Makes and Bakes for a little girls third birthday!

This weekend was one big celebration. Our little girl L turned 3! Oh how time does go by so fast. It feels like only yesterday when she was born! 

On Saturday we had her birthday party. Our house filled up with family, friends and lots of children and she enjoyed it all so much! My mom baked her famous apple pie, especially requested by our girl. And I did some baking and made her a birthday cake which was delicious and I totally forgot to take pictures of it ~oops~. It was a delicious recipe and I will absolutely bake it another time (and remember to take pictures). To give you an idea, I will try to describe it for you. I started with a biscuit base, cut it into two slices and I filled it with raspberry jelly and butter cream, a red fondant topping and some whipped cream. Hope you can picture it in your minds eye ~smile~.

After a good night's sleep it was time for some Makes and Bakes! Our girl was celebrating her birthday at daycare on Monday, so something had to be made for that.
L really wanted me to Bake Carrot Cupcakes. I had never made them before so after some online studying, I decided to use a straight forward recipe. It basically was just 240 grams of flour, 240 grams of sugar, 200 ml of sunflower oil, 300 grams of finely grated carrots, 2 tsp of cinnamon, 3 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt.

I gave it a "Bakes by Maartje" twist by using self raising flour and leaving out the baking powder. And instead of using regular sugar, I used dark brown sugar. And I must say, they turned out to be delicious! I packed them into lovely boxes from Hema and that was that!

And then it was time to do what this blog is all about. Makes!
This time I made little drawstring bags and filled them with a little cake tin, six small crayons and a matching coloring book.
Our kids are both in the same play group at the daycare, so I asked for a list with all the kids names on them. All in all there are 18 kids (11 girls, 7 boys) including ours, so I decided on making separate bags for the boys and the girls.

I chose two canvas type fabrics and used navy blue Hoooked Zpagetti to make the actual drawstring for the girl's bag and a similar type string in grey for the boys' bags (not the one shown in the pictures above).

I used this tutorial (in Dutch) and adjusted it by first ironing the fabric and creating the tunnel for the string to go through. Then I sewed that part, and used a safety pin to pull the string through. Then I folded the fabric, right sides towards each other and sewed it, turned it out and then I was done!

My girl really liked the little presents and she had a great day today! The kids all loved the carrot cupcakes and I will probably make them again next month, when our baby J will turn 1!

Would love to hear what you think of my Makes and Bakes, so if you can, leave a message.

See you again soon!

Love, Maartje

Pillowcases... final touches for the nursery

Hi there, so nice to meet you here on my blog!
As you know I have been busy the past few weeks to catch you up on all my Makes for the nursery for our little baby boy.

The final bits were some pillowcases to finish off the look. I found a great pilow cover tutorial on the lovely blog of MiekK, which you can find here (in Dutch).
Even for me, with only a bit of sewing experience, it was very easy and it turned out very well, if you don't mind me saying so ~smile~

I made two pillow covers, one measuring 50 x 50 cm and the other slightly bigger at 60 x 60 cm. 
Following the instructions step by step, I measured, cut and sewed both pillowcases, using a navy canvas and some left over fabric I used to reupholster the roman blind (blogpost can be found here) for the 50 x 50 pillow.
The second one I made from the same navy canvas and another left over piece of the postal bag fabric I used to make the memo board (blogged about that one here) and I only finished that one last Friday. Therefore you get to see the results now and not last week as I had planned ;-)

As you can see, the white Ikea chair got a completely new look and feel. By adding the postal bag fabric, it really lifted the color scheme of the room with the little bits of red and the sandy color of the pillowcase.

So here's a little peek into the nursery. Since the nursery is on the Northeastern side of our house, light is a challenge when taking pictures. So hope you can see how it all combines so well.

See you next time!

Love,
Maartje

Makes by Maartje: Flag Garland

Hi again!

Hopeyou are doing well on your end of the world! Thanx for stopping bytoday and read up on my blog.

Inthis post I wanted to share my flag garlands. I made them to matchthe playpen mat and made two because I had enough flags to do so.Both have flags which measure approximately 10 x 12 cm and areattached using bias tape. One has seven flags and the other one five.

Ichose to make rectangular flags, as the playpen mat also has arectangular shape. The longer one I used to hang on the playpen. Theother one is now in the nursery, on the memo board.

Myidea for the one on the playpen is to iron the letters of our son'sname on it. That will be done later though, since he isn't born yet.Of course the husband and I already know his name, but will not shareyet ~smile~.

Asfor making the flags, I used a cutting mat and rotary cutter (which Ilike to call my fabric pizza knife ;-) ). It is an incredibly fastway to make same size rectangles with straight edges. Putting theright sides of the fabric together, I sewed three sides of the flagswith a regular straight stitch, leaving an opening to turn. Using oneof my crochet hooks, I pushed out the corners and ironed them flat.Then, using bias tape, I sewed the flags to the bias, one by one,without pinning them. As the flags are so small, this was no problem.I did adjust the sewing speed of my machine, allowing me to sewstraight. When I finished step one of sewing them together, I took ashortcut in folding and sewing the back of the bias tape, to avoidthe use of pins.

AgainI ironed the flags, folding over the bias tape and ironing that aswell. Forgot to take pictures, so I cannot show you. I do hope youunderstand what I mean. If not, do not hesitate to drop me an emailat makesbymaartje@gmail.comI would be very happy to help you!

FinallyI sewed the bias tape to finish the garlands and hung them on thememo board and playpen.

Thiswas a very easy and fun to do Make. It actually gave me enoughconfidence to sign up for a charity project, making a birthdaygarland for Happy HippoFoundation. My blogging friend Annemarie is organizing this andhas some information about it on her blog which you can find here.It is in Dutch but that might not be a problem for all of you. Goalis to make 300 garlands which can be given in a birthday box tounderprivileged children so they can have a lovely birthday party.More on that in another blogpost!

Ihope to have inspired you to make your own flag garland. It is an ideal way to use those left over fabric scraps and it makes for a great present for any newborn or just as a (birthday) present ~smile~.

Sofor now, thank you for stopping by for a visit!

Xoxo,

Maartje