Zulily- Greatest Discount Website for Kids

Today I'm posting about something different-Zulily. Zulily is my all time favorite website to find great deals for kids, home decor or kitchen gadgets and women's clothing. It features boutiques and pricey designer items at a big discount. Being on a budget, I could never afford the items I've purchased otherwise.

There are other websites similar to this one that I've tried and Zulily is by far the best. Everything ships out within 2 weeks- sometimes, I've received my items in as little as five days. One order in the last year took 3 weeks to ship. When I emailed Zulily about this, they gave me a credit on my account to make up for the inconvenience  That is great customer service.

Right now they're running a special through this link. Anyone who signs up through this link gets a $10 credit. If you have children, grandchildren, or you love shopping for clothing and home decor- you have to sign up for this website. I highly recommend it. Right now is the perfect time to start making your purchases for the holidays.

The $10 credit offer ends Nov 16- but if you're reading this afterwards, I still recommend signing up..its a great site!

Pumpkin Spice Sugar Scrub- Bridal Shower Favors

What is more fall than pumpkin? As I've said in the past, I LOVE all things pumpkin. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin air freshener... So when I was wracking my brain trying to decide what to give for my sister's bridal shower favor (that matched the adorable polka dot matchbook emery boards I bought over a year ago), I was ecstatic when the light bulb went on and I thought about making a sugar scrub.

My sister-in-law, Jamie, had just given me a case of small 4 oz mason jars- which made the perfect package for the sugar scrub. I found this website that detailed how to make a sugar scrub and created the perfect little fall favor. It took my mom about an hour to make 36 of these cute little favors. I'm super sad I didn't get one to take home, but I'll just make some for myself when I have some free time.

Total cost of this project: $33...about $1 a piece. What a great affordable favor!

Here is the recipe...

Tulle Petticoat Tutorial

October is a busy month for me! I have two birthday parties and a bridal shower to host. I have several different projects underway for each event. Elsie's birthday outfit is first and this petticoat was actually going to go under the first skirt I made, but I decided that it was too cute to go under a skirt. So, I switched gears, added a flower and some leggings and a birthday outfit was born!

Elsie has been twirling non-stop since she's had it on. I'm so glad she loves it so much! Here is how I did it...

DIY Lace Crowns

Elsie's birthday is coming up and she wants a Pinkalicious birthday party. I have spent a few weeks agonizing over what she will wear. We've done the tutu dress thing a few times now and I'm ready for something different. The other night, we were reading Pinkalicious and she pointed out that Pinkalicious wears a crown (which I have never noticed before). She looked up at me with the most excited look I've ever seen on her face and asked, "Mommy, are you going to make me a pretty crown for my Pinkalicious birthday party?" Her excitement was so incredibly adorable, I began scouring the Internet to find the best crown for her birthday. This Blog had my favorite.

I purchased a 9ft roll of lace trim at Hobby Lobby for $2.99 (and it was half off).  The trim was gathered on the roll, but I trimmed off the bottom seam to ungather it, which ended up giving me an extra 5 inches on the 14 inch section I cut off, so you could get about 12 crowns off one roll of trim. Pretty great deal.

Here is how I did it...

Toddler Jumper Tutorial

This morning was a really gloomy morning, so it was a perfect day to do a sewing project. I bought some fabric with the intent to make the girls this jumper that I found on pinterest. I made a couple changes to better suit my needs. Evelyn's turned out a little better once I knew how I wanted to do it.

So, here are the instructions to this adorable little jumper

Diva/ Bride Cut-out Butter Cookies

 For my sister's bachelorette party, I made these fun cookies for all the goodie bags. I purchased diva and wedding cookie cutters from amazon months ago and I was so excited to finally use them last week. (although, at 1 in the morning, I wasn't too ecstatic about decorating cookies on Friday night).

DIY Beverage Koozie Tutorial

My sister's bachelorette party was this weekend and even though I had a couple months to plan it, I decided on Wednesday that I wanted to make beer koozies for all the goodie bags (on top of making my cut out butter cookies). Too abitious? - as always.

So, Wednesday night, I started searching the internet for koozie tutorials, but was very dissapointed in the results. There were only a few tutorials and I didn't like any of the finished products.  So, I searched etsy and found a koozie that I liked. Based on the picture of the etsy koozie and one of the tutorials that I found I came up with my koozie.

The most important part of this koozie is the insul-bright fabric that is layered between the fabrics. I didn't know this fabric existed until Wednesday and I'm so excited to have found it. This keeps beverages hot or cold. The key to using this product is making sure the metalic part of the fabric faces the beverage. It will reflect the heat or cold and keep your drink well insulated.

I based the size of my koozie on a beer bottle, but there is about two inches of overlap, so if you want to make yours more versatile, you can place two rows of buttons so that you can use it for a bottle, can or as a coffee koozie.