The Home-sewn Christmas Gifts

I typically only squeeze out one sewn Christmas gift, but this year, I managed a bit more.

I like to get my children an ornament every year and then I put their initials and the year on it.  My mother-in-law did that for her children, and we have a lovely set of ornaments from my husband's childhood.  For the first time, I made the ornaments!  It was fun, relatively quick, and the children were charmed to find these in their stockings.

I also made a busy book for Phoebe, which is never something I thought I would mess with.  However, my nephew has a busy book made out of felt and it was so simple, I really wanted to copy it for Phoebe.

A few weeks before Christmas, Phoebe began unzipping any zipper she could find and also trying to undo my belt buckle during diaper changes.  She would unsnap her dollie's sleeper and beg to have it snapped up again so she could unsnap it.  Over and over and over again.

I was thrilled to give her the busy book on Christmas morning and yes, it has gotten a real work out.  In fact, one of the grommets is gone, and a zipper seam is loosening; I dearly hope this book can stand up to Phoebe's enthusiasm.

Ben With His Cart and Cans

Ben made a go-cart with his dad.  They scavenged the wheels from a broken stroller and a rusty wire shopping cart and used boards and odds and ends in the basement.  Ben was patient, but persistent  with his daddy's busy schedule until the go-cart was done.

Ben rides it almost every day with great joy and pride.  He's gotten several comments from the oldsters on the park benches who remember "building carts" when they were boys and thought youngsters didn't do that anymore.

Then Ben wanted to make himself stilts and raided my coffee-can stash in the basement.  There are metal cans down there, but he chose the plastic ones and was enamored with the way the drill melted the plastic when he made holes.  And Genevieve got into the can stash, too, to make a pulley system of cans from the balcony to pass messages back and forth.
 

None of these things were suggested or explained by me or my husband - I love how timeless children's play can be!

And then, to cap off his summer, Ben won a watermelon-eating contest at our block party.  His prize was a whole watermelon (ignore the tootsie-pops) which suited our family fine: a kid bringing home legitimate food!

From the Scrap Bag

I made a few things for the baby and children's areas at our church, and I challenged myself to use only my small scraps.

First I made a runner for a dresser top next to the changing table (circa 1970! I love that about our church - sticking with the old things because there's nothing wrong with them except the latest style).

 I was continuing the jewel tones started by another mom.  The runner is not strictly flat, but since its function is really decorative and I also used up scraps, I let it go.

This is a single-thickness coverlet for one of the cribs.  I thought each crib should have a heavier blanket and a lighter cover for warm weather.  I did cut into yardage for the yellow, but the duckie applique is from a vintage sheet in my stash.

Then the dolly in the play area was dressed in cheap polyester things, so I made a dress and bonnet with scraps.  The ribbons are oddly placed, and one of these days I will take the bonnet home again and fix it.  And I will also make a little boy outfit for the dolly, too, so the children can decide how to play.

The Secret for Happy Kids with Just a Few Toys

The principle here is simple and relates to other areas of life:  keep something out of sight for a little while and it becomes new and exciting when you get it out again. (We are embarrassingly like magpies, yes?)  Like seasonal clothing, or even the seasons themselves, or summer tomatoes, or toys.  Along with the rest of America, I assumed that children were happy with lots of fun toys.
 
No. No no no. No, they are not.

 I have learned from living with my children and watching other peoples' children (and I would lay money that scientific research backs this up); lots of toys overwhelm children both in play time and clean up time.  They don't use the plethora of toys to play in new and exciting ways every day.  Instead, they grow jaded and beg for new toys, which obliging, doting adults give them.

But no.

All we have to do is pack most of the toys away, unseen, and then rotate the toy selection every so often (every month? every week?  whatever you have energy for).  I have one shelf in the basement and one shelf in an upstairs closet dedicated to this.

She's saying "burrrr" (bear)

This post is coming from a recent toy upheaval at our house.  Phoebe is developing rapidly (talking! crawling!) and her baby toys were too babyish.  So I found little-kid toys in storage and started sorting them with her in mind, but my big kids fell on the toys with literal cries of joy.

I was astounded because I had put the stringing beads and Fisher Price toys away because they outgrew them.  But no - just having the toys out of sight for a few years made the little-kid toys interesting, fresh, and absorbing for my big kids.

We do not have a kids' play room at our house - we have little stashes of baby toys in most rooms and that's it.  The big kids have some toys in their bedroom and some in the playhouse outside.  That's it.  The rest are in storage and I have renewed determination to rotate toys to keep the fun fresh.  Because I do not want to drown in toys because they're usually ugly, plastic, and a sign of over-consumption.

