Summer matching game - free printable

Every time school ends and the summer holidays approach I find myself trying to find new ways to keep my kids entertained. Over the year I've created several printable games for them, and this time I made a summer matching game. 

This is very easy to make: just download the file and print two copies on a color printer (to get pairs). Cut the pieces to shape and laminate them for a more lasting result. 

 

Then give them to your kids and let the summer fun begin!

Feel free to use this summer matching game as you want, but f you re-post or share on social media, just please leave a link back to this page! 

Old basket to doll bed upcycle

Or maybe I should say bunny bed?

Even though I encourage my kids to be creative and they are used to seeing me work on my own crafts, sometimes they still manage to surprise me. Last Sunday, after church, my son came to me and said Carrot needed a bed (Carrot is a soft toy bunny he received from his grandmother last Easter and that has been sleeping with him ever since). 

Now, if that request had come from my daughter, I would have not been surprised because she always needs a bed for every one of her dolls. But coming from an eight year old boy that's usually focused on video games and anything with wheels, it was unexpected. And endearing too. As I'm betting in a couple of years he will not only forget about this but feel embarrassed if I ever remind him, I decided to comply. Kids grow up too fast as it is, so I might as well enjoy what's left of their childhood while I can.  

I had this basket in a corner of my craft room from quite some time: 

 

I vaguely recall that it came with flowers delivered to the hospital when one my kids was born (can't remember which). For a while we used it to store toys, but then the handle broke and I just held on to the basket, thinking I would make something out it one day. 

I told my son to go through my fabric stash and pick whatever he liked for Carrot's bed (not that he had a lot of choice because most of my fabrics are girly and Carrot, has been determined to be boy bunny). This was the end result:

I made everything as I went along, so no pattern and no tutorial this time, but I'll just give you some pointers in case you ever want to make something similar:

• I traced the bottom of the basket onto the back of the fabric and cut two pieces, which were sewn right sides together leaving a small opening on one side, turned inside out, filled with a bit of polyester filling and closed. This works as the mattress.
• I cut a strip of fabric long enough to go around the inside of the basket and wide enough to cover it from the mattress up to the top border. I sewed it to the mattress. 
• Then I cut another strip of fabric this time to go around the outside of the basket. The top of this strip is sewn to the other one (the one lining the inside of the basket) and the bottom is folded and sewn into an elastic casing. This way the basket is lined inside and out with one single piece (because everything is sewn together) and the elastic not only helps to keep everything in place but makes it easy to remove for washing if necessary. 

My son cut himself two rectangles of fabric to make a pillow (and filled it with the polyester), and I also made a small blanket (again, his choice of fabric), lined with the same fabric as the basket and with a small trim as embellishment. 

All in all, it took me less then an hour to make everything, and Carrot has been happily sleeping in his own bed ever since. So I'm calling in a very successful upcyle!

(it works well as a doll bed too, but that Barbie did not last long in there...)

The downside? When my daughter found out what we were making for Carrot, she immediately came up with a doll that did not have a bed yet. Since I was freshly out of baskets to upcycle, I had to improvise. I'll share that adventure next week...

Happy Tuesday, 

 

Birds on a Wire Nursery Decor

..or maybe I should say "birds on a ribbon"? 

Anyway, today I wanted to share with you what I created as nursery decor for a cousin baby girl. 

It's a very simple set of pink and white felt birds, sewn onto a ribbon and tied to a wood ring for hanging. All in all, it is a cute, inexpensive and quick way to decorate a baby's room, and it can be made in any color to match the rest of the decor. 

I'm also sharing below a brief tutorial in case anyone wants to make something similar. 

Ikea Hack Lego Table

We are all huge Lego fans at our house (yes, even me; having kids is a great excuse to play with Legos again), but we've never had a Lego table. Lately, though, I decided we needed one, mostly because having Lego constructions spread out through the living room floor was starting to bother me. I wanted something simple and cheap, that can be easily discarded when the kids grow, but at the same that that did not clash with our other furniture. When I saw an old Ikea side table next to the trash cans at the end of our street early on a Saturday morning, I knew I had hit jackpot! It was the right size, and, most of all, it was the right price.

