I saw the lovely counting felt fish at Counting Coconuts and knew MD would just love them. He is really into fish and fishing right now for reasons I don't understand because we don't go fishing. However, I can't sew to save my life, do not own a sewing machine, and am really busy right now, so I didn't think of making these fishies.
Then one day recently, I remembered that I made MD a Halloween bag 2 years ago and made a firetruck design out of felt to go with his fireman costume. I remembered I still had some felt glue leftover, and thought, what if I just cut out a few fish shapes, put a magnet inside, and glue them together. Won't look as cute but will serve the purpose. I added some buttons for eyes and puffy fabric paint for designs.
I also remembered that I had an extra rod that broke from my bamboo kitchen blinds and I decided to use this as the fishing pole to avoid a trip to the store for a dowell.
MD loved it! He had fun fishing and also fished a few magnetic letters. It was a little tricky to get the "fishing pole" magnet in the right area of the magnet inside the fishes though. I didn't realize until I went back to read the post on Counting Coconuts that she used a washer on the fishes mouth to attach to the magnet. I also had forgotten that they were "counting fish" and did not add that part. Oh well, this was still a lot easier than I thought and a lot of fun. (Thanks for the inspiration Mari Ann!)
Oh yeah, and we also made this "fancy" diaper box boat . . .
