Birthday Banners

Back in July 2010 I started a post on birthday banners. My little girly turned 2 and I wanted to share the banner I made for her. Since then I have made two more but only have pictures of 1 more. My husband's birthday if Christmas Eve so while he got a banner, I didn't take pictures, sadly.

I'm going to give an in depth tutorial but here are the supplies you need:


And here is how Gwenna's turned out.


Her center banner:


For Meredith's banner, 4 months later, I used the same pom-pom string and just changed everything else out. Simple enough.


Her flags and center piece:


Here is the digital copy of the center piece I created for Mer's banner with elements from Summer Driggs.
It's so super simple and really makes the birthday boy or girl feel so special. Give it a try the next time a loved one's birthday rolls around!

Coat Tag

About 2 years ago I made a mall mounted, antique/distressed looking coat wrack for our home. After our dog ATE our 5 and 1/2 foot solid wood coat stand (I'm not kidding) we needed a better place to store our coats. Living in a cold climate, have have lots of them, come winter time!

Here is what I made:



Maybe a tutorial on that one sometime. But for now, let me address a problem this coat wrack presents.

It has knobs.

Seems ok. They're cute enough, after all. But none of our coats like to stay on the knobs unless they have hoods or those little hook on the tag that allow you to hang your coat on a knob.

Our coats don't have those things, for the most part. So a lot of the time the coat wrack is home to purses and aprons. How silly is that? I made this useful piece of furniture so that our winter coats could hang, since we don't have a coat closet or even a linen closet to speak of. (One of the few things that makes me ask, "Why did we buy this house?!")

My solution was to alter our coats. I've been meaning to do this for, oh, two years, and I finally got around to it.

Here is my first born's pink pea coat, purchased on winter clearance for her last year.


No tag, no hood.

Here are the needed supplies:

Oh, before I give you the supply list, let me just mention that I am obsessed with hot glue. It's my solution for almost anything. Hot glue if for me what duct tape is for 99% of men.

Now onto the supplies.

• Hot glue gun & glue
• Ribbon (that matches the coat, if you care that much... and I do.)
• Scissors - good fabric scissors

That's all.

Simply take a small length of ribbon (3 inches?), long enough to go around the peg, knob, or hook of your choice, and glue it on.

Take a second length of ribbon (if you want a finished look) and fold the ends in, gluing it along the bottom so it looks like this:


Really ridiculously easy.

Here is my wool pea coat:


And my daughters lighter weight jacket. I went a little more crafty on this one and added not only the finished looking bottom but a little bow. Because I really like my daughter and like to make cute things for her.


So if you have the same problem I was having, I hope this works out for you.