Custom Baby Toys

I will start this post by admitting that I know Jason and I have a sickness. Probably me more than Jason, I'd have to say. But we (I) like things the way we like them! There's nothing wrong with that is there?

So here's the story. We bought Riley an activity center last week. Like with any new toys, the first thing I did was cut off all the tags- I HATE TAGS on things, and baby toys are the worst- they have tags hanging out everywhere, and warning tags sewn all over the place! So after that was done, already things were looking better. But there were two major problems. First, the center is a little big for Riley, so his feet wouldn't touch the base. This is a legitimate problem, so I can't apologize too much for our solution. Second problem was that there was one toy on the piece that was just designed very poorly. It was a dragon puppet. I have no problem with the puppet, in fact he's pretty cute, but for one, he's attached to the activity center so you can never remove him. For another, there's an opening in the back of his neck in order to put your hand in (since he can't be removed and used as a normal puppet) that gapes open, exposing all the unfinished insides of the puppet (threads, batting, etc.). It was just a real poor design, in my opinion.

Here are our solutions. For the height issue, instead of using a telephone book under his feet like most people would do, Jason custom cut a piece of plywood that fits the base, then added carpet to the top. So now it's the right height, but even better, it matches our decor much better since the carpet is the same as on the floor. And the carpet also covers a large expanse of bright blue plastic-another added bonus! (There's another pet peeve of mine. It's impossible to find baby items in anything but primary colors. I know that babies respond better to bright colors, but there are pretty bright colors other than red, blue, and yellow. Even pastels are difficult to find!) Anyway...

And for the puppet issue, I cut the puppet away from the center, leaving the "base" it was attached to. So now the puppet is actually a puppet that can be used like a puppet! And I added wings and turned the puppet base into a pretty butterfly! How cute is that?

So the next steps we discussed are either spray-painting the legs of the center a more pleasing color with paint for plastic, or actually building wood legs to attach to it and removing the plastic ones altogether.... Really, we were just kidding, but those would be improvements, wouldn't they? I told you we were sick!!

Riley Approves!