Onesie Bouquet

What a great weekend! Ray was actually home all weekend (usually he works at least Saturday, and lately both Saturday and Sunday) and on Sunday morning at about 4 am I got a text with a picture of our brand new nephew, Wyatt, when he was about 30 minutes old. I’ve always loved babies, but I’ve noticed that since I’ve had my own baby I’m even more excited when a new baby is born. Since he was almost 2 weeks early, I didn’t have our baby gift ready to take out there when we visited yesterday. So, this afternoon it was my project.

A few weeks ago, I saw a few of these Onesie Bouquets floating around Pinterest. I thought they looked fun, but of course I decided to put my own spin on it. Honestly, this was mostly because I saw these Chevron receiving blankets at Target and being a sucker for all things Chevron, I knew I had to figure out a way to include them.  I also wanted to save a bit of money and use some things that I already had—namely, the clear glass vase. I have about 10 of those from when Baby Ray was born. So, without further ado here is what I did:

First, I went shopping at Target gathered my supplies. Thanks to the Target baby sale, I got 5 onesies, a sleeper, a burp cloth and 4 receiving blankets for $20. Go me! I also needed some wooden dowels (dollar section) and safety pins.

You don’t technically have to do this, but I washed everything before I started. One less thing that needs to be done on the other end! I threw it all in with Baby Ray’s stuff. I honestly used to hate doing laundry and I had major issues with how things turned out (smell and softness) before I started using this soap. My clothes have never been softer! They have a nice fresh smell, nothing overpowering. Even soap specifically marketed for babies (which I spent an unnecessary boatload of money on last year) didn’t have this light of a smell. Plus, it’s made from all organically grown ingredients meaning it is safe for us and the planet. Score! When I first got it, I thought I would blow through it really fast like I have with all the standard laundry soap I’ve used, but I’ve been using the same small bottle for the last month and still have half left. I do 4-5 loads of laundry a week. Okay, off my “soap” box (hahaha) and onto the tutorial:

It was a pretty simple process to put this all together. First step was to fold the blankets so they would fit in the vase. I originally wanted to put all 4 in the vase, but when tried folding them tiny enough for that, they got too thick to fit in the vase. So, I used two instead. To fold them so they would show perfectly, I laid the blanket out face down to see what I had to work with:

Then just fold it in half from the bottom up:

And again:

One more time:

Then fold it over from right to left. Or left to right. Whatever floats your boat.

Now your blanket is ready to go into the vase. There is no pretty way to do this. You just roll it a little so it fits in the top and then once it is inside move it around so it sits well. It doesn’t have to be perfect since you’re putting another blanket on top anyway.

Now, if you are indecisive like me you decide that you no longer want the yellow blanket to be in there so you  prepare all four receiving blankets in this manner and test them all out to see which combination you like best. Or you could just move on, put the second blanket in there and go about rolling your flowers. It’s up to you. I vote for being neurotic about it, but that’s just me.

Once I decided on the best combination, it was time to roll the flowers. It’s actually a similar process to what you did with the blankets. First, lay the onesie out facedown. And if you are the mother of a toddler, marvel at how small that thing is and wonder how your baby ever fit into 0-3 month size onesies.

Then, fold it in half the long way (“the hot dog way” if you remember back to elementary school every time you do these things like I do).

Then you fold over one more time so it’s long and skinny.

Then you roll it up like a sleeping bag. You can start at either end, but it’s easier to start at the end where the sleeve is hanging out a little so you don’t have to deal with uneven edges at the end. After you’re done rolling it, you wonder why you didn’t open the safety pins ahead of time so you hold it down under your arm to keep it together while you fumble to open the safety pins. (I warned you!) Then you secure the edge to the body and you have a cute flower.

The blue flowers were more photogenic for this, hence switching it up on you again!

After this, you flip the flower over to see that the bottom is much uglier than the top. Don’t hyperventilate. That’s the end you stick the dowel into and nobody sees it anyway. Phew.

Then you proudly stick your flower in the vase and move on to the next one. Like I said, I had five onesies (two were long sleeved, which is a bit harder but still manageable) a burp cloth that made a tiny little flower and a sleeper which made a much bigger flower to stick in the center.

Now, to use the rest of the blankets. I was originally going to tie a ribbon around the vase. You saw that in my “materials” picture. Seriously. I’ll wait for you to go back and look.

Okay, welcome back! I decided to tie a blanket around the vase like a bow. So I just rolled one of them up as tightly as possible and tied it around. It isn’t quite long enough for an actual bow, so I adjusted it a little so it would still look cool. As for the fourth blanket, right now it’s just sitting under the vase of onesie flowers. I’m going to use it as wrapping for the crock pot meals cookbook which is the other part of this new baby gift. I’m thinking that will be very helpful, especially since Wyatt has a 3 year old brother too. I have no idea where non-crock pot cooking would fit into that equation.

We’re going to bring it over next weekend along with a meal. One of the things I was most grateful for with a newborn was people bringing me meals. The last thing I wanted to do on basically no sleep was to cook. It probably would have been dangerous. (It also kind of sucked because I LOVE cooking.Thankfully I started getting much more sleep around 6 weeks after bringing him home.)

What things did you like getting or do you wish you would have gotten with a new baby? Do you have any traditions for things you bring to new moms?

GET THE SAFE LAUNDRY SOAP I USED HERE!

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