Halloween: Minnie Mouse Costume

My daughter really loves the Mickey Mouse Club House and she can't get enough of Minnie Mouse. So, my grandmother and I decided to make her a Minnie Mouse costume. Most of the work was done by my grandmother, I struggle with sewing and she is really good at it. 

Result:

I had to order the fabric from Etsy.com because we could not find it in stores. This fabric came all the way from China, it took about two weeks to arrive after ordering. My grandmother sewed the dress from a pattern that she found and sewed a petticoat for under the skirt. We already had the ears and just taped on the bow. I bought her a long-sleeve black shirt and black leggings. I made the shoe covers from pieces of felt and added an elastic to keep it on her shoes. I made gloves that went with this costume as well, but she found them a little annoying so they were nixed.

Over all this was a little bit more expensive than I thought, mostly because of the shipping from China for the fabric. But, it is well made and we'll have it for dress up clothes for a while.

Knitted Bunny Hat

I knitted this bunny hat for my daughter about a month ago but I haven't gotten around to taking pictures of it until recently. I love taking fun knitting books out from our local library. I got this pattern from a book called, Animal Hats: 15 patterns to knit and show off. There are lots of fun hats to try in this book, I might even take it out again to try another hat. This hat was relatively easy and worked up very quickly, I finished it in less than a week. It uses bulky yarn, so it is perfect for cold winter weather. I used yarn that I already had so this didn't cost anything. If your local library does not have a copy of this book the image below has a link to amazon where you can pick it up for about $12.

Pattern:

                                     

Result:

My daughter is really into taking pictures recently. Especially, when I'm taking pictures.

Pinterest: Home Improvement: Vent Covers

For the longest time I have been looking for a solution to cover our hideously ugly heating vent covers. Our house was built in the 50s and it seems like the new vents that they sell in stores like Home Depot and Lowes don't fit our old vents. I knew we had to come up with something DIY. Then I came across this inspiration on Pinterest.

Pinterest:

                        

This was pinned by The Friendly Home.

It just happened that my Dad was creating new radiator covers for my parents house and had a lot of patterned sheet metal from the old covers. He also offered to build them for us, he enjoys woodworking so it was a win/win. 

Our covers are a little different from The Friendly House's covers. My Dad designed them to be a wooden frame with the sheet metal in the center. We did not remove the old vent covers, these covers fit like a picture frame right over the old ones and are screwed right into the wall.

Result:

Before

After

Thanks Dad!

Knitted Shawl

For the last month I have been working on a knitted shawl. My grandmother subscribes to Knit 1-2-3 magazine and there are always tons of fun patterns to try. This beautiful shawl looked very appealing to me now that the weather is getting a little bit colder. I have links on these photos to the magazines' website if you are interested in getting the magazine.

                                                                                              

Result:

This took me a month but, I did not work on it everyday. I would think that if you worked on it regularly it would take about 2 weeks. This pattern takes #4 worsted weight yarn.