My Cloth Diaper Update!

Hey everyone!

This is a cloth diaper update! I've been cloth diapering for almost 4 months now and things could not be going better! I have saved a lot of money and though it's extra work, this has made it worth the effort. I started out trying to figure out how to get a prefold on my son and now I could do it at 4am while I'm half awake with no troubles and a wiggling lil boy! I'm very proud of myself. I'll actually be uploading a video of a cloth diaper review once I get our move over and settled...and I just ordered some thirsties products to try out so I'm going to be trying those out as well and seeing how I like those. I ordered two AIO's and one cover. I absolutely needed a extra diaper cover so badly. When I had started out cloth diapering I started out with just some gerber prefolds (which are NOT prefolds in my opinion) and some of those rubber gerber pants...they were pink to because I'd had them left over from my daughter and my husband was not happy with his son running around in pink rubber pants. But now I'm collecting a very nice stash of diapers. Mostly I've been using my gdiapers for day use. I really love them, however I use mine so much that the elastic on my liners tends to wear and I had to buy some new liners for them last week because my old ones had started to leak. I ended up going to a store near us called BuyBuyBaby and they sell gdiapers there, so I bought a pack which comes with three liners. Now that I have extra's I won't be using the same liners over and over again so much so hopefully these will wear less. I also have a few bum genius which are nice, the only problem I have had with these is that he moves and runs and crawls they sometimes leak out of the side so I have to adjust them around his butt a lot. I still use just a prefold and a snappy with a cover at night, and sometimes during the day is I'm in the mood for that. Once I get my thirsties in I'll blog a review on those, but I've heard a lot of great things about them.

Anyway, just wanted to do a update on those. I'm proud of myself for staying with the cloth for this long. =)

Update!!!

Hey everybody!

Sorry I haven't been posting How To's. I've been really REALLY busy. This post is just an update on whats going on with me!! =) So we are moving by the end of January. My husband and I are trying to buy a house, so we have been looking at all kinds of different places, houses, trying to find one. It's kinda getting down to the dead line because this month is almost half over and we still haven't decided for sure on a place so I'm kinda stressed out. We are trying to find a place with three bedrooms and two baths. We have a couple places in mind. For the moment until the kids get bigger, we'll probably have the kids share a room, because my son still sleeps in his crib in our room. But having an extra bedroom will be better when they get older and need their own rooms. Our experience in our current Apartment has been horrible! I've never had such a bad time in an apartment and while I've been married we have lived in three apartments so far and the other two were really great and we had no trouble with them and this one has been horrible. I am sooooo ready to get OUT!

Anyway, on top of packing, moving, etc. we have my daughters birthday coming up next month. She'll be 4! I can't believe my baby is already four.... so I've been planning for that. She decided to have a Hello Kitty birthday (no I didn't convince her to do this). I think she is going through a stage where she has decided to like everything I like. She recently has gotten into Harry Potter, watching the movies, reading the books, etc. I've been reading her the tales of the beadle and the barb. So I might move on to reading her the first book. I gotta wait until we move though because they are already packed lol. She's also started really loving Hello Kitty, I think because she knows I like it. And I've been collecting again. I had stopped collecting HK like I use to when I had my son because of having a new baby, and getting the hang of having two little ones. Now that I've started up again Madi has started to pay more attention to HK which I think is cute. One day she'll go through her teen years and hate everything I like haha, I hope not but we'll see.

I started a youtube channel. ::Click Here:: I've been posting all kinds of videos on there. My next video will probably be a Cloth Diaper Review video. Because of moving and getting our internet switched over, etc. I may not be on for a little bit when we move.

So that's my update. Once I get everything settled I'll start doing more How To's again. TTFN! =)

Just a Random update about Random Stuffs!

