Crocheted Stocking Stuffers

I realize that Christmas was yesterday so this post is a few days late for this year and several months too early for next Christmas but I still wanted to post a couple of ideas I used this year. I didn't actually use them for stocking stuffers, I put them in the kids Christmas bags that I wrote about in my last post. They would work for any time you need a small gift, the little purses would be cute as a gift for a little girl and the chapstick holder is convenient for keeping track of little chapstick tubes, at least that was my hope when I made it, we'll see how it works out.

New Hats for Christmas

Every year my husband's family has their big family Christmas party. At the party we do Christmas bags for the kids. We have fabric bags for each of the kids that we fill with little, inexpensive toys and candy, stocking stuffer type stuff. We usually find some little $1 toys for each of the kids and I try to make a few things. Most years each of our kids get a new hat in their bags because that is something that I can make easily and inexpensively, and it is small enough that it fits well in the bag.

Some years I have done all animal or character hats. This year I kind of tried to stay away from that, as you can see from the picture that almost worked but not quite. I didn't use patterns for any of the hats, I made all of them up as I went along and have already shared a couple of the patterns.

Knit Doll Cowl and Beanie

In my last post I mentioned some of the things that I am making for Christmas. One of those was a knit hat and cowl set using a free pattern from Red Heart's website. You can find that pattern here.
At the time that I wrote that post I was probably a little over halfway finished with the cowl and had not yet started the beanie. Now they are both finished so I thought I would post about them. I had to be sneaky about taking pictures so that none of my kids saw me with them but I think I managed to do it.

Christmas Crafting- 5+ Handmade Gift Ideas

I love making gifts for Christmas but I always seem to wait until the end of the year to really start working on things. I feel like I haven't been posting as much as I would like because a lot of the things that I have been working on are Christmas gifts for people in my family so I want to wait until after Christmas to share them. I thought maybe it would be fun to share some links to a few of the things that I am working on and then after Christmas I can share the finished projects. Several of the things I am making are from my own head so I can't link up to those but the ones that I am making using tutorials or patterns that I found online I will. Click on the pictures to find the pattern/tutorial.

Textured Toddler Beanie: Free Crochet Pattern

Along with the Red Heart Boutique Swanky yarn that I used in my last post I also received a ball of another new Red Heart yarn, Heads Up. I got the bright coral color which was really fun and bright. I thought it would make a cute hat for one of my little girls. I loved the bright color, I thought it was something a little different than anything I had ever gotten before but really pretty and fun. It was however, extremely difficult to photograph and show the true color. It is a bulky yarn and it is really soft and squishy. I really liked working with it. To be honest, I can't really think of anything I didn't like about it. I definitely think this is a yarn I will use again. I loved the softness and thickness of the yarn, I think it will be really nice and warm for my little girls. I also felt like it had really great stitch definition, I think this would be great if you are looking for a bulky yarn for something that you really want your stitch pattern to stand out.

Sparkle Hat and Scarf Set: Free Child Size Crochet Pattern

 

Today I am going to share the pattern for a hat and scarf set that I made for my daughter. It is going to be part of a Christmas present so unfortunately I don't have any pictures of her wearing it. The idea for this pattern came from the yarn. A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to receive a package in the mail from Red Heart with a few of their new yarns for me to try out. 

Care Bear Hat: Free Crochet Pattern

Last week, on Halloween, I shared a picture of the Care Bear costume that I made for my daughter. Today I thought I would share the pattern for the hat. It is a toddler size, my daughter is 1 1/2 and it also fits my  2 1/2 year old.

Last Minute Halloween Costume: Care Bear

My 4 oldest kids have all had their Halloween costumes for nearly two months. We bought costumes for the three oldest to wear to Comic Con and then wear again for Halloween. My second youngest was going to wear one of her older sister's old princess dresses so she was set too. Then we have our youngest. I had no idea what she was going to wear. She didn't dress up for Comic Con, she didn't dress up for the halloween party we went to last week. She couldn't just wear her sister's costume from last year because she was the Tin Man which was cute as part of the group but a little weird by itself. I wanted to make her a costume because all of the other costumes were store bought and I think homemade costumes are just more fun. The problem was that I could not think of a single good idea of what to make for her. A few days ago I was talking to my husband about it and he came up with the perfect idea. Her nickname is Mare-Bear so he suggested we do a Care Bear costume. I thought it was perfect for her. Mare-Bear the Care Bear.

