New Year's Eve

No crafts for New Year's Eve, but we still have fun!!

Sparkling Cider, anyone?

Christmas Overboard - Err, I Mean Overview (Part IV-Twas the Night Before Christmas)

Twas the Night Before Christmas, 

and all thru the NICU,

Nurses are crafting special keepsakes for you!

Christmas Overboard - Err, I Mean Overview (Part III-Reindeer Feet)

A few years ago, I made Reindeer Feet in our NICU.  I decided to clean out my craft cabinet locker and I found some left over supplies.  Well, I didn't want to throw them out, so I just had to make reindeer feet for my two patients that night.  

ENJOY.

Christmas Overboard - Err, I Mean Overview (Part II-Clean Hands)

Clean hands save lives!  And in the NICU, everyone scrubs their hands like a surgeon and I do mean everyone: nurses, doctors, surgeons (hehe), parents, grandparents, siblings, everyone!  Hand washing is a HUGE deal because babies' immune systems just aren't that great.  Dirty hands spread infections and infections can KILL.  Clean hands = less infections = healthy babies.

   

Everyone does a 3-minute "scrub in" when they come to our NICU.  We also have alochol rubs EVERYWHERE.  During Christmas, I like to Santa-fy those alochol rubs.  It's a fun way to spread Christmas cheer and encourages everyone to clean their hands.

SANTA-TIZERS

It doensn't get any cuter than this:

Christmas Overboard - Err, I Mean Overview (Part I-ELBW)

Ah, the big holiday.  The one that really gets to people, Christmas.  Having your baby in the NICU instead of home with you, can be really difficult.  No one wants to celebrate Christmas in the NICU, including the staff.  Morale seems to fall in December.

It's hard for us too.  We want to spend Christmas with our families.  There are always a few of us that are celebrating a "First Christmas" with our little ones or a "Last Christmas" with sick family members.  We try, we really do, to keep the Christmas spirit alive in the NICU.  We know it's hard for you.  So, what do we do, we CRAFT, of course. :)

First, let me describe our NICU to you.  We have 6 specialized rooms: ELBW (extremely low birth weight), VLBW (very low birth weight), SURGICAL (yup, babies that need some kind of surgical interventions), GENERAL (heart and everything else), & two step down rooms.  At Christmas, we like to decorate the doors to our rooms.  And yes, this is one of my favorite things and I usually go way overboard with the amount of work!  This year, I couldn't be happier with my creation!

ELVES

This time I used the Create a Friend Cricut cartridge and man, was I way over my head.  the super cute female Elf was adorable and perfect for our door decorations.  I was feeling so inspired with it, I even did a "sneak peek" preview on facebook!

And then I started to put them all together.   16 individual pieces....so much time, but so worth it.  In the end, I didn't put the snowballs on the hats and shoes, so it ended up being 13 pieces per elf.  Then, of course, I had to give them each one of our names, so I cut out little tags and one of our ELBW nurses wrote every one's name (b/c I hate my own handwriting).

I couldn't be happier with our door creation this year!

 

Thankful Thanksgiving

I'm playing catch-up today on all of the Fall/Winter Holidays.  Up next, THANKSGIVING!

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to reflect and give thanks. BUT....I completely ran out of time! 

To my Cricut I go!  I just love the Create a Critter 2 cartridge.  I made these super cute little turkeys for our super cute little turkeys in the NICU.  But like I said, I ran out of time, so only the turkeys for this Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving snuck up on me and I'm so thankful to my coworkers for helping me glue together all the pieces of the turkey, the night before!!  AGH.  

I felt bad that I only made the turkeys...nothing to go along with them.  No emblishments, no craft tape, no fancy paper for this holiday.  I started to feel like I let down those families who were celebrating their child's FIRST THANKSGIVING.  Our cards help them remember and this one was just going to be a turkey?  Oh no, my NIGHT SHIFT CREW rocks!  Check out this wonderful creation!  Simple, but perfect.  Those little feet say it all....Thankful.

Trick or Treat - Smell My Feet

We love to celebrate everything in the NICU, from weight gain to finishing the first bottle! Halloween is one of my favorite holidays because it's all about kids have fun.  We love to have fun in the NICU, but we usually can't dress up our patients.  One, because a lot of them are just too sick to have on clothes and two, when was the last time you saw a premie Halloween costume at Target?

But we still have to celebrate and so we make cards.  

We had a lot of fun making My First Halloween cards in the NICU the night before Halloween.  Way to go my Night-Shift Crew.

I love my Cricut!!  I used the Create a Critter 2 cartridge to make the super cute little monster & Trick or Treat expression.  

 

We used white index cards for our backdrop, crafting tape from Michaels as the border, and super cute little feet!!

They turned out great!