His very own set of Star Wars peg dolls :)
Mom-made peg dolls are a perennial favorite round these parts so it only made sense to make some Star Wars friends to go with the rest of the bunch now that Henry is so in love with all things Jedi.
And naturally I went straight to Pinterest for inspiration (these, these, these, and this Yoda were my favorites and I copied them with reckless abandon!).
R2D2 was the trickiest since he involved sawing off the top of a peg doll head, cutting the body down to size and then gluing the two pieces back together (as found in this tutorial). The only tools I had for the job were David's hand saw and a clamp so both pieces came out a bit crooked. Luckily they were the same amount of crooked so in the end they fit together like a puzzle--anyway it wasn't anything a little wood putty couldn't fix :)
Yoda is my absolute favorite though.
This was a whole family project. David helped by painting Darth Vader black and keeping our project secret from Henry for going on a week now (which in itself is a miracle!). John helped by knocking over pegs while I attempted to take pictures........
I'm pretty sure Henry is going to love these and I can't wait to see his reaction when he opens them!
I really love to give the kids homemade presents that they actually play with. Hopefully my skills can keep up with their imaginations--although my children are admittedly easy to please--I think it's mostly due to their almost complete lack of exposure to commercials.......or friends with super amazing toys :)