My little girl has lots of “hair things” and for a while, I just had them in a drawer in her dresser. But that’s not exactly the ideal storage solution… things get buried and you forget they’re there, or you KNOW there is a hair clip to match this outfit, but can’t find it, or headbands get tangled…

Enter: my storage solutions.

The first one is a quick and easy DIY project. Depending on how many hair clips your child has, and how long her name is, you can get wooden letters for her first initial, monogram (what I did), or spell her entire name (which would be crazy with Anneliese!).

I got these white wooden letters at Michael’s, and also picked up some aqua and yellow acrylic craft paint to decorate them with.

You’ll also need lengths of ribbon (I used grosgrain ribbon, and layered a .5” ribbon on top of a 1.5” ribbon, just for some interest.

And for the bottom of each ribbon, you’ll want another wooden shape, to cover the edge, give a “finished” look, and weigh down the ribbon a little bit (which was helpful when my daughter had just a few hair clips).

All you need to do is hot glue your ribbon to the back-center of each letter, and hot glue the smaller wooden shapes to the bottom of each one.

I hung my daughter’s on her sliding closet door with Command Strips, which were easy to install (if you can even call it installation) and won’t damage the door when we need to remove them.

Headbands create a different challenge. I’ve seen headband holders made of oatmeal canisters (which I think is a good idea for headbands with openings, like the harder plasticy ones), clotheslines with each headband pinned on with a clothes pin (cute, but what if you have more than 5 headbands?), and cup hooks usually on the bottom of a frame meant to hold the bows and clips (but you KNOW those little hooks would be overloaded with headbands very shortly).

I’m not sure when this idea popped into my head but I was SO excited about it when it did. This lets me see her headbands so I can find the right one, and I can easily pull it over the others and off the end… and, like the hair clip holder above, it takes up zero surface space on my daughter’s dresser or shelves!

It’s a hand towel rack, which I picked up at Lowe’s. Simple! It’s installed over the dresser, and holds lots of Anneliese’s headbands. There are a few that are wider or bulkier that I’ve put in one of her dresser drawers, but most of them are “out”  now, easily accessed, and pretty to look at!

I hope this post gave you some new ideas or helped you decide what to do with your daughter’s collection (or your own) of “hair pretties.”

If you enjoyed my ideas and pictures, please pass it on by clicking to share on facebook, twitter, G+, stumbleupon, or by pinning it on pinterest. Thanks so much!

I didn’t make PJs for Anneliese last year, but this year I repurposed a nightgown of my own that I haven’t been able to wear in a long time, and won’t be able to either (since it’s not breastfeeding friendly). The fabric is so pretty and soft, and I’m glad Anneliese can enjoy it.

I also cut up a camisole I had in the “for use as fabric” pile (I need to come up with a better storage system for upcycle-able stuff like that than a pile), to use for the sleeves and accents.

She is laughing here, I promise. Look at her cute chubby feet!

It’s not a perfect nightgown by any means (other than straight lines I’m kind of a sloppy seamstress), but it fits and it’s cute.

The nightgown I cut up already had the gathers under the bodice, so the new nightgown is nice and full.

And I made it extra-long because of all the growth-spurting Anneliese has been doing. Hopefully it’ll fit for a couple of months.

Anneliese explored the tree and looked at her presents, then went into her room to look at a book and get ready for bed.

The little flower is hand-sewn and hand-stitched onto the front, and the heart is blanket-stitched on by hand also.

A heart for my heart.

Stop and smell the roses.

It’s pretty compact. See?

And when you open it up, there are slots for 8 mini colored pencils (which I got at Michael’s) or crayons.

The other side is one big pocket for storing coloring pages. I drew my own, scanned them in and printed them 4-to-a-page. If you do a google image search for “coloring pages” though, you’ll find lots of line drawings you can print out the same way. Simple!

The fabric I used is cotton flannel, and I fused together two pieces with Pellon Wonder Under, which is an iron-on fusible web.

I trimmed the short ends of the rectangle with pinking shears, then folded in the sides and ironed firmly, folded the whole thing in half and ironed the center crease.

A line of stitches 1/4” in from each of the longer sides, and I trimmed those sides with my pinking shears too.

After that, 7 more lines of stitching on the crayon/pencil side (evenly spaced of course), and the coloring wallet is ready for filling!

Ready for on-the-go coloring or gift-giving!

Anyway, for this one I wanted it to be sort of theme-free… something that could be pulled out and enjoyed whenever, any time of year, and have enough items in it to “spy” that it wouldn’t get boring quickly.

