My daughter is getting into Polly Pockets lately. I originally wanted to wait until she was 4 (all those small pieces!), but Grandma surprised her with a couple when we went to Florida.
Thankfully she has been happy with the ones she has, but Polly and friends can only play on little brother’s car garage so many times. Polly needed a place of her own…
I had a kid’s shoe box I’d been saving for a future craft; it was just the right size for a bedroom for Polly. So while my toddler slept, his preschooler sister and I searched through gift bags, ribbons, and boxes to find just the right pieces to decorate Polly’s future room. (I think digging through the stuff was her favorite part!)
We decided on a soap box for Polly’s bed. I stuffed a bunch of old magazine pages inside to make it firmer so it wouldn’t collapse during playtime. Then I just taped it shut.
Peanut picked out a shiny purple gift bag to make wall paper. I cut out pieces to cover the sides and back of the box and hot glued them in. (Preschoolers aren’t patient – using hot glue meant she could play with it right after we finished.)
She picked out some pink ribbon for curtains. I was originally going to cut a window out, but she said she just wanted the curtains up. I folded the edges so they wouldn’t unravel and hot glued them in, too. Then Peanut used a brown crayon to color Polly’s floor while I wrapped the soap box with a floral pink gift bag.
Then she picked out a name tag from another gift bag to make a flower rug that we hot glued in. The room was taking shape, really fast! We wrapped a cotton ball with some of the ribbon we used for curtains – a little hot glue and instant pillow! She just needed some kind of table. An old wood block was perfect! 
The whole thing probably took 10-15 minutes, and Peanut was thrilled! But then she decided maybe Polly was afraid of the dark and needed a light…
I couldn’t resist. I have 2 dollhouses stored downstairs, and tons of things I used to use for making miniatures… I ran downstairs and got a toothpaste tube lid and hunted up the perfect bead. I ran a little more pink ribbon across the top of the block just to dress it up a little. Some hot glue inside the toothpaste tube lid and the bead and voila’ – a lamp! (I confess, this was my favorite part. I’ve missed doing miniature work!)
A quick and simple craft, and my little preschooler’s smile was so worth every moment!
Amanda says
Wow, that is really cute.
What a great mom, I bet your kiddo loved doing that with you!
I was scared of Polly too, all the little pieces, but I have to say the hours of playtime it inspired made it totally worth it!
That being said, I don’t think I’ve vacuumed since 2009 without sucking up some sort of Polly related item!
admin says
Yeah, I gave her a ziploc bag for all the tiny pieces of clothes and we count them (OCD?) to make sure we have them all. But then again, she doesn’t have more than 8 pieces of clothes right now….