A Boy and His Blog

Archive for July, 2008

I’ve been wanting Owen to have a gnome tree house like this one from Blueberry Forest Toys:

And then of course, fill it with gnomes like these from Tree Hollow Toys:

Since the tree houses are $150.00 to $200.00 each, I thought I would try building one.  I gathered my materials over the course of months, and spent two Saturdays working on the project, but I did it, and for very cheap too!

Here is my finished tree house:

The Minnesota shaped piece of wood on the bottom is a cutting board I got from a thrift store for about $2.00.  I got the other two plaque type wood pieces at a very cool recycled art supplies store, which sells all sorts of things that are either recycled or things stores don’t want anymore.  I also got the piece of wood for the table top, the gnomes, which were angels that I de-winged, and the two bucket looking containers and the one vase looking one.  I used the wings from the “angels” to make the sign and some leaves, and I used their “hands” to make two baby heads, and one of their lanterns to make a bird house.  I must have spent about $5.00 to $7.00 total on those things.  I bought a coconut for just under $3.00 and carefully split it in half and scraped out the insides.  Everything else you see is stuff we had already.  Wood beads help make the ladder and a bee hive, dowels make the rest of the ladder, the tree branches came from our Christmas tree, the other ladder is made out of used popsicle sticks, the butterfly was a little wood puzzle Owen had, the rocks and pine cone Owen already owned, and the fabric and string was in my craft supplies.  So, if you don’t count the price of the Christmas tree (since we would have bought that anyway) I spent a total of about $12.00 if I estimate high.

The “angel” wings made a good sign for the front.

Meet Daddy and Mama Gnome.  I made their little outfits out of spare fabric and parts.

And meet the twin baby gnomes.  Their obviously fraternal, as one happened to get huge eyes.  Oops.  They are made out of what were the “angels” hands.  I just put a screw in the center of them and wrapped a piece of fabric around and tied it up with string.  And walla, babies!  This photo also shows a close up of their coconut bedroom.

This picture shows the “well”.  I’d like to find a small bucket that I can hang right over the hole.  The hole was in the cutting board to hang it I guess, and I had a branch that looked like it would make a perfect well so I nailed it over the hole.  I made the bucket so that it can be raised and lowered as well, and even though it wouldn’t really serve any function if this tree house were a real house, Owen loves raising and hooking it into place.

And here is a different view that shows more what I’m talking about.

And here is the tiny little bird house and the bee hive on the side.

And here are the little gnomes eating at their table.  I originally cut the branches to be tree blocks, but later changed my mind.  If I did it over again I would make them a bit taller, as the roof is crowding the gnomes a bit.

Here we see the Daddy and the Mama Gnome standing around the fire while their two twin baby gnomes swing nearby.

A close up of the babies in the swing.

A picture of the full scope of the swing, the baby gnomes, the fire, and a gigantic butterfly.

This is a close up of the stairs that take the gnomes to the second floor.  A ladder takes them to the third floor, and another ladder takes them to their coconut hideout.  This also shows the other “wings” from the “angels”, I used it to make leaves.

This is the coconut hideout bedroom with a ladder leading up to it.  The ladder is made out of dowels, wood beads, and string.  The coconut was pre-scored, and I simply had to nail a screwdriver in it and carefully split it.  The top is glued on with a glue gun.

Here is a view from the side.

And here is a view from the back.  James wanted me to make the coconut look like a guy with a hat on, and I think he also looks like a gnome.

And here is the happy co-sleeping family.  They just can’t wipe those permanent smiles off their faces!  They may want to read up on co-sleeping safety as I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t set your infant twins on the edge of a bed that you need a ladder to get into, but hey, their gnomes, so maybe they have magical powers that keep their babies in their beds

Rough instructions for building a gnome tree house:  Basically, I just winged it.  I set up where I wanted the branches on top of and underneath each piece of wood, then traced them onto the wood.  Then I drilled a hole through the center of the traced circle, and then into the center of the branch making sure to drill down as straight as possible.  When I assembled it, I had to attach the top branches to the plaques before I could secure the ones underneath into place.  I added a few branches after the fact, and then had to disassemble and then reassemble, which got annoying, so more careful planning would have been helpful.  To secure the coconut I used one of those screws with six sides and one of those L shaped wrenches that always come with Ikea furniture.  Yeah, I don’t know the names of tools, but that one worked great, whatever it was, since you can’t get a normal screwdriver inside the coconut to fasten the screw.  Every time I put a nail anywhere I would fist drill a tiny hole with a tiny drill bit so none of the wood would split.  This worked very well, and I was even able to drill a hole through the tiny birdhouse to put a nail in, and then another to create a hole for the tiny birds to enter.  Also, the branches were impossible to cut precisely, so the plaques are not perfectly level, and the branches are not perfectly flush with the wood, but, this just adds to the charm.  Besides, I imagine real gnomes build their houses in quite the same fashion.

This gnome tree house has been very well received by our three year old Owen.  He is just getting into the age where he plays pretend and he is spending time each day imagining with this toy, which is great.  His only complaint is that he would rather have an “Owen” instead of twin babies, so I am now on the look out for something that could serve as a preschool sized gnome.

This is Owen’s new blog with an all new title.  His blog started out as “The Baby Blog” which I began early in my pregnancy with him, and then evolved to “Tater Toddles” which reflected that my “Little Potato” had grown into a walking toddler.  I would say “a walking talking toddler”, but he was more of a “walking signing toddler”.  The new name is now “A Boy and His Blog”, because it is continually apparent that we don’t have a baby or a toddler anymore, but a boy.

I’m pretty sure this new name will remain for as long as I write here, and this destination will remain indefinitely, unless someday when he’s dating he wants me to take it offline   The URL may change (check back at his old blog if you suddenly can’t find this one, and I’ll provide the new link there), as our entire trio of blogs are all going to be shifting to wordpress along with a bran new family site that they will link from.  Hopefully it will function much better than his last one.  I’m quite impressed so far.  I will gradually bring over all his old posts and comments.  As you can see, a handful are already here.

I leave you with a couple cute stories:

This morning I was yelling at the DVD player because I wanted to navigate back to a previous page and couldn’t figure out how to do it without ejecting the DVD and reinserting it.  I kept telling the DVD player what I thought of it and yelling at it to eject when I pushed the button (honestly, this is the least responsive technology I’ve ever had!).  Owen said to me, “TV’s don’t have mouthses”.  It made me laugh and snap out of my anger at the DVD player.  I explained that I knew it wasn’t going to talk back to me, but I was just yelling at it anyway.

And that story reminds me that the other day I was trying to get Owen to simply sit on the toilet as he was scared to.  He even kept his clothes on, so the goal was just desensitizing him to it.  So, we brought in all his stuffed animals and dolls and I had Owen tell each one “it’s okay, don’t be scared, you wont fall in”.  Then we would sit it on the toilet and he would hold one of their hands and I would hold the other.  Then I would tell Owen that the doll/animal wanted to see him do it.  So he would actually sit on the toilet for about 10 seconds.  After awhile he sat longer and longer.  Then the next day I asked him if he wanted to sit on the toilet for a little bit and he said “I need my friends that don’t talk”.