Dr. Seuss Baby Shower

My sister is expecting a baby in early September so this past weekend my mom & I threw her a Dr. Seuss themed baby shower!
First were the invitations, I made them on Photoshop Elements using clip art images and cute wording found on the web. The font used is called “Grinched” and can be found here for free.


So I got there early to decorate (red & white balloons, streamers- not pictured) and I used my new Silhouette SD to cut out some vinyl words for the walls (again using that Grinched font). I also printed out some images from the web of Dr. Seuss books.



I also made some of Martha’s tissue paper pom poms in red & white and hung them over the food table.

And lastly I made a cake! I love making a cake (probably because I eat the extra cake/frosting….shhhhh)! I made a Dr. Seuss Cat in the Hat, Hat cake. The brim is a red velvet oval cake with cream cheese frosting and the stacked part is yellow cake with butter cream icing.

Here’s a little secret for you….I did the whole cake using 3 boxes of yellow cake mix, but I just add in other ingredients to make it red velvet & make the yellow cake taste like homemade! I do make my frosting from scratch and usually make my cakes from scratch too but hey- I just had a baby so I’m entitled to take short cuts right? right.
Here is what I do to turn regular yellow box cake mix into red velvet:
Add 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder to the dry cake mix.
Add all your liquids (substitute buttermilk for any water/milk the mix calls for- I make my own buttermilk by adding 1 tablespoon of white vinegar to 1 cup of milk and letting it sit about 5-10 min) then add 1 tablespoon of red food coloring (about the whole vial if you buy those little ones), a teaspoon of distilled white vinegar and a teaspoon of vanilla.
That’s it! Now you have red velvet cake batter! I use this recipe for cream cheese frosting (She also has a from scratch red velvet recipe in that post too)
For the yellow cake I follow this cupcake tutorial for doctoring the mix. (If you Google ‘doctoring cake mix’ or some similar term you will come up with all kinds of ways to make store bought mix taste terrific!)
For the butter cream frosting I again use Bakerella. I used to use Wilton’s but I don’t like using veggie shortening because it always seemed to be a ‘finicky’ frosting because of it. It tastes great though…I just go for easy & un-finicky!
So there is my family Dr. Seuss baby shower! Hope you liked it!
Have a happy Day,

Easy Pretty Burp Cloths

So I hope you all will let me go all baby crazy on you for a post or two. I will be 38 weeks prego tomorrow & am in full on "gotta finish making things for the baby" mode.  Today I want to show you how I made some burp cloths that are BIG (because seriously those little ones they sell in the stores don't do crap) and aren't fully covered in fabric (I've seen tutorials where one entire side is covered in fabric or there is a strip down the middle and fabric doesn't absorb as well as the diaper they are covering).
Anyway, I wanted to use those cheap-o Gerber cloth diapers they sell everywhere (12 pack of the kind you need pins and diaper covers to actually use as diapers) as burp cloths but of course I wanted them to be CUTE while retaining their absorb-abilty (is that even a word?).

Easy, Pretty, Functional Burp Cloth tutorial:

Here's what I did:

Supplies needed:
1 cloth diaper, large-ish scraps of fabric (fat quarters are great for this- you'll get approx. one burp cloth out of every fat quarter), iron, pins, scissors, sewing machine & some sort of measuring device.

Step 1: You WILL need to iron your diaper. Trust me. when you take one out of the package you will see this. You might as well iron your fabric too while you are at it.

There nice & ironed!!

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Step 2: Lay your diaper out & position your fabric wrong side UP on top. Determine how much of a 'wrap around' you want. Mine was about 3" so I put my fabric 3" away from the edge. (See how I oh-so-accurately measured it? It's a BURP cloth people- RELAX your perfectionism!) Ok now you can pin your fabric to your diaper if you want or just pick it up and put it on your sewing machine (guess what I did....).

Step 3: Sew a straight stitch from one side of the diaper to the other. This is just to secure the fabric to the diaper at your 3" line.

Step 4: Leave your diaper where it is and just flip your fabric over. Iron to make a nice crisp hem/seam/whatever.

Step 5: Flip the whole thing over (diaper and all)

Step 6: Your fabric will be wider (or it should be...did I not mention that? hehe hopefully you read the whole tutorial BEFORE starting to sew!) than your diaper on the sides so you need to fold down & iron the little side pieces to get that hem that was created on the front of the diaper when you flipped the fabric over and ironed. See that picture up there? Not perfect! Just fold and iron. Seriously.

Step 7: Fold in the sides & iron them.