For the small items, I looked to the craft store, mostly in the scrapbooking section. There were some really cute little fabric plush stickers, which – as long as they are mostly symmetrical – you can stick back-to-back in order to make one non-sticky double-sided item for your I Spy game. So I got two sets each of several of those.

And just pressed the matching shapes together firmly, like this.

Some of them, like the houses, aren’t perfectly symmetrical, but that’s okay as long as most of the sticky pat is. The little chimney sticking up won’t bother anyone.

I found these super-cute sparkly shapes too. They’re hard plastic, like buttons but without the shank, and the adhesive is just a little spot of sticky foam…

…which is quite easy to peel off.

I also already had colorful buttons, dice, mini dominoes, rhinestones in various colors and shapes, and plastic magnetic letters. I was making three boxes at once, so I just made sure each one had a good variety of items.

Then, on a light colored background, I made sure to take a picture of all of the items for each box. This can be used as a checklist of sorts, so that the child will know what to look for, and if you laminate it , they can circle or cross out each item as they find it, with a dry-erase or vis-à-vis marker.

This is Anneliese’s scavenger hunt. I put the J in there for her little brother, so they can share the box later on.

The boxes I got were just clear acrylic with simple lids. I alternated adding rice with adding objects…

(happy little objects!)…

…until all of the objects were in each box, and they were about 2/3 full of rice. You want to be sure to leave enough room for the rice to move freely so the objects can be found! If it’s totally full, it won’t be a very fun game.

Then I used my super-hot hot glue gun to outline the inside of each lid and firmly glue it onto the box. I waited until the glue was completely dry and opaque before moving the boxes, so that no rice would get permanently stuck in the glue or anything like that.

Then, on the bottom of each box, I hot-glued the object “list” (not really a list, but you know), which I had sort of laminated with clear packing tape.

This is one toy I made this year that I don’t think Anneliese got a sneak preview of, so I haven’t seen her play with it yet. I hope she likes it! She might be a little young for it at this point but I think in a couple months it will be perfect.

So I’ve been looking for a nice set of nesting dolls for Anneliese for a while, but most of the ones I find are crazy-ugly OR crazy-expensive. So I took matters into my own hands. I bought an unfinished set of nesting dolls from etsy.com and planned to paint them. Like… six months ago. But it’s finally happened!

I got a set of 7 because I wanted to paint them in rainbow colors, including indigo.

I started out by sketching some designs onto paper, then drawing the ones I liked onto the dolls directly with pencil. I have to be completely honest – most of the designs were either from or inspired by my awesome “day tripper” bag which I’m pretty much in love with. But if you google imgage search folk art you’ll come up with a lot of different simple/bold/adorable designs you could add to your dolls if that’s the style you’re after.

The first thing I painted was their kercheifs, in the rainbow colors. After that, I painted their bodies a lighter version of the same colors (just added some of the color to white).

The next night, I painted their skin and hair. I decided to make them all different because it’s just more interesting and less creepy than having little clone-dolls pop out of each other.

After that, I was free to paint all of the little details. It took a while and some very very tiny paint brushes. But I have to say that I’m very pleased with the results! I haven’t decided yet whether to seal them or not… I bought a clear acrylic spray sealer to use if I do decide to. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea, would it?

Here’s the largest lady:

Mrs. Marmalade:

Yellow, green, and blue:

Indigo and violet.

And to give you an idea of scale for these suckers… my hand. The tiniest one is TINY.

Group picture! The whole rainbow of friends.

I think Anneliese will enjoy them. Hopefully she’ll have wonderful memories of playing with them.

You’ll need some little wooden “people” pegs (there’s a huge variety out there, but our Michael’s craft store only carried a couple of options) and some cups for them to fit into. I got 6 for each set that I made, so that I could make a rainbow of people/cup pairs, so Anneliese can practice matching and color recognition, along with one-to-one correspondence (one peg per cup. If there is an extra peg, there must be a cup missing! And vice versa!) and fine motor skills.

I just painted these with acrylic craft paint. They’re not intended to be teething toys or to be mouthed/sucked/chewed excessively, but acrylic paint won’t hurt the babies if they swallow a little.

Which is great, because Anneliese did already. Yeah, I get parent of the year because I let her play with a (sealed, unopened) bottle of paint… a few seconds later I glanced over and her mouth was orange. I should have known better… even though it was sealed and the top was shrink-wrapped… she can open child-proof medicine bottles! So anyway, I cleaned out her mouth – I don’t think she swallowed much – and then after I put her down for a nap I called the poison hotline thingy just to be sure. They said acrylic craft paint is no big deal, so yay. Bottoms up!

