DIY Thomas Mini's Travel Train Track Set

I don't know if any of you have seen these little blind bag packs in the stores. One day we happened upon them in the Dollar Store. I let my 5 and 2 year old boys each get a pack and that is when the obsession started. They are so cute and small. The recommended age is 3 and up, if your child puts toys into their mouth still then these could be a choking hazard. This ended up being a fun thing Rowen gets when we are at the store. They run about $1- $2 dollars a piece and there are SO MANY different trains! Since our collection was growing I wanted to get a case for Rowen to carry them around in. I also wondered if they made special tracks just for these trains. They do have a few different sets that go specifically for these trains BUT I wanted to have more of an open ended toy that Rowen could use his imagination setting up. 

What I came up with has ended up being one of our FAVORITE toys! I have even caught my 8 year old daughter and her friend playing with it! Another awesome thing is all the supplies cost me under $10, excluding the trains. 

The three things you need to start are felt (2 green sheets and 1 blue 8X10), BIG "tongue depressor" wooden craft sticks, and a case to hold it all in. I was going to just use a case I found around the house but I ended up seeing this Thomas the Train tin lunch box case for only $6.99 at Hobby Lobby and then used a 40% off coupon. I call that a score!!!

Here is Rowen with his new Thomas box and a few of his trains inside.

   

The next thing you need to do is get a sharpie and draw train tracks on the wooden craft sticks. I just used another stick to draw my lines.

   

 With two basic 8X10 green felt sheets it takes about 8 wooden sticks to make a circle.

Next step is to cut some water out of blue felt and make a bridge out of popsicle sticks. Your water can be cut in any shape you want. For the bridge I used smaller craft sticks but you can use the bigger ones if you want. I just cut the sticks with scissors and used hot glue to stick the bridge together.

After you hot glue the sticks together just simply paint brown and wait for it to dry.

   

This next step was so fun. Rowen and I took a special walk to find some perfect size rocks to add to the scenery. After he picked about 3 or four we took them in to wash the with foamy soap.

Another simple and fun addition to Rowen's travel train track set is a little pack of dinosaurs we found at the Dollar Store. They also had the option for Safari animals but he wanted the Dinos!

   

After completing those few steps above, you are all set to PLAY!!!

Make sure to make extra track so your child can set it up however they want. They might even want the tracks off of the felt!

Here is a special close up of our bridge and rocks Rowen picked out. 

He loves setting the dinosaurs on top of the rocks.

After your child is done playing, just pack it all up in the case and it is ready for next time!

Since it's just Rowen at home with me on the weekdays these days we have many chances to take his travel train set with us to different places. I had an idea to go let him pick out a set of Thomas Mini's at Target. Then we got a snack and played at a table. He had so much fun lining up all of his trains. We even played a counting game along with his normal pretending.

Here is one last example of Rowen's set up at the Doctors office. I had a normal check up and Rowen had fun playing while I talked to the Doctor. This would also be a great idea to have on plane trips. 

One other thing I was thinking of doing is adding a few micro machine type cars and on the other side of the train track sticks made them road sticks for cars.

Halloween Keepsake Treat Bags~ 2016 Hand & Footprint Art

 Those of you who have been following me for a while know that I started a tradition in 2012 with my children where we put their hand and/or footprints on the sack they take trick or treating. If you want to know more about this click HERE to see the past posts and the hand/foot prints from past years.

This year I kept it a little more simple and did only one print for each kid except for Rowen. He is still so little and the prints are just so cute at this age! 

Here is Rowen in two of his costumes this year.

Plex from Yo Gabba Gabba and Buzz Lightyear!

      

Here are the prints I did for him. I wish I would have done his footprint for Buzz in purple because that is actually the color of the bottom of his foot. Instead I just wrote ANDY in purple.

Garren's foot print turned out better than I thought it would! 

I just copied his costume of a blue Power Ranger to his footprint!

   

 Kiki is a police woman this year so I thought it would be fun to just put a police badge in her handprint!

   

 One of Brenden's costumes is Harry Potter so I got really creative with his LARGE footprint! 

Seriously, just to get an idea of the space this takes up.... he wears size 7 in men!!! 

Why do they grow up so quickly!?

   

 Lastly, I had to add what Brenden is wearing today for actual Halloween Day.

He is Josh Dun, the drummer from my FAVORITE band Twenty One Pilots!

Notice the sharpie O gage on his ear! LOL

   

 Here is full body! Brenden is wearing his Skeleton hoodie just like Josh and Tyler wear!

