I remember stringing buttons from my Grandma's button drawer -- top right drawer on her Singer treadle sewing machine! I'd string the prettiest ones, have her tie the ends together and have a glamorous necklace to wear!

Our new house will have a shelf-lined closet off the lower level family room -- I saved a lot of my kids' best toys, and they'll live there for their children to play with.

When my older daughter was 3, my DH and I made about a dozen wooden puzzles for her -- couldn't afford to buy them! Her 3-year-old son loves them. I have a lot of original FP things, including the castle, plus kindergarten blocks -- plus boxes and boxes of books. Can't wait for the grandkids to be able to access them easily!

Arlene

Yes, Stacie, my daughter Ashley always loved buttons, my Dad gave her a big old cigar box full and she was in heaven, she put them on strings and sorted them, used them on crafts. I still have all the metal cookie cutters that were Grandma's and both the girls used them for playdough, and as "stencils" to trace outlines for pictures. They also liked the old blue canning jars and used those to store hair ties, pencils, whatever.

Ashley loved to make paper dolls, I'd cut out a picture of someone from a magazine and she'd "design" clothes to fit out of construction paper and crayons.

Once I bought the horse, though, everything else was secondary, LOL. Their favorite playthings, and the favorites of The Monkey Princess and Bruvver, are the farm animals, the baby chickens, little pigs, the big bossy cow, the horses.

Annie

Oh I had forgotten about paper dolls! I loved them. I liked to make my own paper clothes and dolls. I also made all my own Barbie doll furniture out of odds and ends from around the house--lots of kleenex box furniture. Our best loved toys were wooden blocks. And I too loved the button box. That was a fun thing I sometimes got to play with. I have a little dish on the coffee table in my living room filled with pretty rocks, marbles, acorns, shells and other bits and bobs--it's always the first thing kids gravitate to when they visit. I had a piece of styrofoam that had been eroded into the shape of a rock by the waves on the Lake MI beach. Unfortunately my friend's two year old thought it was a piece of candy!

My daughter's favorite "toys" were measuring cups (she'd spend hours stacking and unstacking the Tupperware ones) and pots and pans, bowls and wooden spoons.
Empty cardboard boxes were good too!

Deanna

I am at work, and just put a box in the recycling that I thought, "Wow! that'd make a great car or a refrigerator or or or or " my mind just started reeling with visions of sitting in the box squished up to the steering wheel drawn on, and my feet pressing the pedals. Made me think of the modern day SpongeBob episode about "imagination" (Idiot Box is the title). Boxes were good stuff as a kid. All of our babies banged pots and pans with wooden spoons, rattled keys, and my lil sis and I loved to play with the sewing box my great-grandmother gave to our mom... full of glitzy buttons. It was almost as good as the cigar boxes full of her fancy brooches, very costume. Loved it. And dressing up. We'd get dressed up and dance to make a show for each other.

My sisters and I loved playing with paper dolls. I remember one of my first sets was a baby doll, with clothes. Later onto Dale Evans and then later had the Lennon Sisters. I loved their prom like dress. We used to spend hours cutting out clothes from the Wards catalog. I bought a used set of the Lennon Sisters but one of the sisters was missing. A friend saw a new repro set once so she bought it for me:)

We played "Button Button who has the button for hours every Sunday at Grandma Rozenberg's when we were younger.

Another strange thing I remember is loving playing on grandma stairs. It was very narrow and steep, but we enjoyed the small area with our dolls.

Did anyone have a doll house? We had a used tin one, with some furniture (some of it was broken) thought it was the "Cat's Meow".

Trudy, I still have a dollhouse for the grandkids. It was my daughter's when she was small and the kids love to play with it.

Annie

Trudy,

I just bought one of the tin ones along with furniture. Turns out it is the exact same one that my mom had growing up and that we used to play with when I was little. My mil had a fit when she saw it after she bought the girls a fisher price doll house. I told her that it was my doll house for me to play with lol.

Stacie

I guess I was a quiet little girl, I played cards...had a set of Authors and Old Maid cards...and my great grandmother taught me to play casino. My grandfather made me a spool knitter and I made miles of that stuff and then coiled it for mats. I had a bead loom.
And for several yearsI had a washing machine box which got folded up and stored in the garage when it wasn't a house. It had a door with a knob on it and windows with shutters and even a chair inside. The grand kids loved it!
And there was always a sandbox....I remember once when my husband was planning on doing some brick work in the backyard and he had about 2 tons of builders sand dumped on the drive way. Like magic that pile gathered kids with little cars and dolls and it was perfectly silent as each one made roads and ran their little cars around!

Stacie, I bet your little ones would like those lacing cards to lace up with some long shoe laces! I remember little kids playing with those. My boys loved to get my pots and pans out of the cupboards and bang on them with wooden spoons. Also, they loved to fit themselves into brown paper grocery bags or empty one cabinet and climb into it and shut the door.

OH! I had forgotten about the cabinet trick! More than once I nearly panicked, then found my daughter in a cabinet! (smiling, remembering...)

Deanna

Teresa,
I have some of those cards, some are vintage some are newer from when I taught school. I should take them up to school and laminate and then punch holes in them so that they hold up with little hands. I need to get them out. I am still searching for some of my treasures after MIL was here cleaning.... But did find some tapes that DH has been searching for.

Stacie

My paternal Gramma - long gone, was the non-nuturing kinda mom. She had a bucket of pennies we all played with and had a *ball*. And always had pudding in the fridge - and nothing else lol. Fortunately my Grams lived next to each other in brownstones in Brooklyn and Gramma Zevan [the lovely lady you helped me say goodbye to last last May] was the 'good food Gramma'. They were so different and thats what was so great, it was so much fun growing up there. :)