Lace Cluster Scarf: A Free Crochet Pattern

A few weeks ago I ran into the fabric store to grab something and while I was there I decided to check out the clearance section. They had a lot of yarn there and it was all really tempting but I have so much yarn and fabric at home, a lot of which has been given to me, that I rarely buy any unless I have something I want to make with it. I ended up buying two skeins of an acrylic/alpaca blend in a light blue color. I thought it would make some soft, pretty scarves. After I got home I immediately started thinking up patterns for it.  It took less than one skein to make this scarf. I figure I will probably be able to make 3 scarves from the two skeins that I bought.

Triangles & Stripes Baby Blanket

I had the idea for this baby blanket after coming across a Japanese crochet pattern on Pinterest that had this triangle design. I took that design and turned it into a blanket. My first thought was to do it in a solid color but then I thought it might be fun in stripes. I used three colors and decided to use blues, I thought the geometric pattern in the blanket would work well for a boy blanket but I think it would be cute in girly colors too, and as few or as many colors as you want. 

Homemade Halloween Costumes: A Look Back at Years Past

I thought since today is the first of October and my first October having this blog it would be fun to show some pictures of halloween costumes that I have made for my kids in the past. I have not made their costumes every year, in fact I am not making costumes this year. At least not for the 3 oldest. We bought them costumes to wear to Comic Con a month ago with the understanding that they would be wearing those for halloween as well. I haven't decided yet whether I will make costumes for the little girls this year. Even though I have not made their costumes every year I love making halloween costumes. I think it is so fun to have costumes that are not the same as every other kid out there. Even though they might not be the only Jedi or Dorothy in their school parade their costume will still be unique, no one else will have the same one. I have loved doing theme costumes but I think we might be running out of years where that will work. Another thing that I like about sewing halloween costumes is that they really don't need to be perfect, they are just a costume, not something that will be worn all the time. I can just cut and sew and make it work. 

18 inch Doll Accessories: Owl Hat and Striped Scarf

Recently my oldest daughter has become somewhat obsessed with American Girl dolls. She gets the catalog in the mail and loves looking at all of the dolls and their clothes and accessories. She even found and watched videos on You Tube about American Girls dolls. Every time we go to the library she checks out American Girl books, faster than we can read them so most get returned unread. The truth is she will probably never get and American Girl doll because I am way too cheap to ever spend that much money on a doll, but the good news for her is that there are plenty of cheaper options and she doesn't really know the difference. She had her 6th birthday earlier this month and one day, maybe a week before her birthday, we happened to be at Walmart and saw that they had some of their 18 inch dolls on clearance. I knew she would love to get an "American Girl" doll, or anything that looked like one, for her birthday so we grabbed it. I had all sorts of different ideas of things I could make to go along with it but unfortunately the week leading up to her birthday we were super busy so most of them didn't happen. I still have tons of ideas of things I want to make for her so I am sure there will be more doll posts in the future, probably around Christmas time. 

Crocheted Pumpkins In Two Sizes: Free Pattern

Fall is my favorite season. I love everything about it, the cooler weather, the changing colors, the smell of pumpkin spice candles, desserts made with pumpkin. There is something about pumpkins that just screams fall, when you see a pumpkin you automatically think fall, whether it makes you think of harvest time or jack-o-lanterns at Halloween or pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. 

Wedding Gift: Couple Embroidery

As I have mentioned in previous posts, my sister-in-law just got married. A few weeks ago I was invited to a bridal shower and I really wanted to make something to give to her as a gift. I looked online and came across this link that had some handmade wedding gift ideas. Number 13 on that list is an embroidery of the couples names and a large ampersand. I saw that and thought that was something that I could make pretty easily. Mine does not look exactly like the one in the picture of course, I played around with different fonts until I found a combination that I liked. I ended up making it at kind of the last minute so I didn't think to take any pictures so that i could post it here. I just made it, stuck it in a bag and gave it away. The only pictures that I had were the two below that I had texted my husband from Walmart to get his opinion on how I should frame it.

