Castle Isaac

A few months ago one of my friends posted this blog www.homemadebyjill.com on their blog and I instantly fell in love with her felt playhouses just as she had. At first I was going to make a couple and then I realized how much work they were. And I never quite feel like Isaac gets a good enough birthday since it's the day before Christmas and since we travel we don't bring along many presents for him or even sometimes find a way to make a cake. Don't get me wrong, he gets to go fun places on his birthday and will never have to go to school and will always be with his family, but I still feel like I should make a big gesture since he is finally old enough to understand and be excited about a birthday.
Once I realized this felt playhouse could be folded up and fit just perfectly into the extra space in a golf bag (considered essential cargo on any Woodbury trip) I was sold. It will look like a big fabulous birthday present and it will be easily transportable. Plus I'm hoping the kids will love it and play with it the whole week and a half since we won't be dragging along other toys for them. So here's to hoping he loves it and that it was worth the last 3 months of naptime sewing.
And since I made it a little different than Jill's blog I thought I'd give the instructions. Plus I wanted to show off how cute it turned out.
Jill made hers to fit over a table but since Isaac is already 3 and I wanted all 3 boys to be able to play together and not fight I decided to use PVC pipe and make it bigger. It's about as tall as Ethan so Isaac has some room to grow. I got all the PVC and joints at Home Depot for less than $5 and they cut it all to fit too!
Here's what the joints look like.

And the finished product (finally!!!). Welcome to Castle Isaac. We're stil obsessed with dragons at this house and since a certain Jolly Old Saint is bringing Isaac the movie of How to Train a Dragon, I thought I'd make a castle. They can swing the door up over the top or just move it out of the way when they want to go in.

Plus making a castle made it easy to hook the whole thing onto the frame and they'll never be too tall to play inside (maybe too old but not too tall :). There's velcro on every other piece so it holds it together nicely.

Next to the front door I had to add a mailbox even though that's definitely not an appropriate castle part. But every time we go to the local Children's museum, Isaac spends several minutes collecting mail from mailboxes around the place and then redelivering it. So he needed a mailbox. And I couldn't resist a few removable felt flowers.

This is the backside. I LOVE how the window turned out. The tree overlaps on another side and I made both apples and oranges (Clementines to be more exact since Isaac is obsessed with them) to put on and take off. More flowers of course and it's a good thing I set this all up and decided to blog about it (I wasn't going to until after his birthday so there'd be shots of him too) because I had forgotten to make the mail letters, fish for the pond, and a fishing pole. So it's not all quite done but almost and luckily I have 2 more weeks.

Love the Clementines.

This is the garden side and is the most similar to Jill's felt playhouse. The house is meant to be interactive so all the fruits and vegis have velcro or else they just slide into little pockets (like the carrots). We're planning to do a box garden next summer so I'm hoping this will get the kids excited to join in on the real dirty work.

Here's the velcro on the tomato and pea plants.

And here's the last side. I wanted a little store window so they could buy and sell their food and since I was afraid they'd try to climb out of it I put a doggy door next to it so hopefully they'll use that instead and not rip the whole thing off.

The baskets are empty but they can pick their vegis and then come and sell them.

And it's a castle so of course it needed a treasure chest. This is actually the only thing on the inside walls.

My initial plan included a snowman, changing leaves and flowers for the tree to correspond with seasons, and even lots of things inside like a fridge and fireplace. But then reality hit and I decided good enough was good enough.

These are my favorites.

And all the food fits nicely into a dragon drawstring bag I made and with a few sword/shield/magic wand accessories, we're calling it done!

Hopefully he loves it. Hopefully he spends hours playing in it. If not, oh well, I had a good time making it and he can never say I didn't try to make his birthday special.