Long Sleeve Shirt --- Sensory Processing Tool!

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend a continuing education course given by Children's Healthcare of Atlanta called "Sensory Processing: Behavior, Memory, Learning." The target audience was speech, occuptional, and physical therapists but parents were invited as well (with a nice discount on registration fees, I might add.) So worth the price of admission! The instructor was a woman named Laura Barker and she practically had me crying (tears of hope) by the end of the class. It was an all day course so I won't even attempt to represent all the things I learned in this post but I would definitely recommend visiting her website www.sensoryprocessing.com and looking into a READY Approach class in your area.

One specific tip she gave us was turning a sweat shirt into a weighted (Deep Pressure Input) device. (If you've never heard of weighted blankets or compression vests and don't know what I'm talking about, go here). The weight is sewn into the arms of the shirt. The torso section can be pulled down over the back of a chair, and then the arms can be wrapped around the person and rest in their lap.

I didn't have a sweat shirt on hand that I thought would do what I wanted it to so instead I pulled out one of my old long sleeve stretchy T's. You'll want to pick a shirt made of a sturdy fabric, especially if your kid likes to chew on things the way mine does. (Alexander actually chewed a tiny whole in his wrap in the time it took me to come up here and start this post. So I'm going to need to revamp a little but if you pay attention you should be all good.) The shirt I sewed up is white but here's a black version so you get the "supplies" idea. 

The Homemade Weighted "Hug" Wrap

Supplies:

Adult sized (small or medium) long sleeve shirt

3 lbs* Poly-Pellets (Stuffing Beads)

Sewing machine (threaded)

Rubber band(s)

Scale (optional)

*The weight recommendation for any therapeutic weighted object is one tenth the body weight of the person for whom it's being made. My son weighs 29.25 lbs. I rounded that to 30 and used 3 lbs of beads for his "hug wrap". You'll need to know your child's weight and scale the measurements accordingly.

Step 1:

Grab one sleeve to start with and use your machine to double stitch it shut at the bottom. Keep sewing off both edges to ensure the sleeve is completely sealed off. You don't want any of your little beads working their way out.

Step 2: 

Measure out (or guestimate) 0.5 lbs (ie: 1/6 total quantity) of beads and pour them down into the closed off sleeve. 

I grabbed the food scale and a good sized cup from our kitchen. The scale's tare function allowed me to use the cup to hold the beads while they were weighed. Then I pulled the "mouth" of the sleeve over the top of the cup and flipped the cup over to pour the beads in. (Dealing with these itty-bitty beads is a bit of a pain, but my method seemed to work well this time.)

Step 3:

Use the rubber band to tie off the sleeve with the beads as well packed as you can get them. 

I cut the rubber band and used it more like a tourniquet so I could really get it tight enough not to let any beads through.

Step 4: Double stitch through the non-stuffed part of the sleeve as close to the rubber band as you can without sewing through bunched material. 

If you look closely at the picture above, you can see my stitching about an inch to the right of the rubber band. It took some finagling to get the material to lie flat so I could get a really good closure. Just take your time and don't worry too much about a straight line, as long as no beads can get through, you're good. 

Step 5: Measure out (or guestimate) 1.0 lb (ie: 1/3 total quantity) of beads and pour them down into what is now the top half of the closed off sleeve.

Step 6: Repeat steps 3 and 4 with the top half of the sleeve. 

Step 7: Repeat steps 1-6 with other sleeve.

Finished product

Test Run

Snug as a bug in a rug

I'm considering adding "fidgets" with velcro (might cover that little hole I was talking about) but now you have the basic idea. I plan on caring for my hug wrap by hand washing and then laying out to dry. If I get really courageous all of the sudden I may try a machine cycle on the hand wash settling and maybe even try a tumble dry on low. I just can't imagine what all those little beads would do to my machine if they got loose somehow.

Big Honking Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. This is a home made item and hasn't been studied or endorsed by any of those fancy government mommysitter agencies. Please judge for yourself whether this sounds like something you want your child to be using (with or without supervision.) You may also want to discuss weight therapy with your child's doctor before proceeding.

