Holiday Gift: Landscape

This was the big gift for our girls this holiday season - a play landscape with some horses. They watched many a toy catalogue arrive at the house during December and set themselves to picking out toys to tell Santa about. One of the things they got really excited about was a set of horses with a stable.

DH and I decided that with his skills in the workshop we could come up with something just as nice - and probably more adaptive to other play interests - here at home. However, time ran short as the basement renovations took top priority. So rather than an entire stable set-up we came up with this landscape idea; we can always add a stable later.

The horses and paddock are from playmobil. The grass is a piece of felt from my stash, the sand is from the barrel at the corner (our city places these out in the winter to help with the slippery driving conditions), the water is acrylic paint and the rocks I snatched from their growing collection. DH used a router to cut out small recesses for the felt, paint and sand. The large piece of plywood was cut with a jigsaw. Assembly took place during the late afternoon of the 24th and all was dry by midnight when we set out the gifts from Santa. Whew. While I was busy in the kitchen DH and his sister worked on the project. This year my only role was to gather supplies, they did all the work. The piece is relatively lightweight and can be moved all over the house. It's great for tabletop play. I've already watched as it changed over from a paddock to a savannah - giraffes, baboons, lions and tigers have all had a drink at the cool waters edge.