Step 7: This is where it gets hard to explain. Take the bottom raw edge of your fabric and fold it up bring it up around the back of the diaper. See the arrow? That is my seam from the front. I had a large piece of fabric so I just folded the fabric back on itself until I saw the seam. I ironed the fold. (If you pre-measured your fabric- or measured at all -you can just skip the next couple steps until I get to the sewing again haha)

See? All ironed and the fabric is about 1/2 inch higher than the seam. (That is the wrong side of the fabric facing up because it is pulled around from the front of the diaper then folded back on itself-make sense?)

Step 8: Un-fold the fabric and cut along the ironed crease which should be 1/2 inch right above the front seam-make sure you are only cutting fabric & not the diaper!

Step 9: Welcome back if you are a pre-measurer and skipped those last few steps! Fold the raw edge of the fabric under (the opposite direction) Iron it under & pin in place, line up your hem with the seam!

Step 10: Put your fabric wrapped end of the diaper into your sewing machine as shown above. You will start topstitching at the left top corner and sew up the side of the diaper. When you get to the corner (I'm coming up to it in the picture above) ....

Step 10a: Stop with your needle down (see arrow in picture above? it's pointing to my needle being down still), lift the presser foot....

Step 10b:Turn your diaper (arrow in above picture is still pointing to the needle but now the diaper is turned), put the presser foot back down and keep sewing down the fabric. Do the same thing at the next corner until you reach the right hand corner. There is no need to sew along the bottom where the fabric wraps from the front of the diaper to the back because it's just a fold not a seam. You can if you like though.

Step 11: Repeat steps 1-10b for the other end of the diaper. You're done! Make a bunch!

 Aren't they cute!? These make great baby shower gifts or you can also do this with plain dishcloths to dress up your kitchen or give as gifts! (See not just for babies!)

Have a good weekend!




I am linking to:

It's A.......Baby shower!!

So my baby shower was this past Saturday & I'm just fully recovered enough to edit photos and write a post. Whew! This whole pregnant with a toddler thing takes a lot out of you! (More on that later)

So the theme was "Cupcakes & Tea" and I actually used a lot of ideas I saw floating around the internet & ended up keeping my costs really low.

Ready for some pictures & a surprise? You've seen the invites I sent out...very gender neutral since we weren't telling anyone the gender remember?

Here is the welcome banner & teacup set-up as the guests walked in:

and of course we had to have some Martha Stewart Pom Poms! (well ones I made myself- I don't like to pay Martha for nothin!)

wait....that last pom isn't gender neutral is it?

hey wait- neither are those!! You can't see it in the picture but that banner across the windows says: "It's A Girl!"  Yup- that's right- our plan all along was to tell everyone at the baby shower! Our Little Girl has a due date of June 4th and we put off the baby shower as long as possible so that we could enjoy all the little guessing games going on amongst family & friends! (By the way yes she already has a name but that we don't share until she arrives!)

Let's see more of this shower now huh?

The iced tea & hot tea set-up on my buffet (taken after the party had started so you can see my MIL's camera bag haha)

The cupcake/cheese/cracker/fruit kabob table (directly under those pink poms!)

 I made teapot/teacup shaped sugar cubes which I think are just so cute!

And napkins that I cut/folded into the shape of little dresses & my friend Katie tied ribbon 'sashes' around! Thanks Katie- where would I be without your help?? She also cut & glued the cupcake toppers together for me!

A little more of a close up (better lighting)

And the fireplace banner in the living room complete with a couple of my favorite outfits from a huge lot I bought of Craigslist for $25! Woohoo!

Ok so that is it for pictures I took. Here are the links to all the tutorials/shops/ideas I used so you can use them anyway you want to too!
Martha Stewart Tissue Paper Pom Poms (free)
Martha Stewart Printable Letters (free)
Napkin Dress instructions (free)
Cupcake topper image (free) & instructions (free)
Iced Tea label download (free)
Sugar cube how-to (free)
Teapot mold (not free lol)
Teapot shaped favors ~you rip them apart, plant them & wildflowers grow! (not free-tell them creativekristi sent you! I'm sure they'd love to know I'm talking them up!)


There you go! I mentioned earlier we'd talk a little about how tiring this pregnancy is getting having a toddler too...well I've decided only once a week for posting is about what I've been averaging and I'll try to keep it up until delivery day. After the baby comes I'm trying to arrange a few guest posters for you so that the blog continues but I can recover. I have one who says she'd love to help a new momma out & if any of you want to help please e-mail me: creativekristi (at) gmail (dot) com with the words "Baby Guest Poster" in the subject line. I'm only looking for 3 or 4 and if you have a blog please include a link so I can check it out too. You all know the type of stuff I write about so try to keep it in that general area of topic. If you don't have a blog that's fine too- send me an e-mail anyway and we can work something out! Thanks so much!

Have a great weekend!