Felt board activities for toddlers seem to be all the rage on Pinterest lately, so I thought I’d make Lucy a giant felt Christmas tree to decorate.
We have this giant space on the side of our pantry, and I decided to hang it underneath her picture board. That way she could play with it while I was doing things in the kitchen.
So one afternoon last week, I put that sweet baby down for a nap and got to work. Here’s a pic of all the materials I used. I bought 1 yard of green felt. The rest of the felt pieces I had in my craft bin from other activities, which was helpful. I dug into my cookie cutters to use as ornament patterns.
I folded the felt in half so that I only had to draw half of a Christmas tree. I knew that the whole tree couldn’t be wider than 23″ or else it’d be too wide for our pantry, so I used a yard stick to make sure the bottom of the tree stayed right around 11″. Ignore that random black line sticking out! I drew the tree free hand and cut it out. Easy peasy, right? . . . .
. . . apparently not!! haha I was cracking up when I unfolded this. I realized right away that I should not have cut all the way back to the folded part of the felt. I never claimed to be Martha Stewart, people.
This is a list of the questions that flew out of Matty’s mouth in between him laughing hysterically at this picture:
Why did you do that?
You didn’t know?
Didn’t you realize you needed some girth to that tree?
Luckily there was enough felt left over for me to try again. I learned from my mistakes and didn’t cut so far in this time. Yes, as Matty was kind enough to point out, it’s basically the same width from top to bottom, but at least there’s space for the ornaments this time!
Exhibit A and Exhibit B. Why wasn’t I just sitting down reading a magazine instead??
So then I used my cookie cutters to trace a bunch of ornaments and make a few gifts. Some of the trees I saw on Pinterest went all out and added embellishments to each ornament. Let’s get real for a second here. This is “naptime crafting” not “all the time in the world crafting.”
My plan was to use 3M poster tape to hang the tree, but Hobby Lobby didn’t have any, so I tried some other kind of wall-safe tape. I was pleased with the result, and it took me a little over an hour to complete everything.
Matty hung it up while Lucy was napping over the weekend. She came out and got right to work; no directions necessary.
Showing Daddy her ornaments.
Oops! This is what you get when you run up to the camera right as the flash goes off.
Then Matty said it was time to feed the dogs, and Lucy dropped everything and ran. It’s her job to feed the dogs dinner, and she takes her chores very seriously.
I asked her to stand next to her tree and look at me for a picture. This is all I could get.
And then yesterday morning she started playing with it again, and after about five minutes this happened. #mamatried Maybe the 3M tape would have worked better. From now on I will just spread it out on the floor for her and let her play with it that way.
I have one more Christmas craft up my sleeve. Hopefully it lasts longer than this one!
XOXO
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