One night, as I was perusing the internet, as I’m wont to do, I saw little kits for tin boxes with peg dolls and I thought to myself, “Self, you could do something like that for your kids, but make the things they are interested in.“

So I bought a case of 40 tin boxes on Amazon (that my husband didn’t even question because he’s learned not to question my weird crafting things) not knowing what I was going to do with all 40. They arrived on a Friday night. I spent Saturday designing clip art scenes (I especially like buying clip art on Etsy, especially from ©MyClipArtStore) for 10 different ideas I had. I printed them at Office Max just before they closed and cut them out with my Silhouette before going to bed. Sunday I glued them to the boxes. And Monday I started working on the things for the insides. (I bought a couple dozen tiny peg dolls the previous year for a different project).

I had my first three finished by Tuesday – construction, space, and the garden. My kids couldn’t get enough of them. And I realized I was going to need more peg dolls.

Our 7-year-old keeps talking about how they are the perfect toy to take on road trips and thinks I need to keep two or three in my bag at all times in case she gets bored when we are out. At home she regularly has two or three open and the people inside visiting with each other.

With the encouragement of many friends, and especially my husband, I decided to make more to sell. It has been a lot of fun working out the details of all the boxes and our kids have loved giving their input. We’ve always got a few new ideas we're working on in the background. Stay tuned to see what we come up with next!