Dress up a Derby Hat

Good morning! How is it only Thursday? May is such a crazy month, and since I work at a high school, we are in the thick of event season, from Grandparents Day to Baccalaureate, to Graduation. It's so fun, and a bit bittersweet, to see the seniors graduate and move on to bigger things, but so fun to see the incoming freshman and their excitement for the next four years.

Anyway, on to todays ridiculously simple craft. Last weekend, we got to go to a Kentucky Derby themed party. Mick and I (mainly me!) were so excited about breaking out our Derby attire. We got the opportunity to go to the real Derby in 2010. In my opinion, it is such a bucket-list experience. Everyone should go once! We were lucky enough to have reserved seats, which were well worth the investment sicne the day we went, it POURED down raining. If you buy the general admission, you spend most of the time in the grass, which on a rainy day, is less than ideal!

Here we are before we left for the Derby...

And here we are once it started raining. Trash bag chic!

As you can see on the picture above, my hat was pretty basic when I bought it. But I wanted to dress it up, so I attached a flower to it.

This year, I wanted to add a bit more color to the hat, so I used the same hat and dressed it up with a flower bought at Michaels. Take a look below and see this SUUPER easy way to dress up a basic hat to make it Derby-worthy!

Here's what you need: a hat of your choice (Steinmart is a surprisingly good source for cute hats at reasonable prices!
Hot glue gun
Faux flower(s)

Here's more detail on the flower. It's best to pick one that is fairly flat on the back.

Detatch the flower from the stem. Originally, I was going to cut it with wire cutters. However, I then realized that with a little pulling, I could separate the flower right at the base- this worked better!

You can see on the hat where I attached the flower last time- see the dark spot above the center of the bow! I just put my hot glue there, and firmly pressed the flower onto the hat. A few minutes of drying time, and voila!

Here are the final hats! I didn't do anything to my sons (top center), but I did dress up my daughters a bit. See the pic below to see how I did that one!

This one I didn't want to hot glue as I wanted to be able to remove the flowers and let her wear it to the beach, or on a hot day. So I simply took a few stitches and loosely sewed her flower and the butterfly on. She had a lot of fun picking out her decorations at Michaels.

And here we are in our Derby finest! I'm wearing this dress- super comfortable and I love the bright color! I'm wearing an XS, and it's still a little big under the arms, so make sure to size down. Mick's jacket is a few years old, but he's wearing these pants, which are so darn cute on him!

So that's it- an easy way to dress up your Kentucky Derby hat and personalize it to your style and outfit! Happy Thursday friends- one more day to the weekend!