The set I made for Anneliese has pretty small “guys” and require a little bit of dexterity to aim the peg into the small cup. Judging from her play with them already, I’d say it’s about perfect for her right now. Not TOO easy but if she focuses it’s something she can do without frustration.

For a smaller friend of ours, I made another set with slightly larger “guys” and flowerpots with larger openings, so it will require less dexterity for her to put the pegs into the cups. Another bonus of using the flower pot shape instead of the “candle cup” shape above is that the pots can stack/nest with each other, making a whole new game!

Sometimes the simplest toys are the best, aren’t they?

This is one of those items – a crocheted (they say knit but they’re wrong) tea set. SO CUTE right?? I thought, “I can make that!” and went out and bought cotton yarn in “Anneliese’s colors” – turquoise, yellow, and white.

I started with the cups, then the saucers. I don’t think I’m going to add handles, but I would like to make little fabric tea “pillows” to fill the cups with to help them hold their shape a bit more.

After that, I started on the tea pot. I had thought about writing up the pattern for this set, but I was really winging the whole thing and didn’t feel like making notes the whole time, so sorry… no pattern. But there are lots of crochet tea set patterns for sale on etsy, if you want to make one and aren’t comfortable “winging” it yourself.

Once the body of the tea pot was finished, I made a spout and a handle and sewed them on. Each of the 3 sections is stuffed with poly-fil. And? The set was finished. In a blog post it seems so quick. It really took about a week of evening crocheting to complete.

I’m looking forward to tea parties with Anneliese and probably her baby doll and her sleepy sheep. I haven’t really gone through much effort to hide Anneliese’s presents as I have been working on them, mostly because she still really doesn’t “get” the Christmas thing, and to her a new toy is a new toy.

So she has seen this, and has pretended to drink from the cups, and signed “water” to me, sipped, and giggled. I love watching her pretend. It’s so cool to me that she already has a little imagination!

Siiiiiip!

The little saucers can be for the cups to rest on, or for little imaginary treats. I might sew up some (grain-free of course) cookies or muffins for her a bit later. Not for Christmas though.

Would you care to join us for a spot of tea?

So the first decoration I made involved those, some ribbons in my “theme colors” for this year (and probably several years after this) – orange and turquoise, and some hot glue.

I just hot-glued ribbon to the center of each pine cone “butt” and tied them up on the curtain rod in my living room. Festive, not overkill though, and yummy smelling. I would’ve done more in other windows but I ran out of turquoise ribbon, and needed the rest of the orange for another project (below).

The second hand-made decoration I made this year is crocheted tree garland. I didn’t want to decorate with glass balls and such, for more than one reason.

1) Obviously I have a curious toddler. She is great about leaving things alone if I tell her to FOR THE MOST PART, but I wouldn’t want her to get hurt if she got a bit adventurous when I wasn’t looking.

2) All of our Christmas decorations are in a box on the very highest shelf in the garage. I don’t feel like standing on a step stool and trying to get down the very heavy box, especially pregnant. I could ask someone to help me, but then I’d have to ask them to put it back when the holidays were over too.

So anyway, I bought some delicious yarn in my colors, and crocheted tons of circles in each color. Then I “dressed up” each circle with a border and some embellishments in the other color. Finally, I crocheted them all together into a garland using silver eyelash yarn, which turned out to be pretty cool because it’s like tinsel and ornaments all in one!

Love how the silver garland catches the light from the tree.

Anneliese loves going over to the tree and touching the circles, looking at them carefully.

The third decoration I made is a couple of bell wreaths. I found the basic wreaths in the Target dollar section (for $2.50 each) but you could easily make your own with wire and bells from the craft store. Though I don’t know if it would save you any money.

Then, I took orange ribbon and wove it around the bells, then tied it into a bow at the bottom. The turquoise glitter snowflakes are also from Target. A pack of 4 was $1 I think. I used thin white (very strong) thread to attach them to the wreath too. It’s hanging on the back of my front door (on the inside) framing the peep hole a la Friends.

I haven’t actually found a good place to hang the other one, but I’ll have it for next year!

Have you made any decorations this year? What did you create for your home? I’d love to hear about it, or if you’ve blogged it, feel free to comment with the link!

You will need:

• 24-25 books, depending on if you want one for Christmas day.  (if they are not all “winter themed” just fill in with other books you already have)Funky Polkadot also reminds you that you can even wrap books from the library – just make sure they won’t end up overdue!
• Wrapping paper and tape
• A special basket
• Your kids

Step 1: Wrap all the books with wrapping paper.

