Late Indoor fun fort!!

I forgot to post! Oops! It's been crazy this weekend. Gabee's birthday was yesterday and with 3 families to accommodate for birthday celebrations it sometimes gets hectic and I am behind schedule. So, a few changes got made this weekend. Friday Gabee didn't want to do the science experiments and I am just letting them go because I apparently didn't read the instructions well enough for the star player and don't have the money for the ingredients. So we left it out and started again today. To catch up I will probably post three more things today! After Chuckee Cheese's. After Eli goes to sleep.

SOOOOOO, on with the show.

Thursday, we made a fort in the playroom out of a bunch of cardboard boxes, some cardboard tubes, some sheets, and some Christmas light.

We started by collecting boxes.

 

The we collected MORE boxes. I was really happy to come across the big box outside of 7-11 around the corner from my house. They were replacing the grill and this was the box it came in. I was super happy!

 

As you can see I had been saving diaper boxes, I reused the cardboard I had spray painted the golf hazards on, soda boxes, beer boxes, anything that I could that was semi sturdy.

 

 

I took one of the large boxes from 7-11 and took a screw driver to it. It was a very good release of aggression! I stabbed the box 100 time with the screw driver to make holes for the Christmas lights.

 

 

I asked Gabriel to take a picture of me poking the Christmas lights through the holes only to find about 90 pictures, mainly of Eli, like these when I checked my camera..... Thankfully we got one gem.

 

 

Word to the wise. Know your Christmas lights. I thought I was using the outdoor Christmas lights and had plenty of space between the lights. I did not. I ended up using two sets of lights because the lights I used only had about 4 inches of clearance between lights and wouldn't stretch between the holes. So I ended up poking more holes and adding more lights. I also used a box cutter to cut out and score a double door on the other side of the large box. One door feel off and we taped it on both sides to give it a hinge. It works well.

 

 

We added some decorative towers and two structural towers (I forgot to get pictures) You can kind of see them on the sides. They were composed of two diaper boxes each. An unopened box for weight and a empty box for height. Then I taped the think cardboard tubes on top of them in a way to add support to hold weight on top. You can see those making the ten structures on top. We then covered the top with a sheet and taped it to the two large end boxes.

 

 

This is an inside view of the support towers. I then added another think cardboard tube held between the two standing tubes to make a roof like support system. Let me clarify on the tubes. I have no clue where they came from my husband brought home a big box full of them one day from work. I believe they are tubes for mailing posters.

 

 

Finished fort. I just couldn't capture how awesome this thing is in pictures.

 

That's the side so you can see the general structure.

 

Gabee decided it was a light saber factory and has been coloring the white tubes into light sabers for 2 days now.

Grand Total = FREE!

Next up, Modeling Chocolate, Pool Noodle Light Sabers, and Blue Goo!