point that’s directly south of the tip of the scissors….

Sew where you pinned on all four corners…

I sewed them 3 or 4 times to make sure they were sturdy because I’m betting most of the pulling and wear will happen at the corner seams…

From there, you want to fold over your raw edges twice and create a casing {about 1/2”} for your elastic band…

Sew your casing, but remember to leave a couple inches open so you can insert your elastic…

The length of elastic will depend on your crib size and preference of how tight you want your sheet, so just test it out.Add a safety pin to the end of your elastic, and begin the monotonous process of threading it through your casing…

Once you have your desired tightness/length of your elastic & it completely threaded through your sheet, you want to overlap your elastic & sew it so you have a complete loop of elastic…

And this is what you’ll have…

And here it is on the little one’s mattress…

Close up of the corners…

And the wider view…

To be honest, it was a lot easier to make than I expected. The worst part was threading the elastic, and that was just boring, not difficult! I think I’ll gladly use the customized $7 crib sheet {with leftover elastic & fabric}. Not too shabby! :)

DIY hooded towel.

I made a couple of these hooded towels for some precious baby boys. After reviewing a bunch of different tutorials and trying the process out once, I improved the process the second time around & it was much easier. Here’s the final process in a nutshell using 1 hand towel & 1 body towel.

Here’s the hand towel…

I folded it in half horizontally {hamburger style} ;)

And sewed the sides {where my hand is}, leaving the top in the photo above open…

Then you lay it back on the table as in this photo, except your sides will be sewn shut…

You take the corner where my hand is, and tuck it diagonally into the opposite corner to get this…

Then you simply flatten out the triangle/re-fold it to get this…

Now you want to pin the hand towel/hood onto the center top of your body towel

And sew it together slowly {it’s thick with all that fabric, so it helps to be careful as you do this step}…

So then you’re left with the basic hooded towel…

I wanted a bit more pizazz to the towel, so I cut out the baby’s initial. “J” for Jonah!

I used pinking shears to cut it so that it won’t ravel in the wash. I used a zig-zag stitch to sew on the “J”…

Not perfect, just homemade…

Here’s the final product…

I like that the towels are so much bigger than the baby hooded towels you buy in the store. I think I need to make one for my little one too, {although I can’t do an initial because we still haven’t decided on her name!}

My weekend.

I stopped at Target on my way home from work on Friday and saw this…

Look familiar? It may be a stretch, but to me it’s eerily reminiscent of a mega version of my DIY mobile! I think Target’s marketing team & I are on the same wave-length. :)

I also picked up a super cute green tea kettle on clearance. It may be weird to say this about a tea kettle, but I seriously love it. It’s so cute! {And it will be even cuter when we finally get around to adding butcher block countertop & green mosaic tile backsplash…someday.}

Eugene’s baseball team had their first game/double header of the season. I’m so proud of this coach. They won the first game & lost the second in 9 innings. He was pleased with how well they played, which makes me happy too.

After watching the first game, I scooted out to a bachelorette party for one of my college volleyball teammates. I laughed a ton & enjoyed catching up with friends. And the little one went crazy {moved a ton} the whole time because of the music, loud laughing, and girly yelling. I’m sure she was just wanting to join in on the girl’s night out. ;)

We enjoyed a really good church service. Our church just got a new pastor, and he’s done a really great job already. So challenging. I wrote the scripture from today’s sermon on my kitchen chalkboard as a reminder for this week…

Eugene & I enjoyed lunch at my parents’ place. I asked my dad to snap a picture since we really don’t have many {any?} photos of us together since I’ve been pregnant…

He makes me happy too, a little more than my tea kettle. ;)

A baby shower for Jonah.

The women in my church group threw a sock monkey themed baby shower for one of our fellow group mates who is due to have baby Jonah in late April. The shower was a group effort {I didn’t do much at all}, and it turned out really cute!

There were little paper socks cut out and guests were invited to write advice & encouragement for the mom-to-be and hang the socks on the clothesline…

The momma is using sock monkeys to decorate Jonah’s nursery…

She got some really nice gifts, and my marketing-slanted mind loved all the cute wrapping paper and bags!

Guests completed a mad-lib story about birth and shared the funniest versions as our shower game…

And the food was delish – cheese fondue and salty dipping bites on one table and a chocolate fountain with fruit and sweets on another…

The momma & baby Jonah seemed to be happy. Isn’t she glowing?! {That cracks me up when people say that I have a pregnancy glow, but Sarah really does look radiant here! ;)}

This is our lovely group of beautiful women…

I’m thankful for the friendships growing from this group. And speaking of growing, three of us are pregnant so our group is most certainly growing!