Homemade Peppermint Brown Sugar Scrub

Here we have another great Pinterest find:

Tip Junkie Compiled - 14 Easy Homemade Sugar Scrub Recipes

I pinned that honey of a link all the way back in October when I first started getting ready for Christmas. I knew it would make a great "neighbor gift." We recently picked up about six or seven #10 (60 oz) cans of brown sugar from my husband's parents when they were cleaning out their old food storage. The sugar is 'expired' and quite possibly not as good for eating anymore but when I found these recipes I knew they'd be perfect for a scrub. I ended up making sugar scrubs for Alexander's teachers (teacher, parapro, and speech therapist) and for all the ladies at church that I visit-teach (and one or two that I don't). 

All the recipes are essentially the same (sugar, oil, some kind of extract for scent) so I knew I could get away with tweaking and making my own. Corrie's Brown Sugar Body Scrub from Paula Deen's website seemed the nicest, I thought, and I even already had a bottle of Vitamin E to use. My first batch was actually for a bridal shower gift for our brand new sister-in-law and my ever-self-sacrificing hubby braved Hobby Lobby on his way home from work to pick up lavender and peppermint extracts so I could indulge in my homemade gifting plans.

Indulgence for the bride

As you can see, I did one lavender and one vanilla scrub for my bridal shower gift. Then for the rest (I wanted to go more Christmas-y) I went with peppermint. Since I was making so many, I played around with doubling, tripling and quadrupling the recipe and made a few batches over several days. Here's the general gist of my final "mass production" recipe.

4 cups brown sugar

2 cups olive oil

1 tablespoon vitamin E oil (I used Spring Valley Vitamin E Skin Oil from Walmart) 

15-30 drops essential oil (I used Crafty Bubbles Peppermint Essential Oil from Hobby Lobby)

2 tablespoons honey

Combine wet ingredients first (I kept forgetting to do that, but with a little extra mixing they turned out fine). Then add brown sugar and mix well. (When I encountered stubborn lumps of sugar, I just reached in which my hands and smushed 'em good.) Portion into containers and seal tops on tightly. Tie on tags with cutesy ribbon and distribute. :-) 

I used 16oz (2 cups) containers and this recipe only filled two of them. 2 cups is pretty big though so you could definitely go down to 8 oz (1 cup) containers and have a great little gift.

I don't seem to have any pictures of the final Peppermint Scrub product but here are some free printables of the tags I tied on them. 

Click. Save. Print.

Click. Save. Print.

I got the tag itself from the Holiday Recipe Collection over at Shabby Princess. The little blue section is where I put the "To-From" info. I printed the tags on cardstock and then flipped the page over and printed the instructions on the back before I cut them out. That way you've got a nice two-sided tag with everything you need. 


These scrubs would be great gifts any time of year. We've got Valentines day coming up, then Easter, Mother's day, and then it's practically Christmas again right? Just change out the peppermint oil for your recipient's favorite scent and you're golden. :-)

Pinterest 'wins' from Christmas!

Now that Christmas is over I can post about the stuff I wanted to keep a surprise! I went a little nuts this year on projects (what year don't I go nuts?) but I really enjoyed making the gifts for my family and friends. I think this Christmas may have been my favorite so far since I put so much focus on the giving part. Of course, the receiving part was great, too, and I'm going to post about that on our family blog sometime in the next few days for journaling purposes.

So, here's the beginning of a run down on the projects you missed while I was keeping secrets...

First: the T-Shirts

I found the ideas for almost all my projects on Pinterest. I did a whole bunch of shirts for people based on designs from there, but using iron-on transfers instead of the fancier methods. Iron-ons don't always look as nice but since I was doing so many, I wanted to use a method I'd done before. I completely forgot to take pictures of my actual finished T's so here are the inspiration photos (some from Pinterest, some from elsewhere) and some exported jpegs of the files I used.

For soon-to-be-born and new babies of family and friends:

For our nieces:

  For my brother in law:

For my siblings and our nephews:

Another nephew:

 

These two were for a couple of good friends of ours who we refer to as the boys' "Godfather"

and "Fairy Godmother."

I'm particularly proud of this last one because I came up with the concept and the phrase for the back of the shirt all by myself.

I bought the shirts at Hobby Lobby (link) and Walmart (couldn't find a link to the actual pack I got, but just go to the mens underwear section and they have good prices for undershirts that work well for doing iron-ons).

The shirts were just the beginning of our gifting endeavors this year. Stay tuned for more this week!