Hey everybody! So I haven't had time really to do a lot of crafts because we are in a process of preparing for 1. A Move and 2. My daughters birthday, plus Christmas, etc. that has just past and it's just been crazy here. So anyway, I probably won't be uploading a huge amount of How To posts until after we move. I'm thinking of posting my first online video and I'm debating over the subject matter. This might sound kinda crazy but a few of my friends have told me I should do a "My Handbag Collection" video because I have a lot of them. So I'm thinking of doing that now that I have a youtube channel. Soooo I may do that. I'll probably end up doing that when my hubby is NOT around because he would find that just tooo funny LOL. Anyway, so I might do that maybe tomorrow morning because that is usually my most peaceful time in my house...the kids are usually in a good mood because they have just woke up, etc. Anyway, so just wanted to do a lil post.

<3 Robin

How To: Make a Magazine Box

Hey everybody! I don't know if anyone else has magazine's in their bathrooms, but I do and I was in there yesterday while giving the kid's their bath and was looking at all my magazine's I don't read anymore...and was wondering what I could do with them other then just tossing them. So I looked up idea's and here is one of my favorites, because I can always use space...so here is my How To on how to use your old magazine's to make a magazine box.


Here is what you'll need:

Clear Tape
Magazine Pages
Colored Duct Tape (Optional)
Some sort of cardboard

I made my box out of a Pregnancy magazine which I have had since I was pregnant with my daughter. This particular magazine was one I didn't want to toss because I remember reading it a lot during my pregnancy because it had a lot of great articles, and it's just a fond memory. I know, probably kinda dumb but it always make's me think of that time when I see it. So I used that and figured this would be a nice solution because it was getting really worn just sitting in the magazine rack in the bathroom. You can use any type of magazine you want though. Your going to start by ripping out a lot of pages. I tried to pick ones with bright color's on them, you could choose only black and white or two different colors. It's your choice, your box!

After pulling out your pages, your going to fold them long way to about the size shown in the picture above. You'll need a BUNCH of these. You'll also need to take your cardboard and cut out four sides and one bottom so you know how big to weave them together. I used the cover of a composition book I was about to toss and it worked great, so you can use any type of hard material for your box.

This is my pile of them to the left. This pile didn't take me very long to fold at all. Maybe about ten minutes. After this step your going to take several of your strips and lay them down together. I did a set of three and taped them down to my desk, them took another three and weaved them together.







To the right are mine after being weaved together. You want to weave enough together to fit around your peices of cardboard. After you have enough together, and the right size you'll lay down your card board and tape the weave around it. I also might need to add that I used scotch tape to kind of secure the magazine for the moment while I was weaving. It keeps it in place and lets you manage it easier, plus it's clear so it doesn't effect how it looks after your done.

Place your board in the middle and fold the sides of your weave and tape them down. You can weave enough strips together to cover what will be the inside of your box, or you can leave it plain it's up to you. I made my strips long enough to cover both the inside and outside of the walls of my box.





This is what the "outside" of the wall should look like when your done. After you have done this to all the pieces of your box, take your clear roll of tape and cover each piece with it, make sure no naked magazine paper is uncovered. Once you have all the sides and bottom of your box taped completely, you can then take the clear tape and start to tape the walls of the box together. After you've taped your four walls together you can add on the bottom and you should be done! You might need help holding the walls up while you tape them together.


I added some pink duct tape all the bottom and top brim of my box, along with a Hello Kitty head that I had cut out of a party hat I had just to add some decoration to the box, but you don't have to if you don't want to. You could leave it place, or add some type of your own decoration. The entire box took me about 45 minutes to complete.


Here's a top view of my box. I hope you have fun making this project!!

A Holiday Update

Hi guys, Sorry that I haven't updated for a few weeks. The weeks before Christmas everyone in my house ended up catching like a super mega cold, and I seriously had trouble just doing simple things like changing diapers, etc. let alone making crafts and craft how to things. We are finally starting to get better finally so I figured I'd do a update.

