I was Supermom yesterday ... a title I'm not often willing to bestow upon myself. Jeremy worked late, and so to keep the boys and myself busy, we began to construct cardboard castles for their newly acquired knights, horses, dragons, and other medieval creatures.
We constructed castles that would make my Grandpa--a master carpenter--proud! (Yes, Grandpa?) Now he works with "real" materials like wood, wood glue, staples, nails, and saws. But I had a glue gun, packing tape, Target boxes, shoe boxes, toothpicks, ribbon, felt, and string. We made the best of it. I think I used 3/4 of my hot glue supply, clogged my glue gun 302 times from overuse, and went through a roll and a half of packing tape. Here are the results....
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| This is a fairy castle for the girls, who received fairies and elves for Christmas, rather than medieval creatures. |
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| This is Noah's castle, complete with drawbridge. I also hemmed a piece of blue fabric on which he can set his castle to make it seem like a moat. I intend to spray paint the boys' castles sometime soon, if they hold up for a little while. |
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| I cut ribbon to make flags for the boys' castles. I hot glued them to toothpicks which they can stick into the cardboard of their castles. I also glued foam on a couple of places, hoping that they'd also use those little spots for flags. |
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| Noah's knight defends his castle. |
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| I also made banners which have a toothpick glued to the back, but only at the ends of the toothpick so that it can be hooked over something (two toothpicks glued to the castle, in this case). |
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| Rather than make flags for the girls, I made banners out of ribbon. I glued a toothpick straight down the length of the ribbon, but only glued the top half of the toothpick. They can insert the banners into cut-up straws which I glued onto the edges of their castle. |
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| I glued ribbon around their windows and glued long felt "curtains" on the insides of the windows. |
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| At the top of their castle are two cubes--they said they're bedrooms--with windows. |
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| Elf and Fairy horses do not smell like regular horses (and probably do not poop at all) so can be stabled in the lower part of the castle. I'm sitting here chuckling. |
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| This is the inside of the girls' castle. See the horses peeking out of their stalls on the lower left? |
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| This is Noah's castle, from the side. |
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| This is Isaiah's castle with the drawbridge up and his horse apparently stranded in the moat of our green carpet. |
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| The girls couldn't stick toothpicks in their castle, so I cut straws and glued them to the top of the castle. Now they can rest the toothpicks of their banners in the holders. |
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| Isaiah has foam peanuts glued to the front of his castle into which he can stick his flags. |
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| I glued foam onto the inside of Noah's castle, but the cutting and gluing of this proved to be very messy. |
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| This is the back of Noah's castle. |
