Last weekend I helped my son build two doll beds for his little sisters. They are hoping to receive American Girl-type dolls for Christmas, so they will have lots of fun putting them to bed at night in these cute beds. We got the plans for the Doll Farmhouse Bed from Ana White's website. If you like to build stuff, head over there for a HUGE list of free plans. I can spend hours browsing and dreaming up projects from her site. My son and I had a good time working together. Since he's ten, I cut out the wood. I'm not quite ready to let him use a power saw. But he was stoked to use a few other power tools, like the orbital sander, nail gun and even the drill. All with supervision of course. He helped sand all the pieces and then we assembled the beds together. We used a nail gun in place of the screws for some areas of the bed, but for the most part we followed the instructions. I was originally going to have him paint the beds, but he didn't want to. I'll probably spray them with a coat of lacquer to help protect the wood. These were really inexpensive to make. I already had some 1X3's, the backer board, and the screws, so I only had to buy a 2X2 and a couple 1X2's. But even if you have to buy all the supplies you will spend only a fraction of the cost it would take to buy one. Now I need to make some little quilts for the beds. I'm going to make them similar to the striped quilts I made for the girls. A couple other handmade gifts we've done this year: Christmas Jelly - Neighbor Gifts Painted Canvas Bags
