By now you know that I am on bed rest, which kind of just means to not leave my house unless I have to do and not do anything strenuous or unnecessary. While I am not confined to a “bed” all day, I do go stir crazy and long for my past life of activity and fun.

Siiiigh.

However, one blessing has been all the time it has allowed me to get projects completed for the baby’s room and for my other two girls. I have enjoyed working on items for my Etsy shop, Opal and Aqua, and attempting crafts that I normally wouldn’t try due to lack of time or motivation.

I put together a little project yesterday to go with my girls’ Halloween costumes. I recently wrote this regarding the fact that we were going store-bought all the way with costumes this year, and that Noelle would be Anna from Frozen and Charlotte would be a ladybug. The only problem was that when Charlotte tried on her ladybug costume, she flopped around in revolt and screamed her head off.

I am picking my battles, so I immediately ordered her the Elsa costume that goes with Noelle’s, and it is perfect! I can’t believe they even make these dresses this small, but it is the cutest thing I have seen. I’m telling you, JCPenney dress up outfits are where it’s at!

So, on one of my outings to Target (don’t get excited…30 minutes or less with a chaperone is hardly a Target trip), I noticed this* Olaf trick or treat bag. I thought it was cute enough, but when I looked at it up close, I realized that not only was it overpriced, but it was also barely big enough to hold a Kit Kat. What the heck is that? My kids trick or treat for the single purpose of bringing home a crap ton of candy for their mama, and this year it is more important than ever that they collect an impressive haul. Once this diabeetus is out of my system, I plan to go NUTS with the fun size chocolate bars. This bag simply wasn’t going to cut it.

*P.S. I couldn’t find a link on Target’s website. As you can see, people are already selling these on eBay. I wish I would have bought one to mark up and sell on eBay, too…but that would just make me heartless and disgusting.

I liked the idea of the Olaf bag, though, so I got to looking in my craft closet and found all the supplies I would need to make two bags, one for each of my girls. I didn’t spend any money on this, and it took about an hour to do. If you don’t have a ready stash of felt and hot glue gun sticks, I bet you could make one bag for less than $5 total.

The best part is that I didn’t measure or sew anything, so if you are not into those types of crafts, you can still do this!

This is what you’ll need:

2 copies of an Olaf face that is roughly the size of a piece of computer paper
At least a 1/2 yard of white felt for one bag or a whole yard for two bags
Individual sheets of felt in white, black, brown, and orange (just one sheet per color will be fine)
Sharp scissors
A good glue gun that gets nice and hot with the appropriate glue sticks
Screaming children running in and out of your work space — optional, not recommended, but whatevs

First, I needed an Olaf face to use as a pattern, and I came across this from Catching Up with Kate. I printed it at 250%, black and white, and made two copies. I didn’t want to print all the pages of his body (once enlarged, it is about 9 pages), so I just selected the page with the face on it and printed that one.

Prior to cutting anything, I laid my large piece of felt out, folded it in half, and placed one of the printouts on the fold. This was going to be the template for the size of the bag. The fold of the fabric made the bottom of the bag, so I just needed to cut around the other three edges. I widened the bag just a little, so I cut a little more than inch around the sides of the paper to make the bag slightly larger than the piece of paper. Remember, I want lots of candy!

I did this twice (along with everything) because I made one for each of my daughters.

Next, I began cutting out the features of Olaf’s face. These next pictures are disturbing and not recommended for children under age 12.

I have two copies of the face so that I can cut out not only the whites of Olaf’s eyes, but also the dark shadow around the eyes to make them stand out. I also did this with the mouth and teeth. One copy was used for the mouth, and the other was used for the teeth.

After cutting out his eyes, mouth, nose, and eyebrows, I then held each piece up to the corresponding color of felt and began cutting around them. There is no exact science to this. I just held the pattern steady against the felt and trimmed around each piece. I doubled my felt because I was making two bags.

I began laying out my felt pieces on my bags, using Olaf’s (butchered) face as my guide to placement. I had to play with it a little before I found an arrangement that looked right to me. The good thing is that Olaf makes lots of fun expressions throughout the movie, so you can’t really mess it up.

I decided he needed some hair, so I simply cut some random brown hair (they kind of looked like tree branches) and placed them behind the top piece of felt of my bag so they would look like they were coming out of the top.

The next step was to glue! Hot glue works really well on felt and melts all the fibers together very nicely for a strong bond. You don’t need to sew or secure anything!

Once I had the face pieces where I wanted them, I simply lifted them up a corner at a time (so I wouldn’t lose my placement) and started gluing. Of course I had to burn my fingers a few times, but what project is complete without some burnt skin?

After the faces were glued, I opened the bag and placed a strip of glue along the edges of the bag, one edge at a time. I pressed the edges together firmly and they were sealed! No need to glue the bottom since I used the fold, and if I were to glue the top…well…that would be stupid.

All that was needed were some handles! I cut two strips of felt for each bag that were about the length of the bag itself. I placed the first handle behind the top piece of felt and glued the edges in place. I then flipped the bag over and did the same thing for the second handle.

Ta da! The finished product!

