DIY - Downsizing a adult dress to fit a kid

Hello, friends of Hazelnutt House (",)

I was doing some packing and pulled out this tube dress (from Forever 21) that I used to wear.  My oh my... I think I have had this dress for close to 10 years!  I wore it even when I was preggers since it is really stretchy.  So, to extend its wardrobe life, I decided to downsize this dress into something that Kiddo can wear (",)  

Here's how the dress looks before the alteration.  It has elastic shirring at the top and waist area.

I decided to cut off the shirring on the top since I had to shorten the torso area to fit Kiddo.  Set the cutout portion aside for later use.

I eyeballed the dress and decided to take an inch and a half away from the top to bottom on one side.

I wanted an easy way out instead of torturing myself with the regular inner seam - I made two rows of stitches and trimmed off the excess with a scallop shears.  Not the best way to tame a seam, but this will do and it usually holds up pretty well (",)

After taking in the sides, I reattached the top shirring and added elastic round the entire top.  And that's that! I am done!

Here's how Kiddo looks in the dress.

She wanted it to be a long dress, so I made it into a midi.  A long dress would be too cumbersome on a kid.

Check out my other clothing makeover projects:

DIY: Top to Skirt to Dress project 

DIY: Adult's top to kid's dress

Talk to you ladies soon!

Castle craft for kids

Hihi friends of Hazelnutt House (",) 

It has been some time since Kiddo and I embarked on a 'large scale' project.  Since we've no plans today, we gathered ALL the boxes, cardboard pieces and all the odds and ends that I have been saving and we spent some time thinking of what we can create.  

Eventually, Kiddo and I decided to create a castle.... 

"A big one, Mama..." reminded Kiddo.

We made use of the wall paint that we have and painted all the sides of the boxes and cardboard materials.  I particularly like using wall paint as it dries really quickly.

To add some texture to the plain walls of the castle, we stencilled some 'bricks' at random parts of the walls.

Lastly, we assembled all the parts onto a large piece of cardboard and secured them with hot glue.  

Kiddo made some flaggies for the towers and added her figurine family on the deck of the castle.

Here's the back of the castle.

We spent almost the entire day working on this project.  We did not rush.  Took our time to get it right and also lots of breaks in between.

Talk to you ladies soon!  

Phone craft using foam and random bits

Hey hey friends of Hazelnutt House (",) 

Kiddo has a phone! ... yup...one that she made with foam (",) 

I kept these two pieces of foam sheets after removing them from a package and today, I thought of a good way to use it - Kiddo and I decided to make our own mobile phones (",) 

I cut out some rectangles for the buttons using card stock.

To achieve a slightly popup effect for the buttons, we used these double sided foam to stick the buttons onto the foam.

When Kiddo was done with her buttons and home screen, she pulled out her sticker album and started to add some Bling! to her phone.

Kiddo's really thrilled with her phone...*ahem... pls ignore the laterally inverted numbers that she has written on the buttons >_< 

Here's my foam mobile... robot style. 

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!