A few weeks ago it was "King and Queen for a Day" in my eldest son's Kindergarten class. All the children could wear a crown at school and this optional. Of course we don't have a crown suitable for a boy and I don't think we even have one of my daughter's princess crowns anymore. For a week I asked my son if he wanted a crown and his response was always no. The night before "King and Queen for Day", right after supper was done (around 7 pm here) he said, "I think I'll take a crown to school tomorrow."
Why do they always do this to me? It's always a last minute decision. I should have listened to my instincts and just made one for him at the beginning of the week.
I got out my felt and told him he would have to have light blue since the only other colours I had enough of were pink and white. Then when I went searching for heavy interfacing and couldn't find any. Luckily we have a Wal-Mart close by and I ran in there to get some heavy interfacing. When I was standing there waiting for someone to come and cut my interfacing I found the dark royal blue felt. I knew he would like that much better than light blue felt I had at home and got some of that as well.
Once I cut out the crown shape, I decided to put his first initial on the crown. It still looked kind of bare so I got out my button collection and found some great boy buttons. Of course it was past the boy's bedtime and he was in bed so I wasn't asking him what he wanted and decided it would be a surprise. I had a rocket ship, an airplane, a saw, a great sized yellow star and a flashlight button - all things he loves. When I showed the boy his crown in the morning before we left for daycare he was really excited about wearing his crown at school.
After school I asked him if any other boys wore crowns and he said yes. I asked if anyone had a crown like his and he said no. (This is our quiet child.) Daddy said to him, "I bet no one had a crown as nice as yours." He didn't reply but every once in awhile he still gets his crown out and puts it on. So I call it a hit.
Our youngest will be in Kindergarten next year and I was thinking I'll have to keep the crown for him and just put his initial over top of this brother's. However he keeps reminding me he hates blue and really loves orange. Maybe I should get started on his crown now!
For the oldest.
The tractors were purchased as a felt kit at Michael's for $1.50 each. I thought we would have to glue the tractors together, but they came as one piece which we glued onto a foam rectangle with a hot-glue gun for the background. The boys then cut around the glued on tractor. This was a very age (4 and 2) appropriate project. The boys told me where to put the glue and I used the glue gun given that the glue was very hot. They really enjoyed spending the one-on-one time with Mommy for this. My husband spent one-on-one time with the other boy so what they received from each other remained a surprise until Christmas morning. We used double sided foam stickies to stick the tractors to their bedroom walls after the gift opening on Christmas morning.
The stripe fabric came from Fabricland. I think I picked it up in June on sale and didn't have a plan for it. The ribbons were purchased at Michael's for 60% off and there is still some leftover. I had a bulletin board kicking around here and used it. We hot-glue gunned batting on the top of the bulletin board, cut the fabric down to fit the bulletin board with a little extra overhang to keep the stripes straight. We then stretched the fabric around the bulletin board and staple-gunned the fabric in place. Then we determined the placement of the ribbons and staple-gunned those in place. This project didn't take very long and the 4-year-old was quite happy to use the staple-gun (closely supervised of course).
We glued the guitars on the top corners of the picture frame, then glued the buttons on. He chose the buttons and helped glue the buttons in place. I put a picture of the two boys in the frame for her. I erased the boys out of the picture before posting the picture of the picture frame as I don't want pictures of my kids on the internet. 
