How to Make a Diaper Cake

With so many expecting in my friends and family network I've been doing a lot of research on what's new in the baby gift giving industry. A few months ago I discovered the diaper cake and immediately was fascinated. I love giving diapers for showers. I do this because it's the absolute most practical gift. However, you don't get a lot of "ooohhh"s and "ahhhhh"s with a box of diapers no matter how nicely you wrap they gift.

I have a baby shower this afternoon and was eager to make my first diaper cake. Now I want to share with you just how to do it.

Diaper cakes can be made at so many different levels. I did a bit of research first and sort of put some idea's together before doing my baby shopping. Here is what I bought:

*80 size 3 Target brand diapers (she's a first time mom and may not be happy about generic but I'll give her a couple of months before she changes her mind.) They were 50% cheaper than pampers).

*15 new born baby diapers
*A baby bottle
*Baby Wash
*Baby Lotion
*4 Receiving blankets to go with her decor (I checked her registry for this info)
*A set of 2 Bottle Cleaners
*Comfort Blanket for the topper

I also had to buy the following to put the cake together:
*16 inch cake circle for the bottom of the diaper cake
*Wooden dowel to hold the cake together
*Assorted rubber bands for the diapers
*Various ribbons
*Pink Toile

Now here is a step by step on how I put this together. Let me first say that this takes A LOT of patience and practice for your first time. I think I spent about 2-3 hours messing with it, putting it together and taking it apart to start all over again.

For the bottom layer I wrapped 40 size 3 baby diapers with rubber bands to hold them into place. I needed 2 receiving blankets to completely cover the diapers. This is probably the most frustrating part because you want the blankets to be taut, not sloppy and loose.

I used a branch cutter to cut my dowel into the appropriate size and inserted them through the cake circle. This is important, because without it your cake will slide all over the place and will be a mess when you deliver it to your shower.

I used 21 diapers for the center layer, in addition I added a bottle of baby powder to the center. These extras aren't necessary for a diaper cake, just fun for the mom to be. Much like finding a wedding cake has a raspberry filling. Yum.

I then wrapped my second layer with another receiving blanket. I had to play with this a few times because the blanket wasn't quite long enough. So I had to fold it in a triangle to get it to work properly. Then I inserted the 2 baby bottle washers along the dowels.

Next, I placed the baby wash and the baby lotion on top and wrapped several rubber bands around the collection of baby items to keep them in place.

Then I took my new born diapers and fanned them out around my baby supplies. Another rubber band was used to hold everything in place.

My final receiving blanket was used to cover the diapers on the top. and secured with another rubber band.

Once I was finished with the diaper cake I began to decorate it. This is the most fun. My topper is secured in place with the ribbon on the first tier. I used pink toile and a hot glue gun to cover my cake circle. Each tier has been wrapped with a ribbon and glued into place (onto the ribbon, NOT the blankets). Then I made about a dozen bows and glued them all the way around the cake. Voila. Tell me this isn't cute.

Baby Hideout...

My sister and sister in law are both expecting babies soon. I am so excited to hold and care for infants that won't keep me up all night. I'm even more excited about shopping for all of the little baby stuff that is completely unpractical but absolutely adorable. I'm also amazed at how deprived I was when my children were infants. Have I mentioned that my youngest is not even 5 yet? Outstanding things have happened in the baby industry and I want to pout just a bit because it isn't fair.

For instance, the Baby Hideout is an amazing tool for nursing mothers. My other sister in law used this for her youngest daughter and I loved how it kept her discrete. Mind you I've never really minded nursing in public but I always did my best to cover up. I would take dinner napkins in restaurants and do my best to wrap it across my chest. I was determined not to be like some of the mother's I've seen in public (like the zoo or at a shopping mall) who just whip out their tata's and let their child go to town. Even I, a non people watcher, can't help but to gawk at a boobie in the middle of public.

My sister's sister in law (I know, a lot of sister in laws) actually makes these awesome things. They're like aprons in a way but large enough to give you and your baby privacy while feeding, or even sleeping. And they come in amazing patterns and fabrics. Check them out at Baby Hideout.

Yardsale Success Part II...

Having a yard sale is much like giving birth to an infant. It's time consuming to prepare for, awful to go through yet when it is over the bad memories eventually fade and you are ready to do it again. I am not yet at that phase. In fact, I've been so traumatized by my most recent yard sale that I am convinced I will hang it up forever.

With that said I will first warn you that there will be no Yard Sale Success Part III. This is it. Once I write about this I will move on to more things that don't cause me to have post traumatic nightmares.

Once I was finished with tagging everything and organizing items into accessible boxes I packed up my stuff (2 FULL van loads) and hauled it all out to my dads. This took 2 full days, as I was also helping out my step mom with her own yard sale stuff. The following picture is the before and after of just the clothing items. I still had a lot of other *stuff* that my mom and my mother in law contributed.

I decided the day before the start of the weekend that I would be super crafty and I made a couple of aprons for holding money. One for myself and one for my step mom. Mostly my motive for this is because in the past I've always just kept my money in a zipper bag that I was notorious for leaving around. This way I could not lose my stash of cash.

A couple of extra helpful pointers for a successful tag sale is to collect your wal-mart/grocery bags for a couple of months before. People love to have bags to hold their items and the more they can hold the more they can buy. Another important pointer is to get about $40 in lower bills and about $5 in quarters so that you can give out change. And be certain to keep count of how much you started with and subtract it from what you made in the end. This way you don't get too excited if you think you made $50.00 when you started out with $40 only to forget to separate your money.

My own yard sale was overall successful. In the many years this event has occurred we've been fortunate not to have experienced weather interferences. However, this year, it rained the entire day Friday. This was not a good start because in the past Friday's have always been my money making day. I generally make about 75% of my total on Friday, partially because many Amish come into town on this day and another adjoining neighborhood has their big yard sale on Saturday.

Nevertheless, we sucked it up and went on with the show. We used my dad's car-port as well as his canopy to help keep our stuff dry, but it was an ongoing drizzle that just made everything damp, including our stuff. I was lucky I pulled a $200 day with all of the circumstances.

Thankfully, Saturday turned out to be beautiful. The weather was perfect for a yard sale. We were able to move the show to the actual *yard*.

In the end my total collection of money (I can't call it a profit because of course I spent much, much more on the actual products) was about $520. I say about because the kids bummed at least $20 off of me for food, ice cream and yard sale shopping for themselves. So I didn't include that amount. This was a bit low, but considering the rain on Friday I was pleased. Also, I left my dad's with just 1/8 of what I came with.

Just 3 days later I am still a bit traumatized by the event, mostly because of little old women who want a $40 Ralph Lauren sweater that still has price tags on it for 50 cents. At this point I am convinced I will just start to sell most of my stuff on eBay, but in a year I will likely change my mind.