Little Girls Dresses For a Wedding

A couple of weeks ago I posted a tutorial for some bow ties that I made for my two boys, I mentioned there that I was making them for a wedding and that I was making the dresses for my girls as well.

The wedding was last weekend so, as usual, I was finishing up the dresses last week. The colors were a bright blue and yellow. I decided that I wanted the two little girls dresses to match but to have my oldest daughter's dress be different. I wanted it to be a style that looker a little older, not so toddlerish. My sister-in-law, the bride, said she really wanted some yellow because she was worried no one would have yellow so I decided to do the two little girls in yellow. I was glad I did because they were the only two of the nine nieces and nephews to be in yellow.

Kid's Messenger Bags

I feel like it has been forever since I have posted something on here. We have had a really busy couple of weeks. One of the things we had going on was Salt Lake Comic Con last week. Probably about a month ago, the first time I did a geek-craft guest post on my husband's blog, he mentioned that he thought it would be cool if I made some bags for the kids to bring to Comic Con that we could then make a tutorial for and post on his blog as another geek-craft. I thought it sounded like a good idea. Right away I sat down and started sketching some ideas. I came up with several but the kids already had their costumes picked out so I chose designs that would match their costumes. 

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. 

Crocheted Football Helmet Hats- Free Pattern

A couple of years ago I made a hat for each of my kids for Christmas. I found lots of cute ideas for babies and for girls but I had a really hard time finding something for my oldest son that wasn't too babyish or just really plain and not very fun. In our family we are big University of Utah fans and he was just starting to get interested in football so I came up with the idea to make a hat to look like a football helmet. That hat is the red one in the pictures. It is a couple years old now and after getting stuck to the velcro on his coat several times it is definitely showing some wear. I thought it would be fun to figure out how to make it in different sizes and post the pattern.

11th Doctor Coin Purse: Another Geek-Craft

Last night I shared another geek-craft project on The Geeky Mormon. It is a Doctor Who project, an 11th Doctor Coin Purse.

I made it after seeing a tutorial online for a zipper wallet with a bow on it. After watching Doctor Who I can't see a bow on something like that without thinking of the Doctor. 

Owl Hats

I had a request for a couple of owl hats and I just got them finished and in the mail today. I used this pattern from Repeat Crafter Me. I have used this pattern so many times and it is always a big hit. I have made several as baby gifts but these were made in the teen/small adult size. They are for an 8 and 10 year old so I made the child size first but when I tried it on my almost 6 year old it fit perfectly, I was afraid on a child a couple years older it would be too small so I went with the next size up. I thought they both turned out really cute, the only thing I wasn't really happy with was that I used the size of buttons that the pattern called for for the eyes but I think they needed to be a little bigger. In the past I had used old buttons that I already had and they seemed to be bigger and I liked that better, this time I had to buy some because I had used up all of my big black buttons. And now looking at the pictures I realize I should have put the eyes a little closer together, oh well. Other than that I am happy with how they turned out.

Here is my daughter testing out the size for me. They were big on her, which is what I was hoping for, but I didn't think my son who is closer to the right age would be interested in modeling a pink or purple owl hat for me.

Five Little Monsters is Now on Facebook

I finally, thanks to a little push from my husband, have created a Facebook page for Five little Monsters. Click here to check it out. There isn't much on there right now but I will continue to add things to it and it will be a good way to keep up with my blog. I also added a Facebook button to my blog so you can click that as well. 

 

I am also on Instagram, Pinterest and Ravelry. Again, I am just getting all of these started so there isn't a lot there right now but I will be using all of these as ways to share my projects. 

If you are interested in keeping up with Five Little Monsters liking or following me on these sites is a great way to do it. Either click the links in this posts or the social media buttons on my blog.

Thanks for all of the support.

Free Pattern- Crocheted Ninja Turtle Pencil Bag

I have another crochet pattern to share today, this time though I am guest posting on my husbands blog so you will need to click over there for the pattern. He loves all things geek so he has a blog where he writes about all kinds of geeky stuff. If you like that kind of stuff you should go check it out. His blog is The Geeky Mormon. We have decided to do a new feature on his blog where I will share a geek-related craft a couple of times a month. Today is the first time and I will be sharing the pattern for this crocheted Ninja Turtle Pencil Bag. 