And don't forget the drum sticks!

   

 To his bag, I will probably add his handprint in red and paint the Twenty One Pilots logo in the center.

Well, I hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween!!!

Cake Decorating Party- Dollar Store Supplies

My daughter Kiki LOVES to cook! She is always saying that she wants to have her own bakery when she grows up. Last year we made a Sweet Shop in our basement! If you want to see it click HERE! The amazing thing is we STILL have this up in our basement a year later! 

 I really didn't want to throw a HUGE party again. I wanted to just go somewhere and have them do all of the work. However, once I saw how much it would cost, I decided to have it at our house. 

After talking it over with my husband and Kiki we decided that a cake decorating party would be the easiest. We had her pick 5 close friends so they could all fit comfortably around the dining room table. 

The first thing to consider when having a cake decorating party was how to prepare the cakes. We decided it would be best if the cakes were made before hand and the girls would just have fun decorating them during the party. I searched and searched for the best size cake pans. I didn't want to spend a lot of money and then have something I wouldn't use later. We finally found these ceramic ramekins at World Market that were about 5 inches in diameter. They only cost about 2 dollars each. As you can see in the picture below we also bought a few smaller ramekins to see if we wanted a smaller cake layer on top. I will tell you now it was easiest to have just two 5in circle cakes. It made it easier to put the icing on since that is the trickiest part. 

One cake box mix filled all 6 of these ramekins. So if you were just going with the 5in ramekins, you might get away with filling 5 with one box of cake mix.

 What we did, starting about a week or two before Kiki's party, was bake a bunch of batches of cakes one at a time. We would make a batch, cut the tops off to make them flat, flash freeze them on a cookie sheet, and then store them in a ziplock bag in the freezer until the day of the party. It would be easier to choose one type of cake but we wanted the girls to have the option to choose between white and chocolate so we had to bake a lot of cakes! I think all together, pictured below is two boxes of chocolate cake and three boxes of white. The great thing is you can find box cake mix at the dollar store so it didn't cost us much it just took a lot of time! 

The morning of the party we pulled all of the cakes out of the freezer and placed them on parchment paper to defrost. It only takes about 2 hours!

Next is the fun part! I let Kiki pick out tons of candy that she thought would be good to decorate the cakes with. A good place to pick out candy is the dollar store because your kids can go crazy and it won't cost you a fortune! I also found theses small plastic bowls at the dollar store, 12 for $1. These were perfect because the girls could pass them around the table.

   

 I got this cute 3 tier serving platter from IKEA. The 12 little bowls fit perfectly on the plates.

You can also just place the little bowls around the table.

   

 One of my favorite things to do when decorating for a birthday is hanging regular balloons from the ceiling with curling ribbon. It's so much cheaper and better than dealing with helium!

 The other goodies we got for the party were also all from the dollar store! They had these cute aprons, the "silver" plates, and also a spatula/spreader. We got one per person and they got to take them home after the party as favors along with their yummy cake!

Here is another look at the table with Kiki's donut birthday cake on the corner.

  

We also scored because we found these pastry bags with different decorating tips for icing at the Dollar store! Seriously, they have EVERYTHING there!

We set it up with every color of the rainbow. Each pastry bag held one tub of icing. We put three colors of icing on one end of the table and three at the other end.

   

 When all the girls arrived we let them pick out two white cakes, two chocolate cakes or one white and one chocolate cake. Then, we let them choose a whole tub of either chocolate or vanilla icing. One tub was the perfect amount of icing for the center and then to cover the whole cake. 

FYI, You can also get tubs of icing from the dollar store!

I told the girls before they started that they couldn't mess up their cakes! If they felt they didn't like something just add more icing and candy! 

At one point, a little piece of the cake fell off of one of the girls cakes. No problem at all, we decided to make a pink and purple waterfall out of that part! 

It was all about having fun, not about a perfect end product!

Everyone had a blast!

 Here are my little chefs having fun decorating their cakes!

The birthday girl got to wear this cute chef hat to match her apron!

Since Garren was the only sibling present at the party, we set him up at his own little table right by the girls! He loved being a part of the fun!

As you can see here, this type of party can even be for younger children. My son is 4 and he did a wonderful job decorating his cake with little help.

   

 Another thing we found at Target was small piñatas, one for each girl. They had fun breaking their own personal piñata open. Garren got sad because he wanted to brake one also so I found some extra candy and duct taped one back together. He didn't know the difference!

   

Here is Kiki's end product! 

What a great way to end your birthday, on a SUGAR HIGH!