The Best Christmas Present Ever.

So, Ruby's class at school has a calendar that involves a teddy bear on the bulletin board who has a different colored shirt for each day of the week. Every morning her teacher and the kid of the day change the shirt and the day and they go over the calendar.

When I asked Ruby what she wanted to get for Sam for Christmas, she said she wanted to make him a calendar like the one in her class. So, we started planning this a few weeks ago. We went shopping and she bought the stuff she needed at Michael's with her own money. She did the design and I was in charge of figuring out how to make it work.

Here's a picture of the project as we were working on it. You can see the bear with one of his shirts. We searched on the internet for a picture of a bear to use for a template, then I helped her cut out the bear. She cut out the shirts after I drew the outline from the pattern we made. She cut out the eyes and the pink for the ears, nose and feet, and she drew the mouth with a sharpie marker.

Here's a closeup of the face.

The shirts and bear are all made of felt. The shirts are in rainbow order, starting with Sunday, and ending with a pink Saturday. The days of the week are printed on dark-shirt iron-on transfers, and ironed on. Each shirt has a little washer hot glued on and the numbers are printed on cardstock which we had laminated and used a big punch to punch them out. They each have a little piece of magnet stuck on the back so they'll stick to the washer. We put grommits on the shirts so they'll hang on the bear (at school they hang like that and she was quite determined that they hang).

Here's the finished product. The shirts hang on little cup hooks we got at the hardware store. Ruby sanded and painted a piece of scrap wood from the garage for the base, and we hot glued on the bear, then put in the screws. That way the shirts are hanging on the wood, not on the actual bear.

The months are also printed on laminated cardstock (well, printed on cardstock, then laminated) and have velcro on the back and there's a strip of velcro on the board.

Here's Ruby on Christmas Eve just before she wrapped it up.

And here's Sam after he opened it. You can see the envelopes with all the pieces of the calendar.

And there you go. Ruby's most clever and heartfelt gift. We still need to put a little picture hanger on the back so he can hang it on the wall.