I have to hand it to Sash, she is the queen of handmade gifts for our boys. This year there are a few last minute ideas she came up with that are sure to be a hit. If you’re struggling with what to get your toddler, here are our favorites.

Play Pretend Garden – Fruit and Veggies

There are plenty of tutorials for sewing fruits and veggie gardens on Pinterest. I won’t compete with the instructions they offer. I will point out a few things that we did differently; mainly the use of pipe-cleaners. For the strawberries, the pipe-cleaners are used to hook on the berries. The same is true for the pumpkins, and their pipe-cleaners act as the vine and stem as well.

The potatoes also use pipe-cleaners as a hook. The three pipe-cleaners hiding in the stem of the potato plant stick out as roots. This offers the perfect spot to hook on the felt potatoes.

Busy Book

This is a (mostly) no-sew busy book. Everything here was done with hot glue, felt, buttons, and puffy paint. Pages 1-2 are counting pages with felt pockets and a matching number of colored Popsicle sticks. On pages 3-4 Sasha utilized specialty buttons on a string to make play pretend scenes. The last two pages are some classic games: tick-tack-toe and matching. The book is assembled with the backs of each page hot glued to each other with a piece of card stock in the middle to provide some rigidity. The last step was to bind it by sewing the pages together, but if you don’t want to break the needle out for just this step, you can just hot glue it all.

Play Pretend Needle Felt Food

Needle felt food! Offers endless possibilities. The boys have a play kitchen, with everything from hamburgers to berries in needle felt food. If you never tried needle felting, head over to Etsy and find any number of kits that are offered. They are a great way to start. All you need is the felting needles, and some colored felt. Then use the needle to shape the wool and poke away. Be careful to watch your fingers as the needle is sharp.