What The Hell Do We Do With All of These Boxes?

 "What the hell do we do with all of these boxes?" I asked my husband. Three days later I was building a cardboard box igloo for daycare. 

For some reason, our city only picks up recycling every other week. Since we're kind of freakish about recycling anything allowed, our recycling bin fills up quickly. Even more so during the holidays because every little thing must come wrapped in layers of plastic and boxes. In fact, the kayak I ordered the family literally came in three boxes! 

On Christmas morning, as we sat in the slaughter of opened packages, my husband asked, "what the hell are we going to do with all of these boxes?" My reply was something along the lines of, "I don't know. Keep them until we have room in our recycling, I guess." We asked each other this question over the next few days as we kept adding to the pile. It was really ridiculous. 

Then, I got bored on Saturday. I requested all of the boxes be piled in the daycare room so I could look at them. Usually, looking at something enough gives me ideas. This is both good and bad. In this case, thirty minutes later and already half a roll of tape later, I had the start of an igloo. To think, 24 hours earlier I was going to buy a freaking cardboard house from Oriental Trading (no judging, but I still might)!

So, the next time you're stuck in quarantine and worried about being bored while you look at a pile of boxes, just build an igloo. Pro tip: DO NOT, under any circumstances, let kids and a puppy help or you'll wind up ordering everyone out the room in frustration as packing tape gets tangled in your hair.

I had a few enthusiastic "helpers" throughout the process. Also, I did zero measuring. I eyeballed everything and worked with sizes I had. I wasn't going for perfection because this is bound to be destroyed within a day or two of playing. Plus, I only donated two hours to building this igloo-thing.

The dog thinks this was made for him. I'm not convinced he'll be good about sharing it with the daycare kids either!

We decided to paint it white. I'll be adding white padding and foam to it in the coming days.

We had to block the entrance to keep the furry butt out of it while it dried.

One Room Renovation In One Week

I wish I had set up a camera to capture all of the work done last week on the new basement school room. All of the other learning areas didn't require as much work as the basement. At one point in time, our basement was finished (by previous owners), but it definitely needs some love and renovation. Our ultimate vision for our basement was a bedroom in one quarter of the basement and a den/big kid hang out area in the other. We decided to finish the bedroom room for now (although, even that isn't all of the way complete).

The first order of business was ripping out the old A-frame. This sunk the basement ceiling a good 4-5 inches shorter than it actually is. We left the ceiling open for now, in case more electrical work needs done on other parts of the basement. Which brings me to the next phase, electrical. Matt (I can write we all I want, but everyone should know by now that I would have no idea what to do) rewired the basement, put in new lights and outlets, and got half of the basement ready for our overall vision project (no date on when we'll do that, just a someday thing).

After that, things changed drastically. We were going to put down area rugs, so that we could finish the floor at a later date, however, we decided to finish the floor, clean it, put carpet tiles down, and clean and paint the walls (the walls are still cinderblock). Our initial thought was to rip out the cabinets and shelves because, long term, we don't want them. But as we got ready to tear them down, I decided I wanted to keep them to use as storage for homeschool supplies. The cabinets and shelves are in decent condition (not the best, but also not falling apart) and hold A LOT of material that would otherwise be taking up space elsewhere.

I had "help" painting the cabinet doors and drawers. We painted them on a humid, 100 degree day. Needless to say, they were sticky and took a long while to dry. But we do what we can in this Iowa weather! For those wondering, the dog still has paint on parts of him from all of the "help" he contributed.

Thankfully we used a primer and paint combo, so it only took a few coats of paint. We got a gallon of paint from the Re-Store, as well as the carpet squares and a few other odds and ends. It's our first stop in any home renovation we do.

Let's be honest: kids are messy. I have no idea how much use this room will see this school year, so we didn't want to glue the carpet squares down to the floor and create more work for ourselves later on (especially if we have to replace this carpet when we make the room in the a bedroom). The carpet tape has worked wonderfully! If a kid destroys one square of carpet, it will be easy to pull up and replace it with a new square (we bought extra just for this reason). When the world returns to "normal" and we decide we want to do something different with the flooring, it will be easy to take out.


The carpet took 2 days to put in, as we had to scrub the floor, wait for it to dry, put it in, make sure each square was stuck down completely, run out of squares and go back to the store to get another box, finish the last part, then decide to do a bit more that we hadn't planned on. Once the carpet was fully installed, that's when things got fun. We built new furniture, moved other furniture from other parts of the house (the hair pin desk was in the boy's room), and set the room up.

The basement wasn't the only rooms to get a makeover. Zeus moved into the boy's room, the area rugs that were meant for the basement went into the mini's bedrooms, we moved furniture around in bedrooms, deep cleaned, and got the living room ready, as that's where our next project will be. We'll be installing a new built-in shelves/TV stand again one wall in the living room...and by we, that's Matt. I just do the designing and hold veto power.

Even though it was a busy week getting the room ready and getting ready for homeschooling, we also had some fun moments:

We were so busy with the projects, the kids pretty much lived on take out and Uncrustables. Zeus was thrilled to discover Puppacinos on one of our many morning trips to Starbucks.

Zeus sat at the top of the stairs all week wondering what was going on in the basement.

Hardwork deserves a reward. We tried Monarca on evening and the paletas were phenomenal!! Highly recommend!

Matt and I were working in the basement and came up to check on the minis because it was quiet. Too quiet. We found them peering over the dumpster, talking about turning the dumpster into a swimming pool. They were disappointed that didn't happen.

We found some gems while deep cleaning the bedrooms...like this poster. I didn't ask questions.

