I sat down with my little guy in his tent last week and we discussed things you would have when camping and made a list of things we could add to his room. His list consisted of campfire, chairs, tent, trees, thing that keeps the juice boxes cold, fishing poles and bears. I decided to tackle chairs and a campfire first. I picked up the chairs from Academy Sports. Ethan being his opinionated little self said he didn’t want them in his room because “I only like orange”. I of course bought green chairs anyway, they match and now that they are in his room he hasn’t complained.

The campfire was very simple and was made from leftover materials. I started by cutting a cardboard circle out of a box from the recycling pile in the garage. I painted a medium brown base, let it dry and finished it up by swirling a dark brown around the edges and a reddish brown towards the center. I worked those in until I achieved the look I was going for. While that was drying I gave the limbs we picked up from the yard a coat of polyurethane. The polyurethane makes a HUGE difference in the look of the branch. I left the branches to dry and using my hot glue gun glued the river rocks around the edge of the cardboard. I followed that up by hot gluing the branches into place and then cutting flames out of tissue paper and putting them in. The campfire turned out cute, last night the kids were upstairs “roasting” mini marshmallows on chop sticks. It is perfect for imaginative playtime on cold winter days.

The next thing I am going to tackle for his room is a little greenery. I’ve been playing around with an idea on how to make my own trees.