It's not a nursery anymore

With another baby on the way it was time to start the transition of Giselle's room from nursery to a little girls room. We decided that we wanted to go the toddler bed route thinking that for us it would be more ideal to buy real big girl furniture when shes about 5.  At that time we could possibly buy the furniture she will use until shes out of high school, know more of what our family is going to look like and what our living situation will be (and not worry too much about her falling out of her bed which she does maybe once a week :))

So, we replaced the changing table with a storage unit from target.  I wanted an affordable piece that would work for storing toys and books, and that would be easy to access for a toddler (note that if you have a toddler, all toddler furniture and probably the rest of the furniture in your toddler friendly house should be nailed to the wall :)).

And, of course the biggest transition was moving Giselle from her crib to her big girl bed!  It actually went really well. She went right to bed the first night, and we've hardly had any struggles, besides a few funny nap time experiences the transition was a sweet and easy experience.

I found her napping in her rocking chair during her second nap in the new toddler room. :)

Okay so on to the sewing..  To make the new room complete, Giselle needed a few cuddly items to help make this transition smooth and fashionable!!

I took her crib sheet cut it in half and made two toddler sized pillows to fit her bed. For the inside of the pillow I took a standard sized pillow and also cut it in half and then stitched up the outside lining to make her very own toddler sized pillows.

Giselle was starting to get attached to blankets that were just not up to par.  They were soft but, drove me crazy because they didn't match her bedding. So it was time for me to finally make Giselle some snuggie-bug blankets of her own.

Now that Giselle has been using them for a couple months, she is very much attached to these blankets, and it just warms my heart to see her snuggle with something that I made for her. :)

And finally, she needed a cute sham to spice up her bedding, so I just sewed together the scraps of fabric I had left over from the quilts and Wah-lah, cute cozy pillow!  My favorite part of the pillow was learning how to use the button-hole stitch feature on my sewing machine.  Totally easy to use, and very professional.  Definitely something that will come in handy.

Crib Sheet Please! (how to make your own crib sheet)

 Yay! So I finished my first crib sheet. It was actually pretty fun to make and surprisingly easy!

I loosely followed two patterns that I found online, and again sort of followed my Pottery Barn sheet.  And by the second sheet I just made up my own pattern, so you could easily do that too.

The online sites that I checked out were @ ehow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_2165529_baby-crib-sheet.html#ixzz0tREDUlFp, and the other one was @www.make-baby-stuff.com http://www.make-baby-stuff.com/crib-sheet-pattern.html

So this is what I needed to make my crib sheet (shown above on a toddler bed :) ):

2 yards of fabric 
2 yards of ¼-inch elastic
Thread
Sewing machine

Straight pins (I didn't use them the second time around.. I don't think they are necessary)
Iron
Ironing board

How to make a crib sheet:

          1. Cut your fabric to 43-by-66 (or measure your mattress and 

              add a few inches for the hem and so it will hang underneath) 

          2. Then cut 8x8 squares from each corner of your fabric.

  
3. Match the wrong sides of each corner together and stitch. I stitched the seam at 1/4 of an 
    inch and then I also went back and did an edge stitch anticipating a lot of wear and tear to   
    these sheets.  

4. Next fold all around the edges of your sheet by about 1/4 inch and iron. Fold over again and iron.
 
5. Run a straight stitch through your hem
6. Stitch down elastic where pins are with a straight stitch, then change stitch to zigzag. You want to pull the elastic very tight as you sew it down to the under side of your hem.

Yay! We now have a crib sheet!! So fun and easy to do. Let me know if you have questions. I even followed this same pattern but changed up the measurements to make new changing pads for Griffin's room. I will post pictures soon. :)