After travelling all over the world with Miss G {hello 36 hour treks to and from Kuwait!}, a six hour road trip really isn’t a big deal to us. That being said, our little lady is a huuuuuuuuuuge talker, and sometimes you just need to have a moment of quiet {or a moment to talk to your spouse} while in the car. That, and sometimes our little Sam Jam just needs a moment of silence in order to fall asleep… Big sisters’ animated stories and ramblings are much too interesting to doze off to {obviously}!
Have I mentioned that Grae and I love putting together homemade gifts? Because we do. We love it so much in fact, that despite the fact that we had actually already purchased a gift for today’s party, we decided we would make something instead – just yesterday afternoon! Today’s birthday boy is a car lover through and through, so we used that for our inspiration. He also {like many of our international friends} is often on the go, so we decided to make him a portable car play kit so that he has a fun and easy way to take his beloved toys with him – whether it be to a restaurant, on an airplane, or over to a friend’s house.
I feel like Miss G and I have been making homemade gifts like they’re going out of style lately {and I love it}. This most recent one is exactly like the portable activity kit we gave her little friend Evelyn on her second birthday, only this one contains slightly different activities – things we thought a busy 3 year old would enjoy. Now obviously the activities included in this kit are not just for boys {in fact, Miss G has already announced that she’d like the activity kit I’m making her to be exactly like this one} – it’s just that we gifted this particular kit to her little friend who happens to be a boy.
Gracen’s little weekly play date buddy turned 4 today, which called for another homemade gift. Like almost all of our expat friends here in Kuwait, he and his family will be headed home for the summer shortly, so we wanted to make him something he could easily take along and hopefully use during the journey back to Canada. Since he and Miss G play with LEGO pretty much every time they’re together, we figured a portable LEGO kit would make a great gift.
Another birthday party means another opportunity for Grae and I to come up with a fun, homemade gift {which we love doing}. This time around, we decided we’d put together a tinkle trunk filled with fun dress-up costumes and accessories similar to what Grae has in her dress-up station. We were really excited about the idea until we realized that the birthday girl is headed home to the States just a few days after her party. A tickle trunk simply wouldn’t do. After some brainstorming, we opted for something she could bring along on her travels – a portable activity kit! Our goal was to keep it as compact and lightweight as possible, while cramming in tons of fun {and quiet} things she could explore and play with during her travels. Here’s what we included…
With our last crafting class of the year coming up in just a few short days, Miss G and I wanted to prepare some simple gifts to share with the little friends she’s made at Bright Minds over the last few months. We adore play dough and had so much fun with our larger scale play dough snowman building activity that we decided to make miniature versions in easy to pack cases – everything needed to build play dough snowmen in small locking lid containers for some holiday fun on the go {or at home, really}.
First, we gathered up our materials… A double batch of our yummy-smelling vanilla mint play dough, awesome divided locking lid containers, beads, buttons, googly eyes, orange matchsticks, small twigs, and miniature scarves cut from inexpensive felt.
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We found our locking divided containers at City Star here in Kuwait, but these Sistema Klip It Split Food Containers on Amazon look similar. I love them because they’re small, easy for little ones to seal and unseal, and perfect for packing in a purse, diaper bag, or carry-on. Plus, they keep the play dough and the ‘building accessories’ {as Miss G calls them} separate, which I like too.
To get started, I added a big ball of vanilla mint play dough to one compartment of each container.
Then Gracen added the accessories to the other. To keep things uniform, we came up with a ‘recipe’ of what should be added to each container (2 googly eyes, 2 matchstick carrot noses, 2 twig arms, 5 beads, 5 buttons, and 1 felt scarf), which turned out to be great counting practice for Miss G.
This is how our kits looked when we were done with them.
Afterwards, Gracen matched up the lids, locked them on, and I used a regular glue stick to adhere some very basic labels I made and printed to fit our containers. And that was it – simple but cute gifts for our friends to enjoy over the holidays, be it at home, on an airplane, and while waiting in restaurants and doctors’ offices. I am so keeping one of these to bring along on our upcoming trip to Germany. In fact, I’m thinking I may create a couple of other little ‘play on-the-go’ kits too! ☺
Of course the one I tucked away for our trip didn’t remain a secret for long…
In fact, Grae’s already had several play dough snowman building sessions with her little kit.
Now let’s just hope the excitement continues until Christmas break rolls around and we board that plane!
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