My Recent Projects

On one of the Christmas posts I mentioned that Taylor's brother had recently gotten engaged and that they were planning to have quite an intense "destination" wedding. Intense being weddings in both London and Dubai including 2 separate civil ceremonies, 1 temple ceremony, 1 reception, and at least 1 luncheon. And all this scattered over just 4 days. Anyone know a better word than intense???
In January our plan was to survive this by just bringing Miles along and he was only coming because he's still nursing. But after a few heartfelt requests from family members we agreed to bring Ethan and Isaac along as well. Yes I know, I probably should be committed to an insane asylum for thinking we can handle this. It'll make for a great blog though. See? I'm trying to be positive.
In planning for the many non-child friendly events as well as the very MANY and very LONG plane flights, I saw someone's blog where they had created a little playmat with one road and little sleeves for the cars to fit in. Then you could take the whole thing, roll it up with the cars inside and have a neat little complete plaything. I decided to take it a step further and add houses, driveways, a gas station, and even a little park. I just used felt so nothing frays and it was actually pretty fast and easy. The boys LOVED it so I made a second one so they don't have to share. Normally I encourage sharing but I'm planning to just survive this trip so forget that.The stitching underneath was pretty ugly so I found this cute fabric that serves to cover that up as well as it's a whole new playmat when they get bored of the other side. I've already tested it out a few times and it works FABULOUSLY. By fabulous I mean it entertains my children for long stretches of time without my being involved. Isaac played with just the car mat and a few cars and some people for over an hour at the doctors office. Which was very helpful since Miles kept trying to roll off the exam table so I couldn't really watch Isaac.

Both Ethan and Isaac are currently obsessed with action figures of any kind. I got a pack of army men from a dollar store and they literally played with them for 3 days straight. Isaac is hilarious making them scream in pain and talk to each other.
Michaels craft store has little tubes of all sorts of figures so I grabbed a bunch and then decided to make playmats for them to use with them. First I made little bags to keep all their figures in and then started in on the actual mats.
Here's the pirate mat complete with the little guys.
And a shot without the guys. I couldn't resist doing waves with the fun stitch my sewing machine makes. Taylor suggested I add an X with a little zipper pouch underneath so you could literally bury treasure and hide things. Sounds fun. Tragically the back was already sewn on so I can't add that. Next time.

Both the car mat and the pirate mat seemed logically best done in 2-D. I was a little more stumped on the knights and dragons. In the end I made mountains with "caves" for the dragons and a 3 sided castle that mostly stays up. Ethan's favorite part is the drawbridge that does with a little luck stay up as well as lie flat.
And a shot with the dragons and knights. I got my ideas by looking at online sites that sell playmats. They're uber-expensive so I'm glad these turned out. Definitely worth the time. And I also looked online to get the dimensions of an airplane tray table so these fit perfectly.

Just more views (these are really just included for Kristina's benefit).

Again I found cute fabrics for the backs of them. And I used another fun stitch to make the trees. My boys won't be impressed but I am. And I don't really care if they're impressed as long as they spend HOURS playing with them on the airplane.