Baby tips - Muslins are your new best friend

We're on the bus into town to enjoy the "beach" (glorified sandpit) at Oxford Castle when the terror seizes me. I've forgotten Little E's hat! He's going to get burnt in the sun, get skin cancer and die!

I suddenly remember that I had seen a mum who had tied a muslin around her baby's head into a cute bandana. I always have a pile of muslins with me, as I find them so useful. To my surprise, Big E calmly showed me how to tie one. Very gangsta...or pirate as most of my friends pointed out.

It got me thinking how amazing muslins are and how many things I use them for.

1) An instant hat! - There are videos on YouTube if you don't know how. I didn't! Basically fold the muslin into a triangle and tie it on.

2) As a sunshade and "nap time" indicator on the pram - Seen lots of people struggling with inbuilt shades and umbrella on their pram. I just dangled a muslin over the edge to provide extra or full coverage. A couple of clothes pegs hold it in place. When I was teaching Little E to nap, we would always draw the curtains in his room and I repeated this with his pram by "drawing" his muslin. It worked really well for Little E as he was sometimes so busy looking at things he couldn't sleep. It still works really well now that he is 9 months,

3) Blanket - If nothing else was available, I tucked in a muslin around him to keep Little E warm, especially if I had forgotten a hat. Once I tucked a muslin into the hood of his coat to add some extra padding. It also works well for keeping the sun off his feet when he is sleeping.

4) Photo prop

Sometimes a brightly coloured muslin is just there at the right time! I swear I didn't set this shot up. I just popped Little E down on his mat and he happened to be on top of a red muslin. My sister bought me a pack of beautiful coloured muslins when Little E was born. They are wonderful and have added gorgeous flashes of colour to our photos. I've always tried to choose colourful muslins since.

5) Mopping up sick - had to be in there somewhere!

6) Bib - Again, another mummy inspired me. I saw a friend of mine wrap an old muslin around her 3 year old to protect him from his lunch. We were starting to wean Little E and I was considering all the different options for bibs. Someone else I would have to buy and carry...sigh...was what I was thinking, but bunging a muslin around him, which I was carrying anyway sounded great.

Pros - large surface area covered, have one in bag anyway, take up very little space, light

Cons - get filthy (I only use cheap muslins now as the stains can be so hard to get out), juice can leak through to clothes

Er...and I think that is my list.

My favourite muslins were a gift from my sister. They are gorgeous bright colours, super soft and have lasted 9 months of punishment. They are from Faye and Lou. I love them! Problem - they are very expensive. £28 for a pack of 7. I don't think I would have bought them for myself, but I would definitely consider them as a gift for any of my friends due a baby.

I got a cheap pack of five from Sainsburys, which are doing well. Really big, but only in grey and white. 2 of them have a funky star print though, so I really like them. Worth trying I think. I also have some nice ones from Marks and Spencers. No idea how much they cost, as they were a gift, but jazzy colours and very soft despite so much use. I was very disappointed with a pack I bought form Mothercare. Rough and nasty within one use, so they are the designated bibs! At least they are in fun colours.

If your baby was like mine and threw up a lot, I'd definitely invest in some nice muslins. They are worth the money.

I'll finish with a question. What do you use your muslins for? Always looking for new ideas!

Crafting by a not very crafty mum - decorating baby vests

We have been so lucky to receive so many gifts and hand-me-downs for Little E. I don't think I had to buy him any clothes for the first 6 months!

The most recent batch was a huge bag of long sleeved vests. We are sorted until Little E is about 3 with this lot! A small selection below.

My friend is an artist and she had decorated some of the vests. Her son went through a phase where he refused to wear anything plain, so she used fabric pens to draw various designs.

She apologised for some of the vests being a bit grubby, but her Little L is a rough, tough little boy! I didn't care, but I thought it would be nice to be inspired by my friend and jazz the vests up a little.

I sorted all the vests out and had five in 18-24m. Big E is obsessed with his day of the week socks, so I thought it would be fun for his son to be in day of the week vests.

First step was to get some fabric pens. I went to Pen to Paper in Headington (great shop!) and they had several options. I didn't know what would be best, so I tried to choose a pack with lots of colours that I liked.

These are what I ended up with. I'm quite pleased with them, but they are not that easy to use. As you draw, you have to squeeze the paint out, rather than being more like a marker pen, which was what I was expecting. However, they dry in 5 hours and you don't have to heat seal them, so they are ready to go immediately. I have washed a t-shirt I used the pens on and the design has stuck beautifully. I like the way, if you get things right, you can create a shiny ridge of paint, which is nicely textured.

So, here are my day of the week vests:

I started with Monday. As usual, I lacked confidence in my abilities and decided to use stencils to write out the words. This was quite hard with the pens I used, as the pain could ooze under the plastic and run a bit. It also meant you had to do one letter at a time, as you had to wait for the paint to dry before you could put the stencil back on top. By the time I got to Thursday and Friday, I was doing it by hand and actually it was really easy and I was pleased with how it looked.

Tips: I put a cereal box inside the vests. This gave me a surface to work on and pinned the vest down. It also stopped the paint soaking through to the back of the vest.