The kids had a great Christmas, they got lots of cool stuff, and mostly everything they asked for. I did leave out one present that Madi wanted for Christmas because her birthday is in two months, and I am saving that present for her birthday and she'd already got soo many presents I just figured I'd save this one back. She had wanted a Baby All Gone and a Fur Real friend, so Santa brought her the Baby All Gone, and the Fur Real friend is put up. Lucas got his first monster truck from Santa, which it's pretty neat. Him and I line up cars and then push the lil button and make the monster truck run over them. He loves doing that. And it's a Dodge so it's just like daddy's lol. They got tons of other things like movies, clothes, doll's, games, etc. They had a ton of fun seeing all their family for the Holiday and playing with all their cousins. I was able to surprise Josh and order him a knife for Christmas which he really liked and needed because he is constantly braking them. He is really rough on his pocket knifes. And the kid's picked him out a Dallas Cowboy's cap that has a D on it. Madi said it was D for Daddy lol. I took the kids and let them pick him out some clothes and such so that was really fun and he likes everything. This was the first year that I got everyone the correct clothing size yay for me.
I got a bunch of cool stuff, mostly Hello Kitty stuff to add to my collection. My mom n law got me a Hello Kitty coloring book to use while Madi and I color which I love. A couple cute shirts, and a lot of money so I was finally able to buy myself a new handbag and wallet. I haven't bought one in over a year so I'm really excited. I had to order it online because they didn't have the one I wanted in the store, so I'm waiting on that to come in. It's Hello Kitty, who woulda guessed.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a great Holiday. I'll try to post some more How To posts but we will be preparing for a move, and for my daughter's birthday coming up so I might be busy lately. But I'll try. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! :)

How to Make a Duct Tape Wallet

So when I was in my junior year of High school this fad started. It was duct tape wallets. Boys all over my school went around make these wallets, which then spread to duct tape hats, ties, and finally an entire suit made of duct tape. Anyway, I never made one back then, and so I suddenly thought..ok...I'll make one. So this is how I did it.

For this Project you'll need:

• Duct Tape
• Scissors
  
• Velcro (Optional)
• Clear Tape (Optional)

So first you'll need duct tape. You can use regular old duct tape or if you want something more modern you can go to Walmart, Hobby Lobby, Home Depot, or another store and buy print duct tape. They come in all styles and prints. I think this one was $3.00. Ok so what I did was took my wallet to measure the length which I think came out to about 8.5 inches. I really hate measuring things, I don't know why but I usually don't do it which is why I measured my strips of tap up against my wallet and not a ruler. But you could use a ruler if you wanted. Once you have a length cut out several strips. I cut out about ten strips this length to start with.

After you have strips cut out, you are going to lay one down sticky side up, and then lay another strip on that one sticker side down. What I did was measured how thick/wide I needed my wallet to be, then laid my strips together like this until they were "thick" as my wallet. Once you have the bottom half, your going to flip the strips over, make sure there are no sticky area's exposed on the back. Then, on top of this piece, lay another strip of tape, leaving half of the sticky area hanging over. Now flip your piece back over. Ok, now your going to take another strip of tape and lay it on top of the flap of sticky tap, leaving just a little line of the sticky side of the bottom peice exposed. This is where you will fold your wallet. Once you have that line, keep added strips until you have a top and bottom half the same thickness.

After you have both sides the same size, fold them over like I have mine in the picture to your right. You can cut off any extra pieces and make sure that except for your sticky line you left, you have no other sticky spots exposed. If so, cover them with another strip. OK, so fold your wallet in half with the sticky line inside the wallet. After you'd done this, take your wallet and measure how much tape you are going to need for each side, and cut two smaller strips and fold them over each side of your wallet, taping the two sides together. This is going to be your money slot.

OK once you have both sides secured, fold your wallet in half again. I folded mine, and folding it the other way, and then back again just to get it a crease. Now we are going to make the card slots. So you'll need to measure how big you have made the side of your wallet. Also, I kept a Sam's card next to me to make sure my slots would fit a regular sized card. You'll need to cut 6 strips the same size, then stick two together, and repeat until you have three strips of tape. Cut off any sticky edges. Now you'll lay the strips on either side of your wallet, one a little higher then the other, and once you have all three in place, cut two thin strips of tape and tape the edges of your three strips down. Make sure you don't tape them sides to close inward because your cards won't fit. Once you have this done, you can either do the same to the opposite side or you can make a ID slot like I did in mine. For this you'll need clear tape. I call it clear duct tape and my husband hates it because it's not actually duct tape. But you know what I'm talking about lol. You'll need to cut 2 pieces of this and stick them together like you did the card strips. Then leaving one side open, so you can slip a card in it, you'll place three thin strips of tape on the three edges. This will leave a opening for you to put your picture/ID in.

