Simply Living : monogram

Last weekend I went to a friend baby shower. She and I have been friends since before we could drive and it is hard to believe that we have our own kids now?! It seems like only yesterday we were passing notes in the hallway about boys in our class, and now we are talking about breast feeding and birth stories! lol! So anyway back to the gift, I started thinking about what to get her, I thought back to my shower and the things that I received. I knew she would be getting a lot of the usual stuff, like blankets, and onesies, so I figured I could do something different. I really loved getting things that were personalized with Carter's name on them, and since my friend and her family like to spend a lot of time by the pool in the summer, I thought that it would be cute to do a summer fun gift! And what is cuter than a baby in a swim suit and sunglasses???

So for this gift, I found a plain tub at Hobby Lobby, and went to Target to grab some essential baby pool accessories. :) Swim suit, sunglasses, towel, and toys! Other things that would be great to add would be sunscreen, swim shoes, hat, floaties, etc... the possibilities are endless.

Once I got all the loot, I simply drew the baby to be's name on the front of the tub using these paint pens.

After the name dried I filled it up, going largest in the back to smallest in the front. It took a little arranging and re-agrraning to get it to look how I wanted.

Then to finish it off I used a clear cellophane to wrap it up! I think you can put just about anything in cellophane and tie it with a bow and it will look cute.. ok maybe not everything, but you get the idea!

I stuffed some tissue in the top to give it a little more color and then tied it off with some toile. I glued on a little turtle to the front that came with the toy pack, to make it complete!

As I was putting this gift together and dreaming of sunshine and days at the pool, we were under a tornado watch all weekend! Luckily it only rained and never got severe around us. I've lived in Oklahoma my whole life, and I will never get used to tornado season! ugh!

I'm glad I had this little gift to take my mind of the weather so I could daydream about laying on the beach instead! :)

This was so fun to put together, and would be great for any age kid who has a birthday in the summer as well!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day!

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Last weekend my oldest niece turned 8 years old. I really wanted to make her something so I thought it would be cute if she had a personalized pillow and bag she could take to slumber parties and stuff, since she's at that age now.

I bought a pillow case and canvas bag from Hobby Lobby, they have different colors in their crafting section. Then I bought coordinating fabric, ribbon, and embellishments.

I discovered iron transfer paper for this project. I don't know where I have been, but this stuff is awesome! I am not a seamstress so this makes life SO much easier!

So first I ironed on the transfer paper according to the directions that came with the paper, mine said iron on the rough side to the back side of the fabric.

I cut out EMMA from card stock to use as a stencil, once the transfer paper was ironed on I cut around the letter.

Ok so this may be a really weird technique, but I found that if I tape all the sides of the letter to the fabric it was so easy to cut out, it stayed in place and the scissors worked better cutting through the tape.

After I had the letters cut I simply ironed them on to the pillowcase and canvas bag. Then I did do a little sewing for the ribbon on the pillowcase (thanks Jes!), this could have been ironed on as well. But I did just iron on the pink rose ribbon across the top of the bag. That's it! Alright, this did take some time, but it was all super easy to do!

So cute! I loved this pink paisley pattern with the green! I think she liked it too!! :)