For each day of the week, I wanted a simple motif to explain where the name came from. Any excuse to squeeze in a bit of education! "Moon-day" made sense to be in blue with a simple circle. Again, I used a stencil for the blue moon, but when I did Sun-day I found it was easier to do it by hand. It was good I chose very simple motifs, as the most complicated design was the tree Yggdrasil for Woden's-Day and with my gel fabric pens it was pretty hard. If I can find fabric pens more like markers, I think it will be easier to draw something more elaborate.

As usual, I'm pretty slap-dash, so a couple of times, I didn't line the letters quite centrally, so I would use the motif to even up the design.

So, overall I'm pretty pleased. They turned out much smarter than I thought they would and I won't be ashamed to put Little E in them. They will probably be under a nice t-shirt anyway!

Crafting by a not very crafty mum - 1st Father's Day

I wanted to make something personal for Big E for his first Father's Day. Like a lot of men, he's pretty resistant to buying new clothes. He cycles to work and has a selection of very old and tatty t-shirts that he wears before he gets changed into his workwear. 

His collection includes ones that have acid stains/holes from his time in a chemistry lab and two flu vaccine marketing t-shirts that he loves dearly.

So, if he is willing to wear this tat, I assumed he would wear something me and Little E could make him. I was pretty certain I could decorate a t-shirt somehow and since it would just be for cycling, Big E would probably wear it.

My first step was to purchase a cheap t-shirt. I looked around and eventually got a plain white one from George at Asda. £5 and it feels pretty good quality. Time will tell!

I got fabric paint from Unique Creations in Summertown - a great little shop for these things - and was planning to use some fabric pens I had already bought from Pen to Paper in Headington (a subject of a blog to come and another super shop).

There is lots of inspiration online, but I had a horrible suspicion mine would turn out nothing like their photos. Perfectly printed feet from an 8 month old? Unlikely... So I decided I would write on the front and then let Little E "freestyle" on the back and see what happened!

Ideally I wanted to complete this task outside. I was terrified of getting paint on everything. Of course May/June can be temperamental in Britain, so I tried to plan ahead. I managed to write on the front of the t-shirt one day while Big E was at work. It needed 5 hours to dry, so I needed to have a day where I could get the task done in the morning and then pack it away later.

Then the rain came... It ideally needed to be hot and sunny, so I could have Little E in only his nappy, but time was running out!

Finally, a nice day came and I rushed out to complete my task. Unfortunately, this meant I was pretty ill prepared. I had laid out an old table cloth and the t-shirt, but the wind kept catching both of them. Eric was in a bad mood and not keen to help. Worst of all, once I coated him in paint, I didn't have a good way to clean him up! Uh oh... I managed to bundle him up, get him upstairs and into the bathroom to clean him off. I had to resort to a bath in the end, because the wet wipes weren't cutting the mustard. Fortunately, it all scrubbed out of the bath with no trace.

So, as I expected, the back of the t-shirt is a mess, but it is a mess "composed" by our little one. I got one pretty decent handprint.

The big day has been and gone. Good news...Big E loves the t-shirt. I think anything our little ones "make" for us melts our hearts. He is wearing it to work today.

I think I bit off more than I could chew with an 8 month old. Hopefully next year I can give Little E some fabric pens and let him scribble away.

If you do decide to use fabric paint, I think the key is to do a lot more preparation than me. Pin the t-shirt down, have something between the t-shirt layers (the paint soaked through to the front in places) and, most importantly, something to clean your baby up outside!

Crafting by a not very crafty mum - CD toy

I hate wasting money and when Little E was only a few months I was struggling to think of toys that he would want to play with. His motor skills, etc were not up to much and the best thing for him was to lie on his playmat staring and touching things hanging above. I was lucky that a friend had let us borrow her baby gym, so I had something to start with.

A lot of my friends had new baby gyms and they all came with so many lovely things. I couldn't seem to buy many of the toys separately and those I could were pretty pricey. There were plenty of gorgeous toys we had received as gifts that Little E had no interest in, so I didn't want to buy things he wouldn't play with.

Upcycling to the rescue!

I go to a really good baby group in Marston and they are always showing us how to make simple things for our babies. Perfect for my level of skill, i.e next to none!

One day they showed us how you can stick two CDs together with pritt stick. Who knew?! I assumed you would need special glue to do this.

So, to make my new toy I used:

2 unwanted CDs (marketing)

Pritt stick

Leftover ribbon from a present

Lindt bunny ribbon with bell

I was worried about how baby safe it would be, but loads of babies have played and sucked on this with no incidents yet. They all love it. It glitters and shines, jingles and is easy to hold.

I brought home the one I made in my group. We had stuck on glitter and tissue paper (again with pritt stick). There was glitter everywhere! Seriously, it looked like Tinkerbell had moved in. Little E also had little problem tearing the paper off. I think I will store that idea away for when he is older and we can decorate a CD together.

I'm so glad I made it. Little E is now sitting confidently at 8 months and has little interest in his baby gym. If I had bought him toys it would have been a lot of money for a very small period of time. He might come back to his gym, but I suspect not.