A Homemade Birthday

Before her birthday month is over I want to share some pictures of the homemade birthday gifts that Miss D received for her 4th birthday. She is very much into mermaids right now so one night, on a whim, I drew up a template of a mermaid, scrounged around my sewing room for some scraps, and whipped up this cute, little mermaid doll. If you look real close, I'm sure you can find flaws, and I am not 100% satisfied with her proportions or the flimsiness of her neck, but all in all I think she's cute. Miss D seems to approve which is really all that matters anyway. Oh, and did I mention that she was completely FREE???  Her hair is made from a yellow hand towel scrap and her body is off white fleece scraps. Her tail and fins are cotton scraps, the flower embellishment was salvaged from a stained shirt and the ribbons and felt are all scraps I had on hand as well. She is also stuffed with stuffing from an old pillow. It only took me one night to embroider her face and another to put her together.

     Miss D's big gift this year that we had waiting downstairs for her when she woke up on her birthday was this upcycled dress up center or "magic mirror" as she likes to call it. We had a full length mirror in our basement collecting dust and after a little convincing, I got Mr. J to disassemble it and add to the rest of it with some wood from his very extensive collection. The dowel is a small piece we salvaged from my closet and the baskets were our original dress up storage solution gifted to the girls a few years ago. 

Front View
Hats in the top basket, shoes in the bottom basket

Side View

   It took Mr. J two evenings to put it together and then me another 2 evenings to paint it with some paint I already had on hand. I did end up spending $8 on the wall decals, white hooks and hangers, but considering that everything else was free, I'd say that's still a pretty good bargain!
  
     The kids loved the new "magic mirror" so much that I had to interrupt their play about 2 hours in on Miss D's birthday morning to get them to even consider eating breakfast (which was cake!!!) 

  Not a day has gone by so far that the new dress up center hasn't been played with and I don't see that changing any time soon. 

   This was our first completely homemade birthday and I have to say it was the most fun for me, by far. Miss E helped to decorate the mirror with the wall decals, and it was fun keeping the secret from Miss D until her birthday. I cannot wait to come up with more homemade gifts for Christmas and then for the other two kiddos' birthdays next year...