Things you need:
The Stuffed Animal:
We performed (repeat) surgery on a pre-existing stuffed animal.
If your child has a favorite snuggle toy, you can use that and give it a bit of magical protection. If you are crafty, or prefer to make the whole she-bang homemade, there are patterns for various stuffed animals available on the net, and in print. If your child is old enough to assist, here is a really simple bear pattern outline that they could sew. Also, because the sachet part of the bear is in a muslin bag, you could also use a crocheted or knitted creature.
The Special Stuffing:
- muslin bag
- lavender
- chamomile
- rose petals
- amethyst
- rose quartz
- moon stone
- small shell
- feather
*these are the components we use that are stuffed in the bunny…but feel free to change it up–just make sure that you don’t use anything that isn’t safe for kids or that they (or a care giver) aren’t allergic to
Setting it up:
The age of your child is going to determine their level of involvedness, and how complex you would choose to proceed. Because Sophie is pretty darn independent, but is not very coordinated (basically, your average 3 year old) the only part she didn’t help with was stitching bunny back up after his surgery. If you have a younger child, and you do this on your own, you can make it more complex and involved…when I originally did this for Bun-bun, as well as for Collin’s Lion, it was a totally different experience.
Sophie helped gather everything together. We have several jars full of things like shells, rocks, sand, feathers, pine cones, etc that we have collected for anytime we need something. She picked out her stones and the feather and shell while I got the herbs out from my herb cabinet. As we put everything together and put them in the muslin bag, we talked about what each item was for.
Lavender to make the sad things, mad things and bad things of the day to go away and protect us as we sleep, chamomile to remember that we are loved and help us relax as we sleep, rose petals from a friend’s garden to bring beauty and love to our dreams, rose quartz to make the heart feel super happy (to quote Ni hao, Kai-lan), amethyst to still our mind and strengthen our spirit, moonstone to help us have control over our feelings, a shell to bring the healing and cleansing touch of water to our dreams, and last (but not least) a feather to let our dreams take us to places we might not ordinarily get to go, and to show us a place to land softly.
Once each item was in the sachet, we placed it inside the bunny and stitched Bun-bun back up, and sewed a heart patch over his owie. For us, this was a replacement surgery since Bun-bun had lost his smell (I originally did this on my own a little over year and a half ago before Collin was born when we transitioned Sophie into a big girl bed).
As we sewed, we said out little chant:
When we were finished, we took the bunny outside, and repeated our chant, thanked the powers that be, and got ready for bed. Sophie says that she feels much better now, knowing that Bun-bun is feeling better will be able to do a better job at keeping the bad dreams away. And mommy feels better because Sophie is sleeping in her own bed again, all night long.
bay witch musings 
That is beautiful 🙂