All Dressed Up

I mentioned that I would be pulling out fun things I've made from previous months since I've been a slacker lately, right....well here's one!

Our family takes pictures every year with our friend who is an amazing photographer, Emily Piraino.  Here is a link to some of the photos she took of our family this year: http://emilypiraino.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/fountains/

I wanted to make a cute dress for Lillian to wear in some of the pictures...I found a pattern online for a crocheted dress, took measurements, and went to work.  The colors were really pretty on her.  If I remember right, I had to adjust (remove rows) from the straps because they were so long with the original pattern.  The back was also a little weird, but the overall design was great!  The pattern suggested some extra embellishment, like a button on the front, but I thought it was cute as is. 

Here are a few pictures of her in the dress :)

Brown Bear, Brown Bear Felt Project

Birthday season is in full swing around here...we know so many kiddos (and adults too) with birthdays in Oct.  Henry is our good friend that got the season off to a great start this past week by turning 2. 

I wanted to make him something special (as I do for all of Lillian's playgroup friends), so after much thinking and Internet searching, I decided on a felt board.  If you haven't seen one or had the opportunity to play with one, they are really neat because felt sticks to felt and you can make just about anything out of felt.  The possibilities are endless!!!  For my first felt board, I created a forest scene with a lake, trees, and plenty of room for the animals.  I wanted this to be educational for Henry, so I cut out animals in various colors and a different amount of each...now he can work on his colors, numbers, and animals :) 

This was a little bit harder/time consuming than I had planned, but hopefully he will enjoy it for a while.  I know that it was Lillian approved because I had to keep reminding her that it was for Henry and she couldn't play with it.  Don't worry, I've already told her I would make her one...maybe in time for our trip at the end of the month.

Here's a look at the finished product...



The glued on pieces




With the added animals...Henry can place them anywhere on the board :)




An envelope to contain the pieces and some Parent Ideas for a Parent & Me activity.

 It was amazing to see the ideas that people have for these boards and I saw more than one mom talking about a binder that she keeps each of the different activities in. 

Here are some other ideas:

• Matching numbers to how many objects
• Matching words to their object
• Colors
• Numbers
• Stories (I plan to do Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, Goodnight Gorilla, and Goodnight Moon for Lillian since those are her favorites right now)
• Poems
• Farm Animals
• Sea Animals
• First Words
• etc.