Someone had discarded it, though, because it looked in pretty bad shape, but the damages were all superficial, just a lot of nicks and bruises and peeling paper cover.

At first I thought about painting it, but those tables are actually made of cardboard, not wood, and I didn't know if the paint would hold. In the end, I used a dark brown self adhesive paper I already had at home (leftover from lining some shelves years ago) and covered the table legs and the sides. And then, because I had to join several pieces of adhesive paper, I added a pretty ribbon to hide the "seams". This is how it looked afterwards:

You can see the top was a bit damaged too, but I wasn't worried about that, as I was going to cover it with the Lego base plates.

Which was also a great opportunity to try out my brand new hot glue gun. I don't know how I lived for so long without one!

Here's the end result: 

I had to buy a few new base plates, because most of the ones we had were old and broken (they've been around ever since I was a kid, which just shows that Legos are durable toys), so you can see the difference in color from the new to the old plates, but the kids wanted to keep that road, and I wanted to cut expenses to a minimum. 

Because the table was larger than the four big base plates we had and I needed the scarred tabletop covered entirely, I cut a few of the older plates to fill in the blank spaces (but making sure Lego pieces would fit in perfectly between the joined plates.  

I hot glued all the pieces to the table top and let the kids have a got at it.

No complaints so far. Total cost: just the three new base plates. Everything else was free or something we already had at home. Not bad for a Saturday morning's work!

Happy Tuesday!

DIY Play Food: Eggs and Sausage

It's been a while since I posted a new addition to the DIY Play Food Series, so last weekend I decided to get down to work and finish one of the patterns I had on my list to share for quite some time.

So today I bring you Eggs & Sausage. All made of felt and all ready to be played with, of course!

These are very easy to make, but I took some pictures and added a pattern sheet, to save you the trouble of having to take measures and draft them from scratch.

DIY Play Food: A Pan of Pasta

Welcome to another post in the DIY Play Food Series. I have lots and lots of play food ideas to share, but it takes me a while to round them up and get them ready. 

Today I bring you a Pan of Pasta. Felt pasta, of course.

Felt pasta is one of the easiest play foods to make, and also one the kids can easily relate to, so here's a small tutorial on how to make three types of pasta: 

All made of felt and all ready to be played with.

DIY Play Food: Felt Christmas Cookies

Welcome to the latest addition to the DIY Play Food Series!

This time I'm back to sweets, but with a Holidays theme. Because Christmas is to be celebrated in play kitchens too, and dolls, stuffed animals and even imaginary friends are more than entitled to celebrate with season appropriate treats.

Most of us have been busy baking Christmas cookies lately, and with this tutorial you can "bake" some lovely cookies for your kids to play with too!

DIY Play Food: A Bowl of Apples

Welcome to the second week of December, and to the fourth installment of the DIY Play Food series. After the box of doughnuts, the felt cupcakes and the bag of candy, today I decided to bring you a healthier option: apples. Made entirely of felt, of course!

 
Check out below  how to make these apples!

 

DIY Play Food: Felt Cupcakes

Welcome to the first week of November, and to the third installment of the DIY Play Food series. After the box of doughnuts and the bag of candy, today I bring you the felt cupcakes!

And even though I guarantee these are free of calories and don't cause cavities, to avoid a sugary overload (even a pretend one) I promise to share something healthier next week. It's already in the making!

DIY play food: a bag of candy

Following last week's Box of Doughnuts, this week I bring you a Bag of Candy. Play candy, to be exact, made of fabric and ribbon scraps and bits of polyester filling. 

My daughter loved the concept, especially because this is Halloween week and her dolls now have their own bag of candy!

Here's a small tutorial on how to make them:

DIY felt food - a box of doughnuts

With tutorial and free pattern. 

Ever since my daughter started to actively use her play kitchen I've been obsessed with making play food, mostly using felt. But I'd never bothered making patterns for it until now. 

Recently, while toying around with a few potential blog posts, I decided to create a series of DIY play food tutorials. 

The Box of Doughnuts is the first in a (hopefully) long list of ideas I want to share. Mostly because I love all the potential of these pieces of felt in terms of all the embellishments you can make. 