Step 2: Place in a special basket in your snuggly reading place.

Step 3: Each night, let your kids choose a book to unwrap, and read it together before bed.

Step 4: Before putting the books away after the holiday season is over, wrap them again so they’re ready to go for next year AND you get to use up any leftover wrapping paper.

I love the idea of adding activities for each day on a tag on each book, at TheLittleBig. That’s something I’ll probably add in a few years, when the kiddos can get really excited about it.

Another perk of this is that Anneliese is getting lots of practice unwrapping gifts! By Christmas day she’ll be a pro and ready to go! She has enjoyed some stories more than others, and some of them she has even carried around for a while in a hug, and asked me to read them multiple times. Others, she gets up and leaves mid-story (some are a bit involved for a 16-month-old at this point, but that’s okay).

So, I have a lot of books… I’ll probably rotate some out if I notice that Anneliese (and later Joseph) isn’t very interested in them, and pull in new ones now and then.

The books I wrapped up this year for our Christmas Advent:

If You Take a Mouse to the Movies	Santa Claus The World’s Number One Toy Expert – hands down, Anneliese’s favorite so far.
Bear’s First Christmas	Merry Christmas, Strega Nona
The Night before the Night Before Christmas	Who’ll Pull Santa’s Sleigh Tonight
Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah	Christmas Mice!
The Very Snowy Christmas	Our Eight Nights of Hanukkah
The Family Christmas Tree Boo	Jingle the Christmas Clown (she also LOVED this one, and kept pointing at the baby animals and saying “baby!”)
Gingerbread Mouse	Mooseltoe
How the Reindeer Got Their Antlers	I Have a Little Dreidel
Snowmen at Christmas	Olive, the Other Reindeer
Merry Christmas Stinky Face	Winter Lights
I Spy a Candy Cane	Can You See What I See? Christmas
The Night Before Christmas

Dyed silk play scarves – Tutorial by The Artful Parent, and there is also a great color chart by Gerbera Designs.

Coiled Rag Bowl – tutorial by Wee Folk Art (there are LOTS of great tutorials on this site for free, so be sure to check them out!)

Tree blocks – simple how-to by Crafting a Green World. Yes it’s as simple as it seems. And while I LOVE unit blocks for more architectural building and naturally absorbing math concepts (and would love for Anneliese to have a set of real full-size “preschool-quality” ones someday)… there is something perfect in the imperfection of these natural blocks too.

Wooden Peg Doll Family – inspiration by ColorFool. What a sweet idea, to make a little doll family modeled after our own! I’ll try to make a Zora (dog) peg too.

Rainbow people matching game – I’ve seen sets like this on etsy and thought they would be a sweet little game for Anneliese, but easy to make myself too. J Man and Miller Bug apparently had the same thought!

Busy Bottles – from Pink Pistachio. LOVE this idea. I was also a fan of the “glitter wand” as a kid, and this is a similar, homemade idea. You could make bottles with different themes or color schemes.

Upcycled Sweater Crafts – If I can find some great 100% wool sweaters at Goodwill, I’d love to make some felted stuffed animals, slippers, and a cute cap. (All how-tos from Martha Stewart.)

Wooden Lacing Cards – By Dollar Store Crafts. I’ll see if Michaels has any larger wooden shapes that I can drill some holes into. I’m pretty sure they have simple plain wooden geometric shapes I could paint. I know they have the smaller wooden shapes too but I don’t think those would be big enough to work well.

Crocheted tea set – I saw this in the Land of Nod catalog and made sure to “pin” it to my Pinterest. How sweet would this be?

A Play Kitchen – I love the “hacked” Ikea kitchens floating all over the internet. This one is probably my favorite though. I love how it’s simple but “complete” and has real touches like an actual faucet with knobs, and how it doesn’t take up a ton of space.

I would be remiss to not include my girlfriend Kim’s play kitchen she and her husband made for their daughter. Everything Kim does has such CHARM that it’s impossible not to fall in love.

Family Book – I’ve been meaning to do one of these for a long time, but maybe I’ll actually get one together for the holidays. I just need to find a good picture of each of us – my husband, me, Anneliese, Zora, our parents, our siblings and their spouses and kids… that should about cover it. I’ll probably order through shutterfly or picaboo or one of those types of book printing places.

