Rookie Moms

There are some really nice people on the Internets who make cute things and then share their patterns. I love making the stuff, but don’t have the talent to write the patterns.

These little plushies are small enough that you can sew them by hand.

Some uses for them:
- Force your child to get attached to one as his security bunny/bear/alien
- Attatch to the outside of a store-bought baby gift to make it more personalized
- Place on a shelf in your house to remind yourself that you can make things besides babies
- Give to your mom as a reminder that she is the mommy and you are the child who still wants her approval

Benefits of this project:
- Motivates you to look into your scary box or bag of fabric scraps and use some and throw out some
- If you are not the type of person who has fabric scraps in your house, motivates you to head out to a fabric store and buy some
- Something to do while your partner is watching something you don’t care about on tv or hogging the computer
- Makes you appreciate the three naps a day your baby may be taking

Three small plush craft projects to choose from:
Mini Moopy - pictured above
Wee Bunny - from Wee Wonderfuls
Sock Dogs - Heather and I made these from Martha Stewart’s pattern. Here is the one I made after Martha wrote it up in 2002. (Instructions require both pages: Page 1, Page 2)

Still having trouble getting dinner on the table? Us too! It seems like places like Emeryville’s Dinner Source are popping up all over the country to fill the need for quick, convenient, healthy meals.

The idea is that we go there and assemble fresh, tasty meals and leave with dozens of future meals. And they do the prep and clean up! Pay a little extra for organic options. Sounds too good to be true? Whitney and I went to Dinner Source and it was practically perfect. I highly recommend as a mom’s group outing or to stock up before the new baby arrives.

Have a look at the Meal Assembly Network to find a place near you. They seem to list a bunch of different chains and independent ones too.

Dear mama-to-be,
We built this site for you… Well, for us, but also for you. We challenged ourselves to think of activities that were fun for new moms because we are new moms. We came up with ideas for month one that are reasonable for moms of newborns, but here’s the catch:

Moms of newborns are not online. At least not at our site. So, read ahead and check out the month one activities… and know we’re here for you. Even if you forget once you have your baby. Somewhere, deep down, you’ll remember that you can take a shower and get fresh air and that your to-do list is not what it was.

Remember us and we’ll be here for you when you’re ready.

Did you already know you can use flickr to spell out your baby’s name in an interesting way? I didn’t. I just read this on Nested and I can’t wait to try it.

Now what do I do with this awesomeness? I’m thinking t-shirt because it’s probably too low res for wall art. Anyone else have any bright ideas?