Natalie's First Halloween

My husband is a huge Halloween lover. I, on the other hand, am not terribly fond of Halloween. I do not like being scared. My husband and our neighbor get together every year and frighten kids, they have a bit too much fun. However, I like to eat candy and dress up. Natalie will be dressing up, of course, and I got a great idea from pinterest to do a cookie monster costume! I hope Natalie will like my version of Halloween better, but for now it is too early to tell.

For now, I will show off my cute costume that I made for her!

1) I made a no-sew tutu, which is all over Pinterest and google.
   *I sewed together elastic to fit Natalie.
   *Then cut the blue tule into long strips (double the size you actually want the skirt to be).
   *Then folded one strip in half and looped it around the elastic. Keep doing this until the elastic is hidden.
   *Finally, I wrapped the black ribbon around the elastic and each strip of tule, and tied it into a bow.
   *There are better directions on google and Pinterest. But, these are simple directions

2) Cut out the felt!
   *First I used a glass to trace the whites of his eyes, and cut it out, then guess-timated the black pupils.
   *Then I cut his mouth out, and the cookies with chips. All of this was guess-timated to make it look more realistic.

3) Sew the felt on!
   *I sewed the first cookie onto the plain white onesie.
   *Then, I sewed the eyes, mouth, and cookies onto the tule. I had to be careful not to sew the front of the tule to the back of the tule.
   *To make life easier I sewed the chips, cookie, and tule together, so that I did not have to sew each thing individually.

The skirt was super cute on her last night, I am waiting till Halloween to put the whole costume on her!

All in all, it took about an hour. Half hour for the skirt and half hour for the felt and sewing.

Natalie's photo shoot

As I nurse my daughter, I want to be a proud momma and show off my awesome daughter & her gorgeous pictures! I can also give some tips on how to take a good picture! After our photo shoot we learned a lot!

1) Nurse or feed before the photographer comes. This will calm your baby down, or put them to sleep, making it easier for the photographer. 
    *We had to learn this the hard way, and feed her half way through the session because she was cranky!
<-- After the feeding!

2) Have a pacifier nearby.  This helped our baby calm down, but we did have pacifiers in the pictures. So, make sure the pacifier is something you wouldn't mind seeing in the pictures!



3) Swaddle! We made some pictures work by putting her in a swaddle.

4) Stick with a white onesie. We tried to change her over and over again, and realized that made it harder for her. Putting her in one white onesie then adding decorations made it easier!  
   *One of our changing sessions, she was calm before we tried to change her again!

5) Last but not least - go with the flow & have fun!!