Heather's Hurrah: bella band

Just making my way through another Monday and reflecting a bit on our weekend, which was a nice one. I am feeling fairly rested and relaxed this morning, so can't complain about that!! :) We took it easy on Friday night and watched a Netflix movie - Drinking Buddies (I probably wouldn't recommend it but it was OK) and went to bed early. On Saturday, we (Molly and I) got haircuts (her first, not mine ;)) and that was exciting for her...then we went to visit our good friends overnight about 45 mins away - so that was fun! They have 2 kids and Molly loves to play with them (both kids are older so she often just watches them). We drove back mid-morning on Sunday and played outside in all the snoooooow in the afternoon, and then had the world's most delicious seafood chowder for supper at my in-laws' house. All in all, a pretty good weekend and both of Brian's picks for football came through yesterday so he was happy about that.

This is the view from our friends' house on Sunday morning:

I started today off with a delicious protein pancake and Molly had one too - she loved it!! :)

I have 2 fun projects that I've been meaning to share on the blog...one is VERY simple and the other is very SPECIFIC haha...but both are easy!

Brian made Molly a chalkboard easel for Christmas. I'll talk about that more later sometime, but since he had leftover chalkboard paint, I asked him to make me a chalkboard to hang in our living room to write seasonal quotes on, such as this one:

(Via)

I think I still need to put a frame around it or something, but here's how he did mine, and set it up for me to come home to:

He used chalkboard paint from Home Depot which you can buy here and painted it on a sheet of MDF that he had leftover (although if you wanted to frame this, you could use even thinner wood or probably even cardboard). He rounded it using a fancy new tool called a router that he got for Christmas, but again, that probably wouldn't be necessary if you were framing it! Molly coloured the bottom of ours, and I have yet to find an inspirational quote for January so maybe I will just wait until it's closer to Valentine's Day to write something nice on it! :)

The other project I finished recently took me about 10 minutes and I've made 2 of these for myself and now one for a friend who is smaller than me. If you've ever been pregnant, you have probably seen these:

(Via)

They are called maternity belly bands and they rock because you can still wear your old pants, but leave them unbuttoned and wear this over top. I usually secure my pants still with a loop elastic so that they don't fall down.

When I was pregnant with Molly, I made two of these in black for myself and I have used them a lot, so I decided to make one for a pregnant friend. I used fabric which is similar to yoga pants, (bought at Fabricville) measured it around myself, cut, and literally hemmed it and it was done. You have to make sure that the stretchier part of the fabric is the wide part and not the length. You can make it any length you want, I used the stretch fabric setting on my sewing machine: