collage box: a birthday gift

I love posts about gift giving on other people's blogs, so I thought I would share one on here.  Caroline's friend Brandon turned 5 recently, and for his birthday we put together a collage box.

We got a plastic storage container (a SnapWare container from Target) 

and filled it with some fun goodies. 

top tray--googly eyes, mini popsicle sticks, buttons and paper scraps 

(punched with our paper punches--fun!)

middle tray--glitter glue, Elmer's glue (white and stick), masking tape, plastic tape and scissors

bottom tray--a few more things (feathers, stickers and some yarn and ribbon), 

with plenty of room for Brandon to add some of his own treasures

We gave this along with the book  I Love to Collage! by Jennifer Lipsey and some small posterboard (found at Target near the regular posterboard).

After putting this gift together, Caroline is itching to glue something herself, so maybe we'll have our own collage time soon.   She has a plastic tool box where she keeps all kinds of odds and ends (ribbon from packages, tiny broken toys or pieces of toys, nature "treasures," scrap paper and anything else she finds (or rescues from the trash) and wants to keep but there is no real place for.  She wants to save so many things, and I can get overwhelmed with the clutter (I have my own to deal with, you know).  So when we disagree over an item's worth (usually an item that was discovered with excitement and then just left on the kitchen counter), I will ask her, "where will you keep this?" If it's worth saving in her box, she can keep it.  Periodically, she gets out the box and makes things from its contents . . . or just sorts through all the treasures (which is just as fun).

I think it's a great idea to have a place like this where you can keep little things that seem fun or [somehow] meaningful but that you don't know exactly what to do with.  Part of the inspiration behind the collage box birthday gift came from Caroline's random things box and this post on The Artful Parent.  The mother whose art space is featured in the post says she keeps an "okay to glue it" box in the art room and that she has given similar boxes as birthday gifts to her daughter's friends.  An "okay to glue it box"--doesn't that sound like fun?

I have also had this gift giving list from Patricia of good + happy day bookmarked for several years.  This is where I first heard of Jennifer Lipsey's collage book.  In her list, Patricia suggests giving the collage book along with construction paper, scissors, and glitter glue.  So simple and perfect.

There are so many possibilities with this type of gift.  I am thinking about putting a girly spin on it and including a different book for some [belated] little girl gifts we need to give . . . I will share some ideas for that in another post.

New Friends

Ever since we moved, Caroline has been actively seeking friends. Every Sunday she wants to know who will be at church. Every other day she wants to know who we are seeing today. If I say I don't know, she'll supply me with suggestions.

She's really excited to be making so many friends. She loves listing all of their names and she said once, "I can't believe I have so many friends. I can't even count them all!"

Granted, making friends is extremely easy at three, especially when your approach involves simply staring at a kid until he or she looks at you and then, when he/she does, waving and (if that goes well) saying, "do you wanna play?"

On our second or third visit to the church we are now attending, I went to pick her up from her class and she was holding a little girl's hand. I said, "Did you find a friend?" And she said, "Uh-huh, her's my best friend!" I said, "What's her name?"

She turned to the girl and said, "What's your name?"

Today we saw this little girl (whose name is Addy, by the way) along with several other children. We visited the Dallas Arboretum--it was a great outing! I'd go every day if it were closer.

Here is Caroline with her best baby friend (in Frisco), Violet. When we first met Violet, Caroline called her Baby Eye-lip. She went from that to Vi-lip. And now that she knows better,
she calls her VioleT with a very strong T.

This is Addy, who is a month shy of three but taller than Caroline. :)

And here is the whole group, including Addy's baby sister Sadie and Isaac, Elijah, and Lucy. Caroline liked playing with the boys, except when she slipped and bruised her knee and said
she didn't want to play their game anymore.

It was so nice to be outside in the pretty fall weather. Caroline ran
and played (and danced) herself to exhaustion.