Free Crochet Pattern- Anchor Baby Hats

 I made up a couple of baby hats the other day that I thought I would share. I was trying to think of something a little more boyish, sometimes is seems harder to make cute baby boy stuff than it is to make cute stuff for little girls. Flowers and bows are great for girls but what do you do for a little boy. I have made sports hats (footballs, basketballs, football helmets, etc.) and some little animals like bears or owls, but I wanted something different this time. These little nautical style hats with anchors on them are what I came up with.

Free Crochet Pattern- Crochet Mannequin Heads

One thing that I like to crochet is hats, especially baby hats. I don't always have a baby the right size to try the hats on to to take pictures so I thought it would be nice to have some kind of mannequin head to use. I decided to try crocheting one, first I looked on Ravelry to see if someone had already made a pattern for them but I didn't find anything there so I decided to make up my own. I thought I would share the patterns that I came up with in case anyone else would like to try making one fro themselves. I was trying to make a newborn size but my first attempt was a little bit to big. It is more like a 3-6 month size. I then made a slightly smaller one to get a newborn size. I will share both sizes today. I will most likely eventually make other sizes but for now these are the sizes that I have

Recent Crochet Projects

I have a few things things in the works to post here including a free crochet pattern, but I thought that in the meantime I would post some of the things that I have made recently. I haven't had a lot of time to work on stuff lately, summer seems to be such a busy time, but I have crocheted a few things.

To start off I have a crocheted giraffe that I made using this pattern. The pattern is for a striped giraffe but I chose to make it solid yellow with a white nose area,  I'm not sure what to call that part, and tan hooves and horn things. Also, the pattern has only eyes and a mouth but I chose to add the nostrils too. One change that I made to the actual pattern is to make the horns shorter. I noticed as I looked at the pattern that they seemed really long. I honestly don't remember how much I shorter I made them, just until they looked right to me, I think it was maybe around three rows shorter.

New Blog

I decided to start this new blog as one of the steps to my goal of opening an Etsy shop. I also want to have a little place to share ideas and things that I have made. I am still in the process of trying to figure everything out but right now my vision for this blog is that it will mainly be a craft blog, a place to share things that I have made, ideas that I have, and hopefully some free patterns and tutorials. I feel like I always have so many ideas swimming around in my head and I am excited to have my own little spot on the internet to try to share some of my ideas with others as well as just to keep track of what I have made.

The crafts I enjoy the most are sewing and crochet, I also occasionally dabble in knitting. I would like to knit more but I am self taught and super slow so as much as I like the look of things that are knit, I don't enjoy it as much as other mediums. I like to try different things though, so occasionally the knitting needles come out and I give them another try. I also really enjoy doing embroidery. I think that right now the things I seem to enjoy the most are things that I can do anywhere. I love sewing but sometimes it is hard to find time to sit at my sewing machine, however, I can carry a skein of yarn and a crochet hook all around the house or or just about anywhere.

The biggest reason that I struggle to find time to sit and sew is also the reason behind the name I chose for my blog. I have five little monsters living in my house. They are pretty good monsters as far as monsters go and I love them to death but they definitely make for a crazy, hectic life. The oldest is seven and the youngest is one, two boys, three girls. I love being a mother and I love each of my kids so much. I also have a wonderful, supportive husband who puts up with having yarn and fabric and other crafty stuff strewn throughout the house. My family is my biggest inspiration for the things that I create.

My 5 little monsters

I have loved making things for as long as I can remember. I saw my mom making things as a young girl so it just seems like it has always been around me. My mom was the one who taught me to crochet and to sew. The first thing that I ever remember sewing was a quilt when I was 8 years old. My mom helped me but I sewed it. I was terrible at maintaining an even seam allowance, it was often much less than a 1/4 inch. As a result it fell apart pretty much as soon as we washed it, but it introduced me to a way to express my creativity that has become a very important part of my life. I love making thing because I love being able to take something that isn't really anything, a skein of yarn, a flat piece of fabric, and turn it into something pretty and useful, something that someone can use and enjoy. It is my outlet when life is overwhelming. Sometimes with little kids it seems like nothing I do lasts, there are alway more dishes, laundry, toys to pick up, being able to sit down and create something that will last is much more than just a hobby to me. Sometimes it is what keeps me sane.

Welcome to my blog, I hope you enjoy what you find here.