Little House on the Prairie Play Set

Completed December 2008
My family has a tradition of giving ONLY homemade gifts to each other. It started one year when I was eleven or twelve and we were short on Christmas money. We had so much fun giving and receiving homemade gifts that we kept doing it year after year. I think it helps emphasize the giving rather than getting aspect of Christmas gifts, downplays the commerciality (I don't think that's a word, but you understand my meaning, right?) of gifts, and it's a great excuse to get your creative juices flowing. I would say most of the crafting/sewing I do is for family gifts, and a big chunk of that is Christmas. So here's my first (of many) Homemade Phesine posts featuring Christmas presents. Of course, these are all on Flickr already if you can't bear to wait for my blogging.

This gift was probably my favorite gift I made from this past Christmas. It's a Little House on the Prairie play set for my six year old niece, who is really into pioneers right now and loves to read.

 
The Ingalls family with their little house and a handy calico storage bag. The house came from Hobby Lobby, unfinished. It stores flat, which is ideal for mailing across the country.


Baby Carrie, Laura, Mary, Ma and Pa. I tried to make the characters true to the Garth Williams drawings in the books. My four year old laughed out loud every time he looked at Baby Carrie's expression. He helped paint the blue on her dress. I wanted Ma and Pa to be slightly taller than the girls, so I glued stacked wooden disks (for Ma's petticoat) and hearts (for Pa's boots) to their feet.


I thought the bonnets, aprons, and Mary's "golden curls" turned out cute. 

 
Here they are all packed up and ready to go back to the Big Woods.