Some sort of Mobile – there is a hook in the ceiling in Anneliese’s room and it would be the perfect place for a lovely-to-look-at mobile, but I haven’t made one yet. Add it to the list. This one is precious.

A gorgeous fabric memory game – Tutorial and photo from purlbee.com. I love the idea of this and think it would also be great with different textures of the same color fabric too for an older child and a bit more of a challenge (imagine all in royal blue, but pairs of felt, velvet, cotton, chiffon, wool, lace, etc.) and for more of a Montessori element (only one variable).

An activity board – For now I’ll stick with the Melissa and Doug Latch Board that we have, but I would love a more exciting version with more types of “goodies” on it when she gets older. This is something I could enlist my husband’s help with I’m sure.

Wall Abacus – From Anything Pretty. Another thing I’d rather have my husband build than do myself. But this would go perfectly on the wall in the play area of the living room. hmmmmmmmm….

Fabric Card Table Playhouse – From Bargain Hoot. Something I’ve been eyeing for years, since before I was even pregnant with Anneliese. I probably won’t make it for Christmas, but maybe for her birthday next year or even Christmas next year. She doesn’t really “pretend” yet but I know she’ll be into it soon!

Quiet Book – My sisters and I had a quiet book when we were kids, and I vividly remember a page with flowers we could button onto stems in a vase, as well as a page with shapes to match (I’m not sure if they were button-on, snaps, or velcro). There are SO many ideas on the internet for quiet book pages and book themes, and a flickr search will bring up a ton of inspiration. I also LOVE this color scrap book from Emmy Lizzy (shown below).

Painted Step Stool – Photo by Remodeling this Life. As Anneliese gets more sturdy on her feet and more independent with tooth-brushing and such, I’d like her to be able to reach the bathroom sink safely and easily. I have a little step stool but it’s not tall enough for a tiny toddler… it’s only one level like a tiny milkmaid stool. Apparently Ikea has some great-looking wooden step-stools with two steps that would be perfect! I’d love to personalize it a bit, not just leave it one color.

Painted Matryoshka Set – I got a set of 7 blank nesting dolls on etsy earlier this year and haven’t settled on a theme yet, but I got 7 so that I could do the rainbow (including indigo). I want them to be relatively simple and modern, but when I do come up with a design, I’ll paint them for Anneliese. Picture from ecrater – gorgeous, but a bit elaborate for me to make (and $80+ to buy!)

Handmade growth chart – here are two versions I LOVE. An embroidered quilted one, and a jute/safety pin/tag one. Totally different looks but I love them both so much. The doorframe thing doesn’t really work for military families!

Baby underwear – Since we’ve been ECing (Using elimination communication)since Anneliese was about 6 months, she is quite used to the potty. Now that she’s walking and also happens to be telling me (with sign language) more often that she needs to use the potty, I’m thinking it’s almost time to ramp up to actual “potty training/learning” instead of the casual EC we’ve been doing for nearly a year. But no one makes underwear for a less-than-20-pound baby. Well, some people do, but it costs $10+ per pair. Making my own would be much more economical. Maybe not “Christmas gift!” material, but something to do soon in any case. Photo from Noodle-Head. Pattern from That Darn Kat on etsy. Zaaberry also made a trainer/pull-up version which is a great idea. I’m planning to continue using cloth diapers during naps and at night, but maybe when she is more reliable a “pull-up” like this would be good for naps.
Note: The pattern only goes as small as a size 2, but I figure it can’t be too hard to scale it down further.

Fabric “Paper Chain” or Advent Chain – I know people use these to count down (or up) to Christmas, but I think they would be a fun year-round activity for toddlers to do (akin to the plastic linking chains, or the beads that snap together). I saw these covered plastic ones in the Land of Nod catalog and immediately thought “I can make that!” and imagined using heavier interfacing inside of tubes of fabric (quilting cotton or flannel), and snaps to fasten them together. A bit of googling led me to Roots and Wings Co, who has a tutorial for a less time consuming version using fusible webbing, pinking shears, and velcro.

Fabric Christmas tree with Velcro ornaments – This is an idea I came up with and when I googled, I didn’t find anything like what is in my head. There are lots of two-dimensional advent calendars that have similar ideas, and this 3D one is the closest to what I was thinking. But my tree would be cuter and simpler, my ornaments would be less cheesy, and it certainly wouldn’t say “My first Christmas tree” across the base. This is another one you could use as an advent/count down decoration, but I think it would be more fun as a toy through the whole month of December, to decorate and un-decorate as many times as your child wants. When I get around to making ours, I’ll be sure to post pictures of my non-ugly version.