Princess Costume Tutorial

Here's a GREAT tutorial to an easy, quick, princess costume for Halloween!  It's Always Autumn is another great blog with lots of wonderful sewing, cooking and decorating tutorials. 

Spooky Halloween Pillows Tutorial

Looking to add a little Halloween decor to your home?  The Girls at Eighteen25 have a tutorial for a basic pillow case (that fits your existing throw pillows!) with some spooky faces on them!  Check out the tutorial from Christina (Lincoln Street Blog) at http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2013/09/flannel-halloween-face-pillows.html

Blanket Giveaway

To celebrate the launch of our new blog, we're giving away a snuggle blanket!  Your choice of one of these three blankets if you win!  Prize can be shipped anywhere in the USA.  See how to enter below.

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Alphabet, Books & Airplanes Baby Shower (FREE Printables)

I co-hosted a baby shower last week for one of my girlfriends.  The baby's nursery is done up in an airplane theme, so we had to include that of course!  Scroll all the way through the post for a free download of the alphabet book project and the link for the bookplates.

 

Adorable airplane cake by Peachy Sweets Cakes

 
The mom to be mentioned that the baby didn't have many books yet, so we asked guests to bring their favorite books to start Parker's library.  We gave each guest a couple bookplates when they came in the door and asked them to fill them out to include with their gifts.  I found these adorable airplane bookplate printables (and many other themes) for FREE at http://www.activityvillage.co.uk.  I tweaked them a little to include the gift line on each one. 

This is the verse we included on the invitations:

From Peter Rabbit to Mother Goose
Goodnight Moon and Dr. Seuss
Curious George and Winnie the Pooh
Eloise and Babar, too.
In lieu of a gift, please bring
your favorite childhood classic.
Let’s build a library for Parker
that will be fantastic!

Both of us agreed that we did not particularly enjoy the typical baby shower games, but we wanted some sort of activity to keep the guests occupied.  My go-to is normally freezer stencil onesies, but I didn't have enough time to prep them.  I stumbled across this idea on a couple different websites and tweaked it to make it my own.

I created "blank" pages for each letter of the alphabet.  The guests were asked to draw a picture corresponding to the letter and write the word for the picture at the bottom. 

Everyone was a little apprehensive about drawing, at first, but it turned out great!  I had the pages laminated and bound at the local office supply store.  It should be nice and sturdy for the new baby to play with.

For the FREE airplane bookplates, go to http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/bookplates.htm.  For the book: I set my printer to print 2 pages per sheet of paper, so that each book page is 8.5"x5.5" after I cut them.  For a printable download of the ABC book, click ABC Book Instructions and ABC Book Pages