My daughter loves to tell me everyday when we get home that she wants to do “something fun”. I am not in the least surprised that hanging out with me while I am half present in her activity and half doing housework, cooking dinner, and whatever else comes up each day, is not what she considers fun. Yesterday after a fun trip to the zoo, lunch with the elephants and an hour drive to encourage nap time, I found myself wanting to do “something fun” with her. It was Saturday after all and we can’t do housework all the time can we? Suddenly, I remembered that our dogs are happy new owners of two very large dog beds which arrived in two very large boxes!!!

I have been saving some Pinterest ideas on cardboard play houses specifically for a time when a big box and some free time landed on our door step. Here was my chance. Two year old in tow, I asked her ” Do you want to make a play house for you and Bear?” to which she delightfully answered “Yea!” I must confess that when I said “lets make a play house”, she heard “go find toys to play with in a box” and I thought “I get to create with cardboard, scissors and tape!” Luckily, we were both right.

We started by looking at the two boxes and she chose the one she liked the best. As I started to cut into the box she became interested in the process. We drew on the outside where the door and windows were going to go. With each step, she had to test out the inside of the play house, while I consulted Pinterest. We also evaluated what the house needed. First and foremost, a door and some more light. We cut out extra windows everywhere! Second, the house needed some exterior decor. While I wasn’t in the mood to get out the paint, I was more then happy to tear up tape so that the windows and door got some trim. We agreed that the house needed something fresh and added a flower box and some pipe cleaner flowers under the window. Lastly, we grabbed some battery powered string lights from another adventure and strung them through the house for a bit more light.

I can proudly say that my daughter and her bear have now spent a couple of hours in and out of the play house. Bear specifically takes a lot of naps in there!

I enjoyed this activity with my kiddo so much. We created something new from something old. We created a space for her to play with her bear. I spent time with her fully present and excited to use my hands and my years of experience.

While I am still trying to pinpoint the true meaning of the word creativity, I really enjoyed the “doing” yesterday. Heres what I experienced: Creativity for me is active, it helps that I had multiple colors of tape and some pipe cleaners around the house to spruce up our playhouse, but those weren’t required for us to start. I had an idea, I did a little bit of research on Pinterest, and we just started. There were failures, for example,  I didn’t cut the side panels of the roof into perfect triangles. Instead we worked around our challenges until they became essential features of our design;  roof had to be a bit higher, and the holes in the roof were the perfect place to string the lights! Is the house perfect? No way! Will I build another? Oh yea!  Creativity is an iterative process. Yesterday we solved our problem of doing “something fun” with this iteration of play house. Today we will play in and around that playhouse. Maybe we will learn more about cardboard doors that we will keep in mind for next time we break out a box and scissors.

How long with the playhouse stay in the middle of the kitchen? Probably not as long as the dog beds, at least until something else fun comes along!