All the birds of a feather...

Did I mention my kids are crazy about the movie Rio?  It's playing almost once a day in our home and they love dancing to the songs, the soundtrack is really good.  It made me think of a project that I wanted to do and thought it was the perfect opportunity to tie it in with the movie.  
 Eri of Llevo el invierno has a diy tutorial/pattern avail­able on her site that is ahmazing!!!   I adapted her tute and tweaked it a bit.  Here's what I did:

1) I cut the 2 side wings from the same pattern and I reinforced with fusible lining (sticky side up) so that it would be easier to hold the feathers when sewing (I'm thinking that it would have been more airy if I did without it but too late...you can leave this out if you want)

2) I precut all my feather pieces, you don't have to stick with the rounded feathers, I think it would have looked just as nice with more of a pointier look.  

3) Lay your feather strips in the order you would like and iron if you did the fusible lining OR pin and sew later OR you can just use fabric glue.

4)  Since I did the fusible lining, I just kept ironing my feather strips on.

5) It's a quick project actually and there you have your wings.

6) Sew your layers of feather strips.  Again, this is optional but I wanted to reinforce mine so that my kids don't have them torn off from wearing them.

7) The inside of the wings will look like this.

And there you go, fun wings for your fun kids!!!!  Here's a pic of my daughter modeling hers.

Kids Room Makeover (or makeunder?)

 I have been itching to paint my children's room since I always feel that the colors were making my kids crazier than usual.  I loved the jungle/under the sea theme and don't get me wrong, I love primary colors but I think for the bedroom it just didn't mesh well.  So I wanted to create a more calmer environment for them and thought light blue skies and grassy fields.  The tree as you can see in the pic was an unplanned addition but there were some bad spots where I had ripped some of the previous coat of paint off and was too lazy to spackle it smooth before painting.  It's amazing how different the room feels now and I think my kids are more calmer too (or it might just be the paint fumes)!  

*** If you would like to makeover any rooms in your home, I suggest using wall paints that are VOC free, matte finish and ask for the type that is easy to clean (just in case your kids go crazy with their crayons).  For this project I used TOA SuperShield paints.  For any wall murals/artwork, I just used crafter's acrylic paints.

*** If you would like to have your children participate in painting their room, I drew the outline of shapes and had my daughter color them in, she did a fantastic job and really enjoyed being part of decorating her room.