Binkies and Briefcases

Remember how I told you I was on a sweater re-purposing kick? Still on it.

My mom dropped off two huge bags of sweaters she no longer wears. Score! After I raided them and took a few to add to my wardrobe I started using the rest to make stuff. I made another sweater puppet and a teddy bear. Sadly the teddy bear came out, well, just plain sad. He is not destined to be blogged about, but my newest creation is.

I made the easiest toddler sweater hat ever. Seriously. Gymboree has several sweater hats in their fall line that are super cute, but why buy one for Little Diva when I can make one for free in 5 minutes?

Yes, 5 minutes. It would be just as easy to make one for an adult.

First you need a sweater.

I traced a bowl to get a perfect circle, then I cut it out. If you are making this adult sized, use a dinner plate.

Then I cut a strip of the band from the bottom of the sweater the same size as the circumference around my daughter’s head. (You can measure if you want to, but I just cut a long strip, wrapped it around her head, and cut it off to size)

(See the band at the bottom of the sweater? Cut that off for the band of the hat.)

Ok, now you should have a circle and a long strip.

Pin them, right sides together. (put the side you cut toward the outside, that way when you sew the finished edge from the sweater will be left alone and there is no need to re-finish the bottom of the band.)

Sew along the outside edge and sew the band closed.

Turn it right-side-out.

Done!

When I do this again (and I’m so doing this again) I think I’ll use a bigger plate or bowl to get a bigger circle.

I’m totally going to use this technique to make a chef hat (just use a really big circle) and a pumpkin hat out of an orange sweater with a green felt leaf on the top.

UPDATE:
Mr. Ham Bone got jealous and wanted his own hat, so we made a boy version:

To add a little flower detail to the girl’s version, just take a thin strip of the sweater material, roll it into a circle, and hand stitch it in place.

There is no such thing as a new idea, but there is such a thing as blatantly copying other people’s awesome ideas and using them to create even more awesome stuff for yourself.

That’s what we’re doing.

I’ve seen several other bloggers create kitchen islands out of dressers and I wanted to do it too.

My inspiration came from House of Johns. I L.O.V.E. their island, but when I showed Eddie the picture and raved about the brilliance of this idea he was not quite so inspired. He thought it still looked like a dresser in the middle of the kitchen. (Sorry House of Johns!!)

I knew I was going to have to find the perfect dresser in order for him to buy into my idea and we were going to have to complicate things a bit to make it look more “island” than “dresser.”

The good news is that I found the dresser at ReSource while Eddie was away on his business trip. The bad news is that I had to pay more than I wanted to AND shell out for the delivery fee since I was sans husband at the time.

Here she is:

“Why is this so perfect?” you might ask. First of all, it’s taller than your average dresser so it will be the perfect counter height. Second, it has that door on the right that makes it look more like a piece of kitchen cabinetry than a dresser. And finally, I am in love with all of the drawer space. It has four small drawers and 3 long drawers, perfect for storing all of my Pampered Chef gadgets and table linens. What I did not love so much was that I had to pay $50 for it plus a $25 delivery charge. Yes (gulp) I paid $75 for this thing. Actually, that’s a pretty fair price because it’s a nice solid piece of furniture, but my extremely frugal self was not happy about that price knowing that we were going to be investing a lot more money in this project.

Here’s the plan a.k.a. Eddie’s “honey do this as my birthday present” list:
1. Liquid nails 2 wood panels from Lowes together to get a thickness similar to butcher block for the top (The panels are $35 a piece, whereas a real butcher block this size was quoted to us at $300)
2. Attach the top
3. Attach bead board to the back of the dresser because the back was unfinished
4. Attach decorative legs to the back
5. Trim out the corners and the bottom of the back.
7. Stain the top
6. Prime and paint the dresser
7. Install trim around the top
8. Touch up everything
9. Install new hardware
10. Move one awesome kitchen island from the garage into the kitchen

All-in-all we are estimating that it is going to cost us $300 to do this island. That just about gave me a heart attack, but I guess when you consider that just the top was quoted to us for that much it’s still a pretty good deal.

For comparison, JCPenny’s sells this kitchen island for $900. Ours will actually have more storage space and be a better scale for our space once it’s finished. Not bad for 1/3 of the price.

So far we have all of the materials except for the new hardware. I’m debating getting stainless steel to match what we currently have in the kitchen or getting decorative glass hardware. The island is not going to match the cabinets. Our cabinets are cherry and the island is going to be painted a very dark charcoal gray with a cherry stained top. Thoughts?