Are they perfect? No. Do they have hot glue snot strings? Yeah, you’ll find a few. But…will they hold lots and lots of candy for this starving-for-sugar mama? YOU BET…and that’s all that matters!

This is my first attempt at writing a tutorial. In general, I am a copy-cat. I see ideas that I like, and then I copy them from someone else. In teaching, we call that “borrowing.” In other areas of life, we call that

First, they started off looking like this. If you look closely, you can see some marker on the seat fabric and white spray paint from one of our other past projects. We also left one of these outside for probably 3 months during the winter after our daughter’s birthday party. Oops.

I spy Charlotte’s toes!

I took all the screws out of the back of the chairs to release the top cushions, and then I turned the chairs over and removed the screws from the bottom of the seat cushions.

I didn’t replace the foam padding of the cushions. If I wanted to make everything like new, I could have done that, but I wanted to keep this very low-cost (i.e. free).

Remove the old fabric. It was so worn and the staples were weakened, so all I had to do was pull up on them and they came right out. You could always shove a flat screw driver in there to pry them out.

Fun fact: Do you know that I rarely ever used my staple-remover thingy when I was a teacher. I enjoyed pulling the papers out of the wall in such a way that the staple flung out approximately 2 feet to the ground. Shame on me.

I cut a piece of fabric about 3-4 inches larger than each edge of the cushion.

Begin folding up one edge of the fabric. Hold it tight and put a staple in the middle. Then do the same technique along the entire edge. I usually start with 3-4 staples, and then I go through and add about 176 more. Just to be secure.

You will have to do a gathering/overlapping technique, working your way around the curved edge of the cushion. You will place several staples in these areas. Repeat for the opposite edge and the corners.

You will be left with excess fabric around the edges of the staples. Use scissors to cut close to the staples (not tooooo close) and get everything looking neat.

You will do the same around the top cushions of your chair. Depending on the style of your chair, you might have some more rounded edges, or you might have a rectangular shape to work around. Just remember to pull your fabric tight as you go and put lots of staples in it to 1) keep everything secure and 2) feel so cool with your staple gun.

Last comes the fun part! You get to put everything back together. Put all the screws back in and attach the cushions securely.

When I started, I thought the chevrons would be going horizontally. Well, when I went to fit the cushions back on the chairs, I discovered that the chevrons would be going vertically. This isn’t a big deal to me, but if you need your pattern to go a certain way, make sure you double check that before you go all crazy with your staple gun.

There you go! You now have updated your old folding chairs into something really special for very little, if any, money. Enjoy!

OK, I know I am little behind in posting my Three for Free for March. I apologize. I won’t bore you with excuses.

Who is excited for March?! I know we are all ready for this winter to be over and out. I need to see some green in my life….green grass, green leaves, green beer. Ahhh, March. I love you.

I won’t keep you waiting any longer.

Ready…set…print!

Mama Stuff

1. I LOVE this! Dr. Seuss’s birthday is March 2, and so preschools and elementary schools everywhere love to celebrate his works throughout the entire month of March. I think this is such a cute decoration for a child’s room, and you can’t beat the message. From The Indie Tot.

2. With St. Patrick’s Day coming up, this would be a fun and easy activity to do with your kiddos. I love rainbows, and who doesn’t love Froot Loops? From Sweet Little Peanut.

I told my husband last night that January seemed like a long month.

I am not exactly sure why it felt that way to me, but it could have something to do with the fact that we have had about 3 winter storms and Arctic cold fronts that pretty much crippled our town for a solid three weeks. It has been a lot of time in the house… a lot of staring at the same walls, and messes, and laundry piles… so I’m not too sad to see January go.

With a new month comes a new set of free printables. I hope you’re enjoying these and using them for all kinds of purposes. I like to incorporate mine into gifts, and with Valentine’s Day coming up, I tried to think about gift-giving when I collected these printables for you.

Remember, Valentine’s Day isn’t about roses, chocolate, and stuffed teddy bears (especially those). Anyone can give those gifts. But to click on a link of an awesome free printable and hit “print?” That is just really, really special.

Enjoy, Lovebirds!

For the grown-ups…

1. I love the metallic look to this image. This printable comes in 16×20, 8×10, or 5×7. This is perfect to print and put in a frame and give as a gift. I also think it would look adorable on a mantle or on top of a dresser. From Love from the Oven.

My goodness, it is January already!

I apologize for a little bit of absence here on the blog. Who would have thought that Christmas combined with a surprise appendectomy would delay productivity for a while?

Anyway, here we are on another first of the month, which means it is time for some free printables!

I have scoured the Internet, yet again, for some cute things for you to enjoy. The start of a new year is always so refreshing and exciting to me. I am always looking for ways to improve myself, my family, and my home, so you might notice that these printables spoke to me in those ways.

I hope everyone is off to a joyous 2014 and that your printers are loaded with color ink!

For grown-ups:

1. I know that paper calendars are like soooo 2009 thanks to iCal and all kinds of other apps, but I still like to have a pretty visual of the months (in case I forget which months have 31 days in them). I think this would be great in a frame on a desk or counter. There are 5 awesome color combinations for this printable, too! From Love Vs. Design.

For kiddos:

‘Til next time, Friends! & Happy New Year.