My nephew, Mackay, was born this summer. He is so cuddly and adorable! I felt a special bond with him right away, and I am definitely his favorite aunt. Well, that's what I'm telling myself (don't rain on my parade!). Anyway, I wanted to spoil him rotten, and I found a bunch of cute projects I wanted to try, so he was my guinea pig! Here we go:
First, I found a great crochet
pattern for this toy. I love crocheting small things (if you didn't notice) because you get that sense of accomplishment so quickly! Because it uses just a small amount of yarn, I got to use leftover Cotton-Ease, so it's sooo soft! Love it!
I am in love with tie onesies. We had one for Dylan when he was a baby that we got from Deseret Book and paid like $15 for it! It was so worth it, but being able to homemake them is way better! I found
this pattern for the tie, and ended up making it one inch shorter than the 2T size for my 3-9 months onesie. $2 for the onesie and like $2.50 for the 1/4 yard of fabric that I used a tiny chunk of. Awesome. I also had some cute dino fabric, so I cut out the coolest dinosaur on it, and made another onesie!
So I found
these tutorials from
Lil Blue Boo on making customized name plaques. I wanted to make one sooo bad, but realized after I started that I pretty much suck at art. So, plan B was to grab some little wood letters and animals and just paint and glue them on (the elephant and tree were already painted/decorated=even better!). I also did copy LBB's idea of mod podging some scrapbook paper "grass" onto the plaque to give it a little more texture. Very fun! This was my kids' favorite of the Mackay gifts.
Okay, now for my favorite. I found
this tutorial for T-shirts from
MADE (probably my favorite crafty blog EVER). Dana makes it look so easy, which it kind of is. I think it would be way easier with a larger size (like she does a 2T), but the baby size was tough to work with on my sewing machine, especially the tiny little sleeves. Mackay's nickname while in the womb was Beaker, so I Googled the word beaker and found this image. My brother-in-law was so kind to inform me that there isn't actually a beaker on the image, but rather a test tube and a graduated cylinder (thanks SO much, Tony). I didn't care, because I thought it was cool looking. So I stuck the picture on PowerPoint, and typed out the word "BEAKER". Then I printed it, traced it onto freezer paper, used an exacto knife to cut the image out, ironed it onto the finished T-shirt, and painted it with orange fabric paint. There are a bunch of freezer paper screen printing tutorials out there, so I will spare you, but while you're looking at MADE for the T-shirt tutorial, she has one for
this, too! Check out those cute little goldfish pants! Love her.
Anyway, I absolutely adore my sweet little Mackay! And I get to see him and my newest nephew Charlie, born at the end of July, this weekend! Yay for getting my baby fix! Charlie spoiling post to follow soon!
P.S. Thanks to Maegen for taking pictures of Mackay's stuff for me!