When making this box of doughnuts, I gave myself one additional challenge: I had to use only felt scraps, which is a great way to declutter too.

Sailboat pillow - tutorial & pattern

Last week I had a few days off work and I took the opportunity to finish a series of projects that I had planned for quite some time. One of them was the sailboat pillow. Because it's almost summer and sailboats rock! 

I ended up making two of them, one for each of my kids (of course) and then I decided to make a pattern and share it here in case anyone wants to try it too (this pattern is no longer free - an improved version of the pattern is now available on Etsy)

crochet owl pillow: the fluffy version

Remember the crochet owl pillow tutorial I posted a couple of weeks ago? I told you at the time I was making another one (because with my kids, everything gets to be made in pairs) with a totally different yarn. Well, it's finished! Here is the owl pillow, in a much fluffier version:

I made the first one for my daughter, and while I was debating about which yarn colors to use for my son's, he discovered in the yarn scraps basket the leftovers from the spring wreath:

He loved the ball of soft yarn so much he took it to bed with him, and it "slept" there for several day (amongst his zoo of softies).
 

It was clear to me then what kind of yarn I had to use for his owl pillow, so I went back to the craft store and got two additional colors (yellow and grey were the only "boy" colors available at the time) and started crocheting.

This time I'm not posting a tutorial because this owl pillow was made in exactly the same was as the other, it's just slightly smaller (I couldn't find another pillow in the same size). Here they are side by side:

I think it turned out pretty cute, and while I love the colors of the "girl" owl, the "boy" one is truly much softer and huggable.

Despite the fluffy look, the yarn was fairly easy to work with, though in retrospect it would have probably been easider to knit than to crochet the pillow.

Enjoy,

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crochet owl pillow: the tutorial

This is a project that was supposed to have been finished a long time ago, since it was intended as an Easter present for my daughter. But it was not meant to be. I ended up buying her a book instead and told her she would have her owl pillow as soon as possible.

Anyway, I managed to finish this little guy yesterday morning and I'm finally ready to share the tutorial. So here is the crochet owl pillow!

Want to make one? It's easy, no special crochet skills required and, if you're not me and don't have a million other things to do, you'll be able to put it together pretty quickly.

Here's the how-to. You'll need a pillow (rectangular shape works better in my opinion). I did not measure mine and I do not have it with me as I'm writing this, but if I had to guess I would say it's about 40 x 20 centimeters.

Other than that, three different colors of yarn (I used 100% cotton for this owl, but I'm making another - if my daughter has one, my son wants one too - with a totally different yarn, so choose what you feel comfortable with) and two buttons for the eyes.

Alternating the colors, crochet two rectangles long and wide enough to cover your pillow (sorry, some of the pictures were taken at night, so they're not as clear as the others).

Join the two rectangles together with a single stitch all around, keeping the pillow in between.

Now you have a crochet covered pillow. Set it aside for a while and crochet the eyes: two circles of the darkest shade of yarn you are using (in my case it was the grey) and two smaller ones in a contrasting color.

I made the larger circles with three rows of double crochet and one row of single crochet, and the smaller circles with two rows of double crochet and one row of single crochet. Depending on the actual size of your pillow, you may need to adjust measurements.

The idea is to have the eyes looking like this when you stack all layers (including the buttons):

Sew the buttons onto the smaller circle first, and then sew the smaller circle onto the larger one. When this is done, place the eyes where you want them on your pillow and sew them in place too.

Then, you'll need to crochet two additional circles for the wings (you can make them half circles but I think with a full circle you'll get more of a 3D effect) and a square for the beak.

The circles are made the same way as the ones for the eyes, with just one additional row of double crochet. To sew the wings, fold the circles in half and sew then (on the fold) to the sides of the pillow (sorry, I was frantically trying to get it finished at this stage, so I forgot to take pictures). I didn't sew the circles completely shut, so there is a sort of a small pocket in the wings (it's like you can hold hands with the owl...):

All that it's left at this point is the beak. Fold the crochet square in half, not quite aligning the edges (so that the top half is slightly smaller than the bottom one), and sew it in place onto the pillow. Again, if you don't sew the top half completely, your owl will be able to open its beak and hoot around (or maybe not):

And your owl is done!

Enjoy,