Child Size Bead Stitch Hats

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Last winter I posted a hat pattern, the Bead Stitch Hat, along with a matching cowl. It has since become one of my most popular patterns. I have had a few questions about how to adapt the pattern to make it a child size, the original pattern was only written in adult size. So, over the last little while I have been working on a toddler and child size version of the hat and now it is ready to share.

Always Be Yourself T-Shirts

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About a month and a half ago I had the opportunity to teach a beginning iron on class at the Cricut Mountain Make-A-Thon. My class topic was on slicing vs. layering when using iron on, and we also talked a bit about knockout designs.

Crocheted Toddler Bow Tie

Is there anything cuter than a little boy with a bow tie? I think that they are so adorable and they are pretty easy to make, out of both fabric and yarn.

Personalized Water Bottles

Summer Camp Season is in full swing at our house. Our kids have day camps through their school as well as through a community center and so far we have had a camp of some kind every week since school got out. This week our 4 oldest have all had camp. Next week it will be Cub Scout day camp for our 8 year old. They need to bring water bottles with them each time whether for lunch or just to have with them throughout the day, and with lots of kids at the camps everything needs to be labeled with their names.

Layered Paper Dinosaur Ornament

I have one last ornament to share from my family ornament exchange. My son Jak had one of his cousins, a boy who loves dinosaurs. Jak decided that he really wanted to make the ornament for his cousin and that it had to be a dinosaur ornament. We talked about a few different ideas and I showed him some things we could do. He really wanted to use my Cricut because I think he thinks it is pretty much magic, he thinks I can make anything with it.

DIY Pokemon Christmas Ornament

Like I mentioned in my previous post, each year my family does an ornament exchange. The ornaments don't have to be handmade but I think it is fun to make as many of them as I can. I made the crocheted owl ornaments for all of the girls that we had but I wanted to come up with some fun stuff for the boys too. One of my nephews is really into Pokemon so I came up with a really easy ornament for him and I thought I would share the idea here. When I think of Pokemon and something easy I immediately think of a Pokeball. It is pretty simple to turn anything round into a Pokeball.

Basic Double Crochet Hats: Preemie-Adult

-This post is sponsored by mormon.org and the #LightTheWorld Christmas Campaign. All ideas and opinions are my own-

I love Christmastime. It is one of my favorite times of the year. There is so much wonderful stuff about Christmas time. It is a time to focus on Christ and his birth, it is a time to think about others and a time of giving. I think it seems like in general people tend to be more charitable and giving around Christmas but I also think that sometimes it is easy to get caught up in the business of the season and get lost in all of the other stuff that is going on so that in the end maybe we don't do as much as we would like. This year the LDS church, which I happen to be a member of, has a Christmas campaign that is encouraging everyone, regardless of religion, to participate in a month of service. They are using #LightTheWorld to share all of the acts of service being done around the world. If you want to participate through social media you can use that hashtag to share the things that you do. Beginning on December 1st they are starting 25 ways in 25 days, 25 ways to serve over the course of 25 days ending with Christmas. If you go to their site mormon.org, they have an advent calendar with different themes or ideas for each day beginning with a worldwide day of service on December 1st. Some of the ideas are really simple, writing a letter, or making a phone call, small things that can brighten someones day. Others may be bigger things that require a little more planning but you can do anything that you want. There is no specific thing you have to do, just a reminder to focus on being Christlike and serving and helping those around us.

Reversible Superhero Capes

These kind of capes have been around forever but they are so easy to make and kids love them so they are one of my favorite gifts to make for kids, especially little boys. A few months ago I decided to share a pattern for how I make my capes over on the Geeky Mormon but I never shared the link here. When I originally posted the tutorial there it was right before Salt Lake Comic Con held their FanX event and I thought it would be an easy cosplay type option for little kids, in fact my youngest daughter wore one the day that we took the kids. Now with Comic Con next week, Halloween not too far away, and Christmas not long after that I thought it would be a good time to post about them again. Batman and Superman is obviously the most traditional cape but my girls love superheroes as much as my boys do so I decided to make a girl version with Batgirl and Wonder Woman too.

