gnomes driving a tractor with handmade felt hay bales

This lovely tractor and trailer was a birthday gift from a dear friend. The gnomes were my birthday gift to little f, and one of the more intense needlefelting projects I've taken up yet. While the shredded paper from one of his gifts made great hay it was getting everywhere. When he opened the box with the shreds, he called out "hay" and didn't even notice there was another gift from another dear friend, it was quite hilarious.

At any rate, I pulled out some wool felt and got busy. For each bale, I cut out four rectangles, 2"x1" and two squares, 1"x1" and whip stitched them all together with a little stuffing. It went into my mending basket and into the bathroom so I could work on them while little f was in the tub.

The galvanized tub was outside, and in my attempt to reduce consumption in our house, I brought it in and scrubbed it out. Now we use less than half the amount of water in his bath each night. That means our pump runs less and we use less hot water. He likes it better b/c he gets a full tub! It does mark up our tub a bit, but it's starting to rust a bit anyway. A towel could go under it, but I haven't made that happen yet and a little baking soda takes off the marks pretty easily.

making toys out of all kinds of things...

"Meems, I need a trailer for my tractor."

Hmm. After thinking about it for a while I came up with this solution. A small wood crate from his little kitchen tied up with twill tape which was left over from something and hanging on the bulletin board. It works out great, b/c he can put all kinds of things into it and pull them all around. 

Since then, he has received a beautiful wood tractor with a trailer that swivels and everything, but he loves to play in his two tractor farm.  A pile of shredded paper from a gift is the "hay". I also made him some bales of hay out of felt, but we haven't tossed the paper shreds yet. Today might be the day, as it is all over the rug.

The shirt was revamped, with a big denim star cut from a old pair of jeans stitched over the "cutesy" motif on the front.

Birchleaf Designs makes the coolest stuff for kids!

Handmade in Michigan by a family of four who love life. I can't think of a better way to describe this enterprise. The stuff : wooden spoons, swords and baby toys along with hand-dyed silks and all kinds of other things that my little guy loves to use for play, along with his imagination.

We have all of these and they are so nice! Instead of buying plastic things geared toward a small age range, we chose these b/c he will play with them for years! And they can be costumes, forts, scenery for stories, gnome play, etc.

Next, we want to learn to do some painting, so these are on our wish list... As far as I can figure, you mix a little bit of watercolor paint with water and give your kids the wide brush (flat 16 or 18). Watercolor paper can be attached to a wood board, to help keep it from moving. Paint can be stored in the jars until the next painting adventure.


Just think of all the crafty stuff we could put in here! Of course, right now, it would be filled with all kinds of wooden cars. School bus, delivery truck, racecar, sedan, tractor and maybe a few more would all be parked in this handy "garage". That's what Fyn's really excited about right now...