making a babies wooden toy bar

As I've mentioned, I've not looked after babies for 3 years. During those 3 years we've lived in small houses so in the interest of being able to 'breathe' in our little houses, everything that isn't currently being used goes straight to the opp shop.

I no longer have any of the baby things I've used for the bigger kids. I decided id like a toy bar for the baby (and possibly future babies i will look after and have myself)

my options were

 1)Find one at an opp shop

pros- recycled, can take it back when I'm finished with it rather than need to store it
cons- may take some time to find one, would probably be plastic and ugly

2)Buy a pretty wooden one

pros- pretty and natural, can find one handmade in Australia

cons- rather pricey for something that will only get used for a few month at a time here and there. I don't mind spending money on quality toys but they look so simple I could practicaly...

.3) make one myself!!!

Yep of course I went with option 3!

As I knew would be the case it didn't even take long to make. The longest part was screwing it together because the angles make that a challenge but my Dad was able to do that tricky part (while I was munching on apples from their tree:)

Because it screws together it can come apart and store easily when its not needed. Yay for the space it wont need to take up!

 I took a few photos of the process to share. Here the top piece is marked out and i'd started drilling holes for the toys to be tied to. I based my design on this toy bar.

 Next I had fun with my favourite tool the edge trimmer

 I hand sanded all the pieces silky smooth and polished them with home made beeswax toy polish. I went to visit my dad and...

It came back looking like this!
Ive not made any toys for it yet but as you can see our bell Christmas ornaments are doing the job for now. Turns out its not so bad having Christmas decorations still sitting around at the end of January afterall