Building a Castle

Yesterday we had a new dishwasher installed and the installer left the box for the girls to play inside.  Then today swim team was cancelled because they had to do some maintenance on the pool.  So, we had an extra hour this afternoon to fill.  So, the girls and I took that big empty cardboard box and some paint and made a "castle."  They had never used "real paint" and "real brushes" before, so that was a treat for them.

We used the extra paint from our master bedroom.  Several times one of the girls dropped the entire brush into the paint can.  We used at least five times as much painted as was needed.  Thank God I had the wisdom to do this on the lawn in old t-shirts.  Of course, the kids went straight to the bathtub after this project.

Catherine kept saying "all the writing is getting covered up;" I guess she was surprised at the opaqueness of the paint.  Sabrina's hands got so much paint on them that she just rubbed her hands on the box:

After we painted it light grey, we added lines to (hopefully) look like stones, as well as some green ivy and purple flowers.

When Robby got home, the girls immediately ran to him and told him we made a castle.  Then Robby made a door and windows for the castle.

The girls decorated the interior of the castle with leftover family pictures (I keep a box of pictures that don't make the scrapbooks for projects such as these). They also used Kleenex to make draperies for the windows. 

They love their castle and wanted to sleep in it tonight.  They put pillows and blankets in there, and Robby gave them their princess and fairy flashlights he had bought them a week ago.  Catherine packed one of her bags to go "stay in the castle." 

It is way too small for them both to sleep in there at night, so I told them that one of them can sleep in it for a nap during the day, but not overnight.  This project has turned out to be a great learning experience for them in imagination.  It is also the largest craft we have ever done.