Bean Bags

This past weekend we had a birthday party for a fantastic one-year-old boy. What in the stars do you get someone for their first birthday? I knew a lot of people were coming to the party so I figured he'd get a ton of the typical boy birthday presents (trucks, duplos, cars, anything with wheels, etc.), so I wanted to get him something different. And since I'm in this homemade kick, I wanted it to be homemade. Now too bad this boy wasn't a girl. I could have had a hay day making adorable little dresses! But lucky for this guy, I didn't go that route. Instead, I decided to make him some bean bags.

I had this adorable flannel in my fabric dresser that I've been dying to use for something fun and this seemed like a good fit for it. I didn't take a lot of pictures of the process of making them because it really isn't that hard.

I cut out 12 5x5 squares from my fabric then sewed sets of two together with right sides touching. I left a hole on one of the sides to put the filler in.

After I had them all sewn (or is it sewed?) and flipped right-side-out, I filled 'em up. I thought about using beans or rice (cheap!) but thought that they might start to grow something nasty if/when they got wet with one-year-old drool. So I went to Michael's and got Poly Pellets. They're in the doll/stuffed animal making section. They were kind of spendy ($9 for 32 oz) but wouldn't have been too bad if I'd had a 40% off coupon. And I think I can probably get 15-20 bean bags out of the pellets. Super bonus - they are machine washable!

I used a scant 2/3 cup to fill each one. Then I sewed them shut with double seams, just to be safe.

Then I threw some ribbon around them and called it good!

Guess what every other small child in my life is getting for their next birthday? :)