4 Fun Fall Ideas For Your Dramatic Play Area

Kids LOVE to pretend. Studies show it helps them grow their mind and relate to the world around them. Children often like to pretend play the things they do in their life. These can be day to day things, but those big things stick out too. This time of year, families are spending plenty of time picking apples, visiting pumpkin patches, celebrating Halloween, getting ready for Thanksgiving, and the farm fields are golden from the harvest (at least here in Iowa). Since I know how my daycare kids are spending their time at home and with their parents, it's often fun for them to do those "big things" at daycare too.

Since I'm a non-transport daycare, we just have to bring those things to us! By creating our own apple orchard or pumpkin patches, not only do the kids get to help create these areas, but I also cater to the type of kiddos I have currently in daycare. Some kids like to do "big play" using themselves in play. Others prefer to use figurines or dolls to reenact their experiences. Offering a good mixture to all is important.


1.) Apple orchard

Kids help to create our trees; velcro tabs on the plastic apples; boom apple trees for apple picking. Plastic apples and a register to buy apples. Dolls, baskets, bags, and more to act out whatever they wish. 

2.) Pumpkin patch

Use real or fake pumpkins, little wagons, baskets, bags, and a couple of games (bag toss is a great one) can round out your patch. I go a little further and add hay bales, scarecrows, and corn stalks. * yes, your vacuum will be destroyed by the hay in your house.

3.) Haunted house

Have a playhouse or two around? Fake spiderwebs, fake spiders, skeletons, clings, and other Halloween decorations can turn a regular play house into a haunted house.

4.) Farm house/Harvest

That same playhouse can be turned into a farm house. Add some animals, have corn picking, and bountiful fruits and veggies for cooking in the farmhouse kitchen.

* I actually have not done this one yet (coming beginning of November). However, checking Pinteresst, there are PLENTY of ideas to do your own. Check it out.

+ 1 Extra:

 Thanksgiving kitchen and table. There's an adorable Thanksgiving food playset that can be used in a play kitchen, along with a table and all of the settings. Kids can play Thanksgiving the whole month of Thanksgiving with these tools! If your lucky, you may get a view like this (of kids telling each other what they're thankful for) without any prompting.

Homemade Bubble Madness

One HOT morning this summer, we meandered outside for a bit before the temperatures got too hot to even be outdoors. I had wanted to do a giant bubble pool like we'd done in the past, but I wanted a simple to clean up activity that we wouldn't be cleaning up at the hottest point of the day. This activity also needed to be fun. I decided to stick with the bubble idea and make homemade bubbles for the kids.....and blowing them with items found around the house!

I used this bubble recipe and put it in a pan (my most easily washed pan).

Then I had the kids find items. The most popular items were pipe cleaners (that I helped them shape), baby hangers (that I still have sitting around, despite my youngest being five), a tied shoe lace, and Magformers. All interesting choices.

Sadly, several kids didn't last long for this activity because it was either too hot outside for them or they didn't like the stickiness of the bubble mixture (it does have corn syrup in it).

I, on the other hand, LOVED this activity. I enjoyed seeing the kids use their creative thinking skills about what objects to use and experimenting with which ones worked the best (or didn't work at all). We'll bring the giant bubble pool back next summer, but I definitely plan to add in this creative element as well.

How To Make A Fairy Garden The Kids Can Play With

The kids wanted to make a Fairy Garden this summer. I had the big kids research what fairy gardens they liked on Pinterest and then created our own based on what they liked. First and foremost, the garden had to be appropriate for kids of all ages to play with. Secondly, the kids wanted something that they mostly made, which meant no pre-made fairy houses and such. Easily done!

Our garden included:

• 1 wooden bird house (purchased at Michael's)
• Garden rocks (purchased at a local home improvement store)
• Fairies (thank you Amazon)
• Crayola Neon paints
• Soil, marbles, and anything extra we had laying around that could be thrown in and not choked on

First the kids painted the wooden house and the pot. Yes we used washable paints. We decided early on that this would be an indoor fairy garden, so using weather resistant paints and materials didn't matter. While the house and pot dried, the kids washed the rocks, dried them, and then every child painted at least one rock (most painted two or three).

 Rock washing. The kids turned this into an all day event.

After everything dried (it took a couple of days), we set up our fairy garden/pot. You'll notice how we didn't build everything up to the very top of the pot. We chose to have it set down a bit so things wouldn't get spilled out of it. This saved me a few times from a huge mess when little hands decided to dig through the pot!

We started with dirt/soil at the bottom, then added marbles, rocks, a little bit of mulch (from the garden), more rocks, and finally the house and fairies.

We made this one of the first days of summer vacation and we still have everything (minus a few broken fairy wings that were pulled off)! It doesn't look like much, but it's one of the first projects I had the big kids (the kids ages 5-9) design and take over. Did I mention it lasted and was played with ALL SUMMER LONG??? Success!

Make Your Own Stilts

We spent a few hours at a local living history place (Living History Farms) this past weekend. I love how my kids get hands on experience of what it's like to live in the past. On this particular day, we learned a lot about the 1800's. 

Grinding cinnamon in the drug store.

The minis got to play with toys and games that kids enjoyed in 1875. One of which was stilts. Yes, stilts. 

We walked away from the stilts and my (wonderful) husband says, "I think we can make our own." A half hour later we found ourselves at the hardware store buying supplies for stilts. We grabbed:

4 2x3 boards
1 2x4 board (for the foot holds)
large screws

The boards needed to be cut into proper heights. We went with 6 ft. and 4 1/2 ft. for pole lengths. The boys sat down and determined pole lengths based on the ones at Living History Farms and how tall they were (they want their friends to be able to use them too, so we wanted basic heights.

The cutting was simple and didn't take long at all. The entire project took around one hour. Then it was play time!

For future reference, don't try it with sandals on!