Christmas-time

My camera has gone on a little vacation, and I can't post anything about the homemade gifts I'm giving for Christmas without ruining some surprises, anyway. (Although just about everything I'm doing can be found in the glorious mess that is my Christmas & Easter Pinterest page. If you find yourself at a loss for last minute homemade ideas, DEFINITELY check out that page!) Soooo...here is a revisiting of my best past projects that could be used for Christmas gifting or decor.

Original Post: Easter Design

Original Post: Irish Blessing Subway Art

Original Post: More Easter Time Art

Original Post: Put Your Photos on Canvas

Original Post: A pseudo-tutorial (ish)...thing (The Living Christ Frame)

Just one more week to go! I'm so excited for Christmas this year!

Lost Child ID Tags

On our California vacation we visited 3 different theme parks in one week. Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, and Legoland. I had our whole itinerary planned weeks before our trip and let me tell you, I did puh-lenty of research!

During said research I came across the Legoland affiliated "Model Mom Mary" blog and this article: Five Safety Measures for Visiting a Theme Park.

Model Mom Mary describes a personal experience we all fear. She is obviously a regular at Legoland, but her 2-year-old daughter still managed to disappear for a brief time while they were there recently. This prompted her to write the article and share the following 5 Safety Measures

1) Have a photo of the child from that day so you can show people who are helping you look what the child looks like that day. This one is easy nowadays with the prevalence of smart phones.
2) Pin a piece of paper on the inside of your child’s clothes or write with sharpie on their stomach their name and all of your contact information.
3) Set an easily accessible meeting spot first thing upon entering the Park.
4) Introduce your kids to an employee upon entering the Park so that they can identify a safe person to approach for help if they are lost.
5) Wear bright colors. No need to bring back the 80’s with matching day-glo tees but bright, primary colors are much easier to spot in a crowd.

She also points out that the best thing you can do is tell a park employee. Of course it's good because they can help you look but they can also radio to all other employees and have the front gate locked if need be.

Those exact same 5 tips can be found on multiple websites geared toward child safety and I think they're great for use with children who are able to effectively communicate with grownups and remember things like phone numbers or where we decided to meet. Knowing, however, that my toddler does not yet fall into that category of children, I was instead inspired to use the knowledge I have of my child to come up with my own ideas and plan for keeping him safe.

I really liked the part about putting our contact info on his person somewhere. For some reason I wasn't loving the idea of writing on Alexander in permanent marker (maybe it's just the OCD in me thinking it wouldn't look nice, what can I say?) It also occurred to me that pinning a piece of paper inside his clothes could turn into an immediate fail the second he started playing in any water (which is his favorite thing to do). So I took the basic concept and left off the specifics and decided instead to make little fabric tags to sew into the clothes he would be wearing at the parks.

Originally I was planning on sewing the tags on the inside of his collar where the sizing tag usually would be. Then I decided that if he wanders away and is actually noticed by a helpful adult, I wanted them to be able to find my cell phone number without having to look for it. One, they might not think to look for it at all; Two, if my son is missing from me, the 15+ seconds it would take a thoughtful person to look for some sort of ID, is 15+ more seconds that my phone is not ringing to tell me he is safe. Outside of right sleeve it is!

Slight side bar: I have read that putting a child's name too large, say on the back of their shirt (jersey style) isn't a good idea because then a "non-helpful" person could possibly use the information to act familiar with the child and lead them away with out them protesting. Alexander doesn't come when people call his name anyway so I wasn't overly worried about that but it was still a consideration. I wasn't planning on making huge tags but the thought did influence me to go even smaller.

There are lots of products out there that can serve this purpose if your child gets lost but I made these out of what I had at home. I typed up Alexander's name and both my husband's and my cell phone numbers in Corel in 10pt Arial font (nothing fancy, easy to read). I made it so 10 tags would print on one sheet so I'd have extras and printed them out on HP Iron-on Transfer Paper. I cut them out and ironed them onto some plain white fabric. One more round of cutting, then I sewed them on the sleeves quick quick like a bunny with my sewing machine.

To finish I'll share what happened while we were in Legoland. While Kevin sat with the baby at some tables nearby, I took Alexander to play in Hideaways (a huge jungle gym type play area). Alexander thought it was one of the best things ever and I was having a good time, too, watching him and climbing and sliding after him. Well, there was a climbing section that I was too big to follow him into and he got to it and started going down before I could stop him. I whirled around and shot down the nearest slide, hoping to meet him at the bottom. Well the slide came out on a different level than the rope course so I had to run up the regular stairs trying to find him. He wasn't there. The park had employees stationed on all the levels so I turned around and told the nearest one that I couldn't find my son. She asked me what he was wearing and I told her it was a yellow shirt with black stripes with his name on a tag on the sleeve. Hair color? Blond! I got his shorts color wrong (I said green instead of blue) but that employee found him (happily playing and completely unaware that his mommy was lost; he certainly wasn't lost, he knew right where he was - on the slide, silly mommy) in 10 seconds flat.

