kids Archives - Page 13 of 33

When my son, Zack (now 8 years old), was in preschool, he hated to draw, color and paint. I tried different methods to get him to embrace his artistic side – Finger paints! Glitter! A box of 120 Crayola crayons! – but nothing mattered. He’d draw/color/paint for all of 2 minutes, and then go right back to crashing his Hot Wheels through Lego towers. As a person who thrives in anything creative, I felt like a failure as a mother. I may or may not have cried about it in front of his teacher and pediatrician.

Moms, you know how it goes. It doesn’t take much for us to feel like we are failures, does it?

But as it turns out, I shouldn’t have been worried. About a year ago, Zack developed a concept that he calls a Zack Bot. It’s a little flying robot with long arms and a big Z on his body. He’s drawn Zack Bot books, puts Zack Bots on every scrap of paper that he can find, and creates “special edition” bots for his friends – there’s a Josh Bot and a Kat Bot, which each have different super powers.

His artistic vision was delayed, but it did eventually show up. You have no idea how excited I am that Zack has finally embraced his artistic side!

So when I heard that there was a company – Budsies – that turned children’s artwork into plush, stuffed animals, I knew that I had to get one made for Zack. After looking at their website, I was really impressed with the way they had turned other kids’ drawings into stuffed animals, down to the last polka dot and crazy detail. Kids have some super imaginative visions, and all of the animals were really well executed.

Of course, I couldn’t order a Budsie for Zack and leave out Emma. She drew her ideal stuffed animal, which was kind of crazy. I was worried that it would be too much (or too abstract) for Budsies to replicate, but they assured me that it was just fine.

The process is that you order your Budsies through their website and then send in the artwork. If your child needs help coming up with an idea, Budsies offers templates that they can use as a jumping off point. To submit the artwork, you can take a picture of it and email or text it to the company or just upload it through their website. They let me know that they had received the artwork and that it looked great. In about a month, I got a shipping notification that our Budsies were on their way to us via USPS Priority Mail.

I didn’t tell the kids that their Budsies were on their way, since I know opening that box would be an amazing surprise for them. And it was!

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When my now 8-year old son was just two, he had one giant obsession: cars. That kid woke up talking about cars, went to sleep talking about cars, and he spent every moment in between either playing with cars or talking about how he wanted to play with cars. He was a fun little man, and Lightening McQueen was his hero. And if we are being totally honest, Lightening McQueen was my hero, too, because he helped get me through some rough moments as a first time mother.

So, I did what any crazy, DIY loving mom would do and painted a car mural on every wall of his room. The cars were cartoon styled to match his (then popular) bedding from Target. The delight on his face when he saw the room for the first time is one of those moments that, as a mother, I will never forget.

In the past few years, Zack’s obsessions have changed. Although he does still like to play cars with his 3-year old sister and has never turned down a chance to watch his buddy McQueen, Zack’s primary obsessions are now Lego, Minecraft, and sharks. When I brought up the thought that we needed to redecorate his room since he had outgrown the toddler car theme, I was met with a lot of resistance. Zack is a very sentimental kid (a trait that he doesn’t get from me), so the thought of his car room going away brought out the tears.

I gave him about six months to get used to the idea. One day, he came to me and said, “I’d like to have a shark room.” He wants to be a marine biologist – which is funny to me, because that’s what I entered college to be but I had never shared that with him. “Yep, we can do that!” I replied. “But, with a little mid century modern twist.”

“Huh?” he said.

Using Photoshop Elements, I put together a mood board using my ideas for his room. Since he outgrew his car room so quickly, I don’t want to go down the themed room route again (I should have listened to my friend Melissa back then). I want to make it “feel” sharky while having very few actual sharks in the room. Zack loves the above image, so I think we are headed in the right direction. This is really the first time I’ve ever done a mood board for one of my rooms, but I’m already thrilled that I put it together.

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Turn Your Child’s Artwork Into a Custom Stuffed Animal with Budsies

Ideas for an (Almost) Tween Boy’s Room