Pokeball Pillow

Pokemon Go is super popular right now and our house is not immune to the obsession. Our boys where already really in to Pokemon before the game thanks to the show on Netflix so of course when the game came out they both wanted to try it out. Now the obsession has reached a new level.  My 6 year old spouts a constant stream of Pokemon facts that he has memorized from the Pokemon books that he is always reading, both boys always want our phones anytime we are out of the house. We get asked pretty much everyday if we can go on walks to catch Pokemon and hatch eggs. I know some people absolutely hate the app but we have had a lot of fun just watching the boys get excited about each new Pokemon that they find and going on walks as a family. As a result when Fairfield World asked if anyone would like to make a Pokemon themed project I decided to make one. Honestly, I had already been thinking about some things that I could make, this just gave me an opportunity to do it.

Easy Oly-Fun Tooth Fairy Pillow

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My son is at the age where he is just starting to lose his teeth, he lost his first a couple of months ago and then just the other day he lost his second. When he lost his first tooth the tooth came out and then he lost it, literally, he couldn't find it to put it under his pillow. I showed him some pictures of tooth fairy pillows and told him that I could make him something like that to help him not lose the next one. Besides, the tooth fairy that comes to our house has always thought that taking a tooth out of a pocket and replacing it with money seems like it would be way easier than trying to dig around under their pillow to find a tiny little tooth while not waking them up. He liked the idea but I didn't really get around to it right away and kind of forgot about it until the other day when he announced that he had just pulled out tooth number two. It was actually right around bedtime that he reminded me that I said that I would make him a tooth fairy pillow and that he needed it right now. I brought him in my sewing room and together we came up with a really easy design that I could make quickly and he picked out colors and everything. Not too long after that he had a little tooth fairy pillow to stick his newly lost tooth in and he was ready to go to bed.

Geeky Baby Onesie Ideas- Plus 2 Free Cut Files

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We only have one month left until this baby boy gets here so we have started getting everything ready, washing all of the little baby clothes, getting a new car seat, setting up the cradle, etc. I actually got rid of a lot of our little baby boy clothes a few years ago because I thought that Maren might be our last baby and a lot of the stuff that we have left is not exactly seasonally appropriate. Our other boys were born in January and March, this little guy is coming the end of July. As a result we figured he might be spending the first month or two mostly in onesies. Since I got my Cricut a few months ago I have had fun designing some shirts and onesies, in fact the very first project I made was actually a baby onesie, so we figured it would be fun to design some onesies for the baby.

Crocheted Phone or Tablet Stand

Yesterday I shared a new pattern over on the Fairfield World Site and I thought I should share it here too. This time of year is all about Dad's and Grad's, men and teenagers/young adults, probably the two hardest groups to make handmade gifts for. I have no problem at all coming up with gift ideas that I can make or new babies, little kids are pretty easy too. Feminine gifts are also easier come up with but something handmade and at all masculine is a little bit more difficult. I wanted to try to come up with a gift idea that could work for either of those groups, either as a Father's Day gift or as a gift for a recent grad. One thing that it seems like those two groups have in common is their love for  technology. I have seen some pillow type stands that can be used for propping up phones, tablets, or e-readers and thought maybe that would be a fun project. Not too long ago I featured a knitted version in a link party, a little different style but similar idea, and I have seen other knitted versions as well as sewn versions. This is my crocheted version.

Crocheted Monster Pencil Bag

Last week I shared my basic crocheted pencil bag and mentioned that there would be some fun variations over the next few weeks. Today I am sharing the first of those variations, the Crocheted Monster Pencil Bag. I figured a monster was appropriate since my blog is called 5 Little Monsters.

Little Boy Bow Ties

We have a wedding coming up in our family and I decided a while ago that I was going to make my girls dresses. I had some scraps left so I thought why not make some bow ties for the boys. I think bow ties on little boys are so cute and although I had never made one before I knew they wouldn't be very hard. I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted to make it and what I wanted it to look like but I also knew that I had seen tons of tutorials online for bow ties so I figured I could probably find what I was looking for. I googled it and looked at several before deciding that I wasn't going to find exactly what I was looking for and just needed to make up my own.