The girls saw their Grandmother’s yesterday and today, so I didn’t want to post about the gifts until all had been given…
Last fall I removed some grape vines from some trees at my grandmother’s house. She didn’t want them there, so I pulled them out. She didn’t want to keep them, so those that were in good, flexible shape, I brought home, and the rest were composted. I soaked the vines in water overnight, to make them pliable. Then I formed them into wreaths, one for each of the girl’s grandmothers, and their great grandmother. We cut pieces of roving into 2″ pieces, or so and then fluffed a little. The little fluffs were then snuck into the crevices in the wreath. The roving came from Riverslea Farm in Epping. I love getting roving there, because they sell it in little bags for about $1.00 a bag, so we get lots of colors, giving us a great variety to work with for our needle felting projects, among other things.
This created our take on the nesting balls I’ve seen at local markets and fairs. The finished wreaths will be hung out near the bird feeders so the birds can take the wool to make their nests. If we are lucky, we might see a nest with some fancy colored wool, somewhere in one of the yards. Just in case, we also created a field guide for each grandmother.
This will allow the girls to figure out which birds they are seeing at the feeders. I selected 15 common birds in our area. I found images on the internet, printed and cut them out. My youngest helped glue them in place. My oldest and I took turns writing the names of the birds on the corresponding page. Then she drew bird themed pictures on some of the pages. We left a couple pages free, in the back for notes.
For the field guide, I used the great tutorial that Angry Chicken shared a while back. This has come in handy several times already. I’m so thankful she posted about what she was doing for sketch books in her house. If you wanted to make a nesting wreath, and didn’t have vines to fashion a wreath out of, you could purchase a grapevine wreath, or even a grapevine ball, at a craft store. You could probably also use pine cones, especially larger cones. Basically anything that you can set wool into, that will hold it there, but still allow it to be easily removed by the birds.
The girls had a great time making the gifts and were excited to give them to their recipients.
What a beautiful idea, well many ideas….I like the fluffs and the bird guide too. My James didn’t like drawing until recently but now he is all into sharks(thanks to a kindergarten project). And a little over a month ago we put our our first bird feeder: we spend lot of time at breakfast peeping at the birds outside. We have a National Geographic book to recognize birds, but this would be a lovely addition. Thanks for sharing this!
Thank you. I’m glad you liked it. We made one for our house too, it’s a little different. I’ll have to show it tomorrow. I love kid artwork. We have a wall in our house that Eowyn has dubbed her museum, and she hangs her artwork on. I love it.