both my girls still take a good two or three hour nap during the day, and they are almost 2 and almost 4. i let my oldest keep her binky until she was 2 1/2, and my youngest still has hers, so i'm sure that is part of it. you might try letting her have a sippy cup with water in it to take to bed with her... at her age, she's still cutting teeth and having something she can put in her mouth is soothing.
as far as schedules go, my girls usually take a nap between 1:30 and 4:30 (i put my little one down first at 1:30, then put my bigger one down around 2... usually they'll be up by 4:30 at the latest). i try to put my kids in bed around 7:30 or 8, and they wake up between 7-7:45 every morning. my bigger one is at the age where she doesn't always need a nap, but she will still go down for a "rest" where she has to lay down for an hour and then after that if she's not asleep, i'll let her read books or watch a movie or something quiet.
i'm a stay at home mom too, and yeah, sometimes i go crazy trying to think of things to do with them all day! at 17 months, you can do flashcards, puzzles, aerobics -- i know that sounds odd, but i went and got the Laurie Berkner DVD (target or walmart) and we put that on and my girls go crazy! they love to do all the moves and sing all the songs! and if you do it with them, it's a great way to get a good work out (you have to kind of exaggerate the moves to really work up a sweat!).
we also like to play with playdough -- i know with a 17 month old it's more of a chore, but mine just loved it at that age! as long as you don't leave her alone with it, so she doesn't eat it or smear it in her hair, it's a great way to pass the time!
another thing we do is artwork. i have about a million old magazines that we go through and tear out pictures of things they like and we make collages -- i use a gluestick for less mess. and they love to use my stamps too. they make all sorts of horrid looking pictures with a million different stamps all on top of eachother so you have no idea what you're looking at.... but they are so proud! lol!
what else.... i've seen other people put shaving cream on the table and let their kids play in it.... not something i'd do because i hate the smell, but the kids do love to do it (they do that in the nursery at my church and my little one goes crazy!). when it's just way too hot to function outside, we sometimes fill up the bathtub and put a swimsuit on my girls and let them go "swimming." it's funny how they really think it's different from taking a bath. occasionally, i've filled up the dish washing tub and put it on the floor (with a whole bunch of towels under it) and let them play with their boats in the water. i've had friends who've gotten their small pools inside and put just a couple of inches of water in them for water play too.... but i'm not crazy! something else we've done is look at family pictures on a slide show on the computer. we don't live near my family so it really helps them to be more familiar with family members.
about a month ago, i got really bored and decided to take my girls "camping." we made a tent out of blankets in the living room, and i built a campfire using orange and brown paper and scotch tape, then i got some old blue material and threw it down for the pond and made some fish and stuck magnets on them and made fishing poles out of plastic hangers and yarn and it all took about half an hour to set up, and we camped and fished all day long! that night for dinner we took fake plastic hotdogs and i taped them onto broken hangers and we pretended to roast them over the fire, then while my girls were still roasting the play hotdogs, we foreman grilled real ones and had hotdogs for dinner.
if you are crafty at all, you can take some material and stitch it together and make a pillow that she can stuff by herself. with the holidays coming up, you can make holiday decorations. there are all kinds of crafts you can do for christmas. one in particular that i did when my oldest was around 18 months old, was to make a christmas tree to hang on the wall. get a piece of the green foamie sheets (i got mine at walmart) and cut it into the shape of a christmas tree, then get yellow and cut it into the shape of a star and glue it to the top -- i used a gluestick -- then let her decorate it with whatever you want. i just got a bunch of different colors of foamie sheets and cut out lots of shapes and decorated the shapes with glittery paint and then let her glue it all onto the tree -- if you do the glitter paint, you have to do it the day before so the glitter paint can dry for your little one to glue them onto the tree. i also outlined the tree with green glitter paint, and the star with gold.
and there are at least a gazillion other crafty holiday things you can do with foamie sheets too.... but i'm not crafty by nature, so i haven't done anything else!!!
last thing and then i'll quit rambling.... you could start a scrapbook with her. take pictures of her (and if they're favorites, make sure you have copies of them or the negatives incase she tears up the ones you give her!) and put a little glue on the back and let her put them on the page where she wants, and then give her things to decorate with. it's a great project to do unless you are anal retentive like me and you hate the sight of a crooked picture!
anyway, my youngest is 21 months, and all the things (other than the tree) are things we've just done recently, so i do know that they work. we don't do things like this everyday though, cause i'm not supermom (and i'm not crazy either!). hope this helps!
