Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Let's be BRAVE and shoot some arrows!

When I first heard about the movie Brave, over a year ago, I was sooo excited! A Scottish princess, heroine without a prince! Finally! I was psyched and I drug the whole family to see the movie over the summer, whether they wanted to or not....luckily they wanted to. Yahoo especially liked it of course! What little girl wouldn't want to ride off on a giant horse into the wilderness shooting arrows? Sounds like a blast!  

(I just love this picture of Yap. I'm not sure if he's hollering or if he's channeling Michael Jordan with that tongue!) 

Do you know how many crappy toy bow and arrows my boys have gone through in their short 8 years? Too many to count. Finally I had to put my foot down and wouldn't let them buy any toy bow and arrows because I knew they'd be broken by the end of the day.  

A while ago I found this great tutorial on how to make bows and arrows out of PVC pipe. Awesome! One lazy weekend during harvest, when DR wasn't home, we marched down to the hardware store a block away (I'm so spoiled) and bought the supplies which weren't expensive at all, maybe $20 in all? I think we had three bows and six arrows built and shooting within an hour! They are a bit tough for Yahoo to play with but she still enjoys being out playing with the boys while they shoot the arrows. 


We built these over a month ago and the kids still play with them! Talk about durable! Well, the only part that has taken a beating is the foam arrow heads...they've gotten shredded between my kids and the neighbor kids playing with them but the dowel rod arrows are still in one piece and those shoot just fine! 

How do you like my daughter's fashion sense? She's wearing a skirt, well as a skirt and then another skirt as a shirt. I should just be thankful she's covered! 


The ONLY problem we've had with this toy is my boys tend to shoot toward the big pine tree in our front yard and the arrows get stuck a lot. 


The boys and I have had a lot of practice throwing the football up in the tree trying to get the arrows down! 

The PVC Bow and Arrow is one of the best homemade toys I've ever made! Check out the instructions at Skip to My Lou. She has great step by step photos!

What's the best Do It Yourself toy you've ever made? 

4 comments:

  1. I never got to see that movie and I can't wait to see it on dvd! Mikayla wants to take up archery and I was going to buy her a toy bow/arrow set from fleet farm (do you have fleet farm stores there?) for Christmas but now I'm reconsidering... Might have to make my own!

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  2. And Awww, we commented on eachother's posts at the same time :o)

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    1. How sweet! Go get the movie when it comes out, it's so cute! We have something similar to fleet farm, Orschlen's. But I grew up in Indiana with a farm store called Farm and Fleet. Huh.

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  3. I so wish you lived by me! I would be much more motivated to be crafty and inspirational with my kids. BRAVE so ROCKED! I tried to use the queen' s attitude to teach K how to act with her 4-H calf. She so needed to let both calves know whonwas boss but with that quiet respect instead of angry jerks on the rope.

    AWESOME BOWS AND ARROWS!

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