Homemade Puzzles for Sis

Of all our homemade presents, this was the only one that was a but of a dud.

When I proposed to Big Brother that we make puzzles for Sis, he immediately responded, "We can't do that.  Puzzles are made of wood."

"Sure, we can," I responded.  "We'll use poster board."  Turns out Big Brother was wise.

As his National Geographic Little Kids magazines start to get beat up, I have been whisking them away to save for projects.  We started by choosing three animal pictures to cut out of the magazines and then three colors of poster board on which to mount them.

Big Brother than coated the poster board with Mod Podge, put the picture on and did another coat of Mod Podge on top.  I could tell immediately from the way the poster board started to wrinkle that this was not going to be fabulous, but we persevered.

After they were dry, I drew lines on the back and Big Brother cut them into pieces, which we stored in a box to wrap.

In retrospect, this would have gone better had we used cardboard (perhaps a broken down cereal box or a gift box like the one we ended up putting the pieces in) to mount the pictures.  I also should have spent a bit more time planning the lines on which to cut rather than just putting them on haphazardly.

Nevertheless, Big Brother enjoyed making these puzzles and Sis was pleased to open them.

I did not feel too bad that these puzzles were a bit of a bust as this was not the only gift Sis received from Big Brother.   He surprised me when he informed me he wanted to buy Sis a train engine with his allowance money.  He was very eager about it and very specific about which train he wanted to purchase for her.

Wanting to encourage his generosity, we made a trip to buy it.  Whenever he buys something (which is rarely), he wants his own bag and hangs on to his receipt proudly--it's very cute.