And besides toys, we also have lots of books and the raw materials like tape, paper, cardboard, stuff in the recycling bin, and let us not forget the entertainment of cooking up an edible mess in the kitchen or the almost-helpful mess of cleaning the front porch with the mop and hose or going to the park or playing with the bunny.  You see what I mean?  I have little tolerance for plastic objects made just for children's entertainment.  I want to keep that stuff to a minimum.  Your thoughts?

Homemade Balls for the Cousins

I seem to have developed a pattern of making just one gift for someone every Christmas. This year, it was Phoebe and her little first cousin Drew.  A first first cousin!  I am now an aunt!  There is great joy and noise in our extended family with two babies, let me tell you.

 I followed this easy pattern.  I used cut up batting scraps as the stuffing, and I put a little jingle bell in the middle to give it a rattle.  Both babies enjoy their simple balls more than I expected, although Phoebe's ball has the aggravating characteristic of rolling away where she can't follow.  Must learn to crawl, Fee!

DIY Baby Toys

There seems to be two extremes of baby toys:  the cheap plastic crap with screaming colors and patterns all over every inch (we have some of these) or the gorgeous handmade toys of natural materials that cost more than my wool coat (we have three of these - all gifts). So I thought I'd try to find my solution with an internet search and some at-home materials.  

I actually made these toys a few months ago, but they went immediately into heavy usage and I forgot to blog about them.  That's my project theme these days:  immediate usage and I don't document them.  I'm going to try to remedy that in the next few posts.

This is a bottle with half baby oil and half water, plus food coloring.  It's fun to shake it and watch the bubbles foam up and disperse.  The big kids adore this thing.

This is a shaker made from a plastic jar cadged from the recycling bin and the random beads and bobs I find on the kids' bedroom floor.  I put a jingle bell in there, too.  I glued the lid shut on both these containers for extra security, but my glue job was a little shoddy so I'm not sure that it's good to let Phoebe put these in her mouth.  She puts everything in her mouth.  So I guess I'm not picky about what the third child is putting in her mouth.

This is a cloud softie - I was so surprised to find myself making a stuffed toy!  I never had any desire to make dolls or animals, but this cloud idea with its sleep face and smiley face was pretty fun.  Again, my workmanship was a little shoddy (my approximation of ladder stitch to close up the hole after I stuffed the cloud is, uh, lumpy, and some of the seams on the dangles are coming out).  I put two jingle bells in the middle of the batting scrap stuffing.

Phoebe loves these toys.  She also loves bowls, wooden spoons, combs, rags, and paper. It's kind of a game these days to find things around the house that Phoebe can explore with her fingers and mouth.

Phoebe TV

This post slides onto the thrifty blog by saying that you don't need to buy electronics to entertain. Phoebe is better than a screen, but there are several considerations: her sound cannot be muted and she requires care and feeding even when no one feels like watching TV.  So the thrifty thing to do is borrow a baby, yes?

 

Under the arch of toys, looking in the mirror.

photo by Genevieve - the first Phoebe smile we managed to capture on camera!

I'll write about actual thrift in some upcoming posts.  I may be sleep-deprived and submerged in work, but nothing gives me satisfaction like worming out some creative, thrifty solutions.

Back Yard, December 9, 10:47 am

*Genevieve's new tree house ladder boards on the maple tree which she begged to do on Sunday afternoon, while her father and I waved her sleepily away with vague permission, quite sure she couldn't manage; imagine our (proud) surprise when we looked out finally on Monday morning!
*I think that's a house the children were assembling with an overturned wooden chair, wooden table, and assorted seltzer bottles from the recycling bin
*a pink plastic chair I pulled from the neighbor's trash a few weeks ago; my husband is horrified; I told the kids it was supposed to stay in the clubhouse - we have the only small children on this block and we try to keep not to be the eyesore next to the prim yards around us
*one of my retractable clotheslines - the white disc opposite the board ladder on the maple tree
*the Radio Flyer full of mud and a snow shovel
*in front of the black compost bin which sits among the three raised beds
*bars on the law firm's windows - no one else has bars on their windows in our neighborhood
*pale green parsley in the bed to the left; I hope it keeps hanging on because it sure brightens up our winter soups.

*an immediate camera turn to my left is the clubhouse, with the rags Genevieve nailed up as curtains; I thought it would a nice beginner sewing project for her to sew curtains for the clubhouse, but she asked for rags instead.  I wonder what the judge and the state representative next door think. . . .

This post is due to Jennifer Jo's brilliant series - I hope she makes it A Regular Thing and invites us all to share links.  It's poignant and funny to see what's going on in one shot (I cheated here with two) of our lives.