Santa's Elves

The girls and I took to the streets of downtown today to play Santa's elves as we participated in The Toy Society's annual Christmas drop. The idea is simple - make a handmade toy, package it up and leave it in a public place to be found and taken home by someone. You can download "Take me home, I'm yours" tags and letters explaining The Toy Society once you join (they'll email you instructions on just how to go about doing things). In between all my other making, I've been working on some softies so that we could make a fun afternoon of it.

I told the girls that we were on a secret mission, that people couldn't see us leaving them and we had to be all slick and sly. They loved it and were very into choosing which toy to leave where. We covered both ends of the city, walking from location to location on the north end, then catching the electric shuttle to the south side.

We had five toys to leave in all. The above two ornament dolls (at least that's what they're supposed to be), two Black Apple dolls decked out in Christmas fabrics and one Christmas tree girl. Aside from the Black Apple dolls, the others were all made from thrifted wool sweaters that I've felted. A big thanks to my Aunt, who has scored lots of sweaters for me!

After riding the shuttle back to the north end of town, we went by two of our original drops and were glad to see that the toys were gone - that made the girls so excited. We celebrated with hot chocolate before heading home and now they're both sound asleep after being on the go all afternoon. This was so much fun to do with the girls, especially making it a top secret mission - I hope to have a stash built up at some point, so that we can do this more often!