Once this is done, you could call it done if you wanted to. I don't like my wallets to have to closure on them so what I did to mine, is added a Velcro strap. It's really easy to do. You can buy heave strength Velcro at Walmart for like $2, and it's got 'sticky' on the back so all you have to do is peal and stick. So you'll want to cut a strip out before you peal the back off. To start, you'll cut two strips of your duct tape, and tape on end on the outside of your wallet in the middle. After this you'll cut your Velcro to fit on your flap and peal and stick the Velcro on the strip and hold down for a few seconds. It sticks really fast. Now do the same thing on the outside of your wallet. Make sure they line up before you peal/stick. If they line up fine, them go ahead and stick your Velcro to the outside of your wallet and hold again. Now you have a nifty closure for your wallet. And I was really bored when I was making this so I got out my Glitter Glue. You can also
buy this at Walmart, it comes in all colors. And I drew a little Hello Kitty on the outside of my wallet. You don't have to decorate it if you don't want, its yours. But this is what I did. Anyway, now you have a Duct Tape wallet. I think this would be really cute stocking stuffers for girls. So here is a picture of my finished project:













Feel free to post any questions, and I hope ya'll have fun making these! :)

Yay a Cloth Diaper Update!

So finally got things somewhat organized after all that turkey and pie. My mother also sends back like a agillion boxes of stuff for the kids when we go to visit her so I had to find a place for that, but now I'm back. She also sent me home with this wonderful antique sewing machine...which I think is really cool and it has nothing to do with this post but I just this its great. Anyway... I said I would do a update to share my traveling experience with cloth diapers so here it is yay!

So our drive was four hours give or take so what I did is packed about 12 changes worth of prefolds, gdiapers, bum genius, etc. and stuck them in my "go bag" (thats what I call it) and threw those in my diaper bag. I premade all the diapers, so I had my gdiapers already filled so all I had to do was slip them on, same with the Bum Genius's. With the prefolds, I added my extra "padding" in them, and stuck them inside a cover, so all I would have to do is take them out and slip them on him and there we go. It wasn't actually as hard as I thought it would be... I put him in a Bum G. to begin the trip that I had extra stuffed so it would be more absorbent. So we drove for about two hours before we had stopped, at which time I changed him into prefold/cover and just threw the wet Bum G. in my wet bag and we were go to go again. And he was good until we got to my mom's. He probably coulda been ok with just one diaper the whole way, but I don't like to take chances so I just went ahead and changed him. It actually wasn't anymore work then a disposable except I don't really know what you would do if the place/person's house your staying at does not have a washer/dryer. My mom does, so when I got to her house I just threw my wet bag contents in her washer and there yah go. Sooo I had a great first traveling experience. The gdiapers were great for during the day while we were there because I just kept a few liners ready for them to be changed out, and at night I'd just use a prefold/cover or Bum Genius. Actually my main concern the entire trip was if Luke would sleep in a playpen or not because he is usually really picky about sleeping. Usually he'll only nap/sleep in his crib, in our house. But it was like he knew he was on a vacation because he didn't give me any trouble, he laid down with his dog and his Pal Scout playing his bedtime music and he was fine.

Yup! So now that I've gotten that experience out of the way I would totally do it again. Sorry if my grammar is blah in this post, Luke's on my lap hitting keys so I'm trying to make this a quick post. I'm going to attempt to make a home made pull up later. I'll post a How To on that if it turns out the way I'd like it. I also have some cotton inserts to make, and a bunch of other projects I'd like to try. But anyway, hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! TTFN!