I saw something similar in Pottery Barn Kids and decided it must go on Kate’s wall. It was super easy and really cheap and I thought someone out there might get some ideas from it, so here’s how I did it.

Supplies:

1 piece of art canvas (mine was 22 x 26 or something like that) - $13 at Hobby Lobby (I used my coupon so it was $6.50. Woo hoo!)

1 piece of fabric large enough to cover the canvas plus a few extra inches on all sides. (mine was a yard and was 10.99 at Hobby Lobby)

Felt in various colors (this took 2 light pink, 2 dark pink, and 2 brown) all were $.25 a piece.

Felt glue

Thumbtacks

Directions:

1. Iron your fabric! I can’t stress this enough. it has to be super smooth because you can only do so much once it’s on the board.

2. Lay the fabric down on a solid surface and place the board on top with the wrong side facing you. Make sure it lines up properly if you have a pattern on your fabric (I used the lines in the fabric as a guide)

3. Fold the sides around the board and thumbtack in place.

4. Fold the tops like you would a present, tucking in the side pieces until it looks good to you. Remember to keep everything as taught as possible without making the fabric all wonky. Thumbtack in place.

Finished board:

5. Cut out the pattern of what you want to put on the board onto some regular paper. Position them on the board and make any adjustments. Cut out your felt. I free handed all of these but I’m sure you could find things online and print them out to use as templates. I used plates for the circle template and printed the letter K out on the printer and used that to cut out the letter.

6. Start gluing the pieces on one by one. I used sewing glue because I couldn’t find felt glue. I should have kept looking for felt glue. Felt glue won’t bleed at all through felt, the sewing glue was too thin. You can see glue marks in the picture above, but those have hopefully worked themselves out now that it’s dry. They aren’t nearly as noticable in regular light, thank goodness.

7. Either attach a ribbon or use a nail to hang. Trim the extra fabric from the back so it doesn’t hang down.

That’s it! Took me about an hour and a half start to finish. And the total was a whopping 25 bucks. Woo-hoo!

1. Today is my 29th birthday.

2. I had Chik-fil-a for breakfast, I’m having Chinese for lunch and Outback for dinner.

3. The smilies showing up in framed boxes drives me insane.

4. I have pictures to share!

5. This is my birthday present. I’m SO FREAKING EXCITED.

If you haven’t checked them out yet, do. Their diaper bags are so freaking technologically advanced it’s insane. They’re pricey but oh so cool. They have a video on their website for each one showing the features. I got the “be all”.

Ju Ju Be

And they come up on baby steals a lot at half price.

6. John ordered me a cookie cake that he thankfully got last night so I could have a piece for breakfast, and mom is making me a German chocolate cake. She has an awesome recipe for the frosting that keeps it from getting grainy like so many of the store bought ones. I could eat just the icing alone.

7. I’m also 26 weeks today. And 6 months exactly (I go by my LMP date, not 4 weeks = a month. The logic behind that drives me COMPLETELY INSANE. If 4 weeks = a month than 52 weeks = 13 months. Since when did we have 13 months in the year? I get surprisingly riled up over that on babycenter… 4.4 weeks = a month is better but who wants to do that kind of math all the time? )

8. I feel fine and I’m getting much bigger than I’d like, I think she’s just having a growth spurt. Suddenly it’s not as fun to sit down on the ground and play. She’s still sitting much lower than Dash was, so that rocks. I’ll take carrying around a bowling ball any day to not being able to breathe.

9. We are having a plethera of car problems at the moment. Poor John. The air conditioning went out on the neon, he thought it was the compressor (the motor that runs the air conditioning) but when he got that out of the car he jump started it with a battery and it kicked on and actually blew out cool air. So it has to be some kind of short in a wire either powering the compressor or a short in the switch that turns it on. The wiring schmatics for the teeny tiny neon are insane. He mentioned having to rip out the steering wheel, console, and something else to be able to get to part of it. Fun. The truck also has two slow leaks in the back two tires, and the transmission is acting up. When it rains it pours, I guess.

10. We did go look at new cars last week, I’d like for John to have a 4 door with two car seats. Even with the deals Chrysler is offering, we just couldn’t bite the bullet. It’s hard to go from no car payment to a hefty one when your job has made salary cuts (which should be ending in a month or two, we’re doing well.) If they’ll offer 0% for 60 mos when the baby comes we’ll jump though. Right now it’s 0% for 36 mos which would make a 27K mini van cost $808 a month. Um, ok. I’ll take a second house instead, thanks. The minivan was REALLY nice though. Ahhh, a minivan…

After some prodding, here’s a 24 week picture. I don’t feel particularly cute or like I’ve changed much lately, I just feel frumpy and pregnant. You can see a bit of Kate’s room in this pic, too, I finshed her letters last weekend and have the room mostly cleaned out now.

I took this at like 6PM today, with Lucy screaming in the background and Dash wondering what the heck I was doing. That’s probably the biggest reason I’m not keeping up with pictures, chasing a toddler hogs up most of my time.

This is Dash and John before their first Viper game. The Vipers are SO much fun to watch. If you haven’t been to a game, go. And get the Nutty Bavarian almonds. They’re fantastic.

And finally… the Dash. We took these in the front yard today. He wanted to do everything but sit still, but he’s still saying “Cheese!” every time he sees my camera so that rocks.

1. I’m 24 weeks today so Miss Kate is viable! Yay!! If she was born today the doctors would do everything they could to save her and she’d have like a 40% chance of survival. So keep baking, honey.

2. Her room is coming along. I have her letters made (seems like a staple of every nursery now, doesn’t it?) and her bedding in and her closet full. There’s still a random amount of junk lying around that isn’t getting moved very quickly. I’m about to box it all up and dump it in the hallway so it has to be dealt with.

3. Dash is growing like a weed and talking up a storm. He’s starting to put words together really well, we got “pink pez, please” out of him the other day. He knows when to use please and thank-you appropriately and it’s really freaking hard to say no to.

4. My brilliant, super husband has been named Student of the Year of the Aerospace Technology department at Calhoun. I’m so proud of him. He loves his aerospace classes and is putting in tons of effort, and any extra stuff that comes up he jumps on. His instructors have noticed and I’m so happy for him. He’ll be presented the award at the honors ceremony on May 1st.

5. Our neighborhood is having it’s annual yard sale May 2nd. We’ve got to get on the ball! We have a lot of stuff we need to sell and some extra funds would rock to pay for a certain dog.

6. My 24 week appointment is today and I’ll schedule my 28 week appointment and the glucose test at this one. After that, I’ll be down to appointments every 2 weeks. You know, at the beginning of this pregnancy I thought I was never going to make it 40 weeks. Hell, I’ve known since 4 weeks and 40 weeks seems like FOREVER. But here we are, almost there.