Felt is my trusty friend.

Oh, I just love felt... it never disappoints. And, I have so much leftover from the Playhouse Teepee project.

Charlie and I made this yesterday during Marcus' long siesta. Charlie can count to twelve well, and I think that he actually has the number sense to understand value in smaller numbers. Once he hits the teens, though, it gets pretty wacky ("eleventeen" is my favorite). So, we traced his hands and feet in felt, cut them out and glued them on to a piece of cardboard (much like how we made the Weather Wheel). Then I labeled each finger & toe with a number from 1-20. I hung it right next to Charlie's Weather Wheel, above his chair at the kitchen table. This way we'll have lots of opportunity to practice.

I also used felt to fix another project that I've been tackling on and off for quite a while.

I made this bean bag way back when Marcus was wee and I was still nursing in the middle of the night. Marcus' room is teeny-tiny and cannot possibly fit a chair inside of it, so a bean bag was a quick, inexpensive solution to my need to sit on something other than the floor at 3:30 am.

Charlie is as much a fan of the bag as Marcus and I both are, and the bag has found its way upstairs in the living room as a result. These boys are pretty rough on the bag, though. This rough play has caused the appliques to tatter and fall off. So, it was time for a do-over. I was never totally in love with the design, anyways - it was too much!!

So I spent a ridiculous amount of time ripping all of the applique stitching out with my seam ripper. Seriously, it is embarrassing how much time I dedicated to this bean bag. But, once I started, I figured "I'm into this thing, so I'm going to finish it!" So, once the bag was free of its old design, I cut out some cute little woodland animals to sew on - out of felt this time so there would be no fraying. Need a template? bunny, squirrel, birds

I decided to keep the design simple this time and just sew on three animals. It is hard to tell by my unsophisticated camera's picture, but the bunny is gray. I was delighted with the color scheme of gray-brown-blue.

In fact, I was pretty happy with these little guys in general, especially the bunny.

And Marcus loves the fact that the bean bag is back in action. I'm sure it will be destroyed in a matter of weeks, but oh well. Then I can practice my new mantra, "Ahhh, boys!" (shrug and eye-roll).