Little Girl's Birthday Gift: Doll Clothes and Closet

My daughter got a rag doll a month or so ago and has been obsessed with it lately. So I thought it would be fun to surprise her with doll clothes for her birthday. It was so fun to make the little outfits! It's very similar to sewing people clothing, but everything is cuter in miniature, right?!

Here are the finished outfits:

Wedding dress. Maybe I'll have to make a bouquet and a veil too.

I call this one the school girl outfit...shirt, vest, and skirt.

Ballerina/swimsuit.

This one is my favorite...a pioneer dress with apron and bonnet. For me, the heart lace on the bottom hem puts it over the top on the cuteness scale.

This one is my daughter's favorite. I made them matching pajamas---silky, fancy pajamas. She changes her doll into pajamas every night and snuggles up with her. It is so cute.

And if you have a bunch of doll clothes, you need somewhere to put them. So I enlisted hubby's help and he made this adorable little doll clothes closet:

One great thing about this gift is that we used mostly things we already had. We bought:

Bead board at ReStore $2,

Square dowels $3

Two cans of white spray paint $2

Scrapbook paper to line the closet $1.50 (I just didn't have six sheets of coordinating paper in my stash).

Total Spent: $8.50

All the fabric and trim came from my stash and my hubby had the hinges, clasp and nails left from some project he did a few years back. Not bad for a gift that will last a long time and be treasured.

If you are interested in sewing doll clothes, I would recommend finding a pattern online. The patterns I tried to make up took so much longer. I spent so much time unpicking it was ridiculous! So I found this great site with printable doll patterns and just modified them to be what I wanted. That's definitely the way to go. Unless you actually like unpicking

Wedding Gift: Recipe Box

My cousin got married this weekend. I know he loves to cook, so I wanted to give him and his new wife some of my favorite tried-and-true recipes. And of course, something to put them in. So this is what I came up with: I bought a raw wood recipe box from Roberts Crafts ($6 with a coupon) and Mod Podged grey scrapbook paper ($0.20) to the outside. All it needed was some ribbon ($3 for the yellow and the black) and a fancy button ($1.25) to finish it off.

The inside I painted yellow, which is the bride's favorite color. And I used velvet stickers to add their initials. I bought a pack of unlined note cards ($0.44) and printed up dozens of my best recipes, made some dividers with labels using the same paper as the outside and whala! An inexpensive but meaningful gift for a pretty awesome cousin. Hopefully they will add all their favorite recipes over the years.

P.S. The wedding was great. He is so in love with that woman and it showed on his face every minute of the ceremony and the reception.

Thrifted Pillowcases Turned Skirt

A few weeks ago I found these purty pillowcases at Savers. Someone had spent hours embroidering a design on them and I just had to bring them home with me. But not to use as pillowcases.

I followed the general directions for the Starboard Skirt from Simple Simon and Co. and tah dah! So easy (especially since the fabric was pre-hemmed) and so cheap (the pillowcases were 50 cents each) and now I have a summery, nautical skirt to love.

Summer Squash And Cherry Tomatoes In Basil Butter

1 yellow crookneck squash

1 large handful cherry tomatoes

2-3 tablespoons butter or olive oil

generous sprinkle of basil, powdered garlic, powdered onion

(all spices may be replaced with fresh)

Slice the yellow squash into 1/4 inch slices. Melt butter in pan. Add seasonings. Saute (which means stir in a pan over medium high heat) squash and tomatoes until squash is tender crisp but not mushy.

Don't be deceived by the simple ingredients. This recipe is so summery and delicious!