I didn't know where he was for a total of about 1 minute but let me tell you, knowing he had one of these tags on his shirt kept me from going from zero to hysterical in those same 60 seconds. Mind you, the tag didn't actually help the girl find him but it kept me sane enough to ask for help in the first place. Definitely worth the 30 minutes spent making them before we left.

Repeated, simplified, four (maybe five) step process:
1 - Create in word processor or graphics program
2 - Print on Iron-on Transfer Paper (follow package instructions)
3 - Iron onto plain white broadcloth or other fabric of choice (also following Iron-on package instructions)
4 - Cut out individual labels and sew into clothing (precise location is up to you)

Sharing my Silhouette

Here's some wall vinyl I cut for my mother-in-law on my Silhouette. 

I think they turned out pretty sweet so if you like the font as much as we do here's a link to the free download. Penshurst Font

Enjoy!

I can do that!

If you haven't seen this site, you should check it out. It's inspired me to look at things I like with a slightly different eye. Not, I could make that at home, but I will make that at home.

Father's Day Ties

I wanted to share this post from my family updates blog. For Christmas I made Kevin's dad and my dad ties with their grandkids hand prints ironed on them. I used this pattern from Purl Bee and followed the instructions for making a wider tie. I actually added more than the 3/8 inch that they said, but I'm not even sure of the exact measurements because I basically just guessed.

This is what the front of my dad's tie looked like.
*Edit* - Before I just had the digital file I printed on the transfer paper but I called my sister and had her take a picture of the actual tie so I could swap it out - TaDa!

I got my kids' hand prints (a two person job for the 5 month old, mind you) using Crayola Washable Kids Paint. I let the paint dry and then I scanned them into the computer. I had my sister do the same with her son and then email me the file. Then I threw them all on a page in Photoshop and changed them to black and white and upped the contrast a little. (You could make the hands any color you want but as you can see the fabric I had was bright blue and black was the only thing that looked right with it.)  I measured the tie and worked up the layout I wanted. I rotated the whole image diagonally so it could fit on one sheet of transfer paper. In the end though, I didn't like the way the extra iron-on material looked around the hand prints so I cut them apart and trimmed each one separately as close as I could, so setting up the layout for the printing part didn't really matter. Kevin's dad's tie had 6 hand prints on it so I sized the hands down just a smidge to get them to actually fit on the tie. I did them all proportionally, though, so they still looked right lined up together.

For the Iron-On part I used HP Iron-On Transfers and just followed the package instructions. I used Transfers for "light fabrics" for all the black and white stuff, the only thing I used Transfers for "dark fabrics" for was the flower on Bill's tie (check my original post to see what I'm talking about.)

The ties weren't hard to make, even with all my do-overs. So check out my post and Purl Bee's pattern and whip one up for an awesome Fathers' Day gift.

Leave me a comment if you have any questions!

Printable Foldable Mothers' Day Cards

I wanted these cards to be quick and easy to make for any forgetful child (of any age) or husband who happens to hop online at the last minute looking for something to give the mama. So I've included the full page sheets formatted to be printed on 8.5x11 printer paper and folded in the quarter fold card style.

Quarter fold instructions 

Not overly elegant but it will give you something to sign your name to in about 60 seconds flat. It's the thought that counts, even if that thought is in the wee hours of Mother's Day morning.

Of course if you've found this post ahead of time and want to get down and dirty with some cutesy, scrapbook-esque card making, by all means reformat my little project anyway you see fit.

Generic Mothers' Day Card

Full 8.5x11 foldable sheet

From Husband to Wife on Mothers' Day

Full 8.5x11 foldable sheet

Mildly Humorous Mothers' Day Card

Full 8.5x11 foldable sheet

Digi-Scrapbooking elements used are from:
-Winkart Graphics and Kiss This Designs. Found in Rakscraps Nov 2010 Megakit
-Shabby Princess Designs Festival Collection