DIY Lego Table

It's no surprise here that we love to play Legos. And by we, I mean me. I have always loved to play Legos. I can remember when my little brother and I used to watch the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and build us some bad ass Lego towns.

So when Cruz finally got into Legos, I was one happy mama. I mean, what's the fun of becoming a parent if you can't play like you're a kid again? It's the best.

As Cruz's interest increased, I felt it only right that we blow out our Lego set up.

I had searched online and found a ton of different options - some weren't exactly what I wanted and others were expensive, so I opted to make our own and enlisted my mother-in-law's help. I also wanted something that could be used on the floor or would fit over top of his existing train table in case he wanted to stand around it, so we used that size as our gauge.

And around 11pm the Sunday night before Christmas, we got started.

{ONE}
Place the Lego base plates where you want them on the particle board, outline with pencil.

Important note: if you are putting the base plates next to each other, use Legos to connect them so you can make sure you put them the right distance apart. If you don't do this, there is a good chance you won't be able to make really awesome, huge Lego houses or bridges connecting one base plate to another. Trust me on this. (see below)

{TWO}
Lift off the Lego base plates and paint the exposed areas with gray paint for your road. It doesn't have to be pretty. We also painted in between the base plates because there was some exposed space showing. Oh, and it's a good idea to have a drop cloth down so you don't paint all over your kitchen island.

{THREE}
Place the base plates on the particle board and hot glue them down. I recommend two people for this - one to apply the glue and the other to hold the base plate and then stick it to the particle board.

Note: once we glued one of the base plates down, we applied glue to the other, quickly set it down next to the other and spaced it with the Legos to ensure we did it correctly.

{FOUR}
Use your stencil and white paint to add the white dotted lines to your road. Allow to dry. (I didn't get a picture of this, but you can see the finished product below.

{FIVE}
Cover and surprise the heck out of your favorite little one!

Since we technically gave this to him the Monday before Christmas, we told him the Elves had delivered it to Grandma Carol's house since they knew we were going to be there before Christmas day. He was pretty excited. And since I knew we were going to do this, I told family they could gift him with Lego sets for Christmas to get him started, which worked perfectly.

And  it's quickly become one of my our favorite toys around here and since has gained quite a few new Lego sets. He literally plays with it every single day and as much as I hate to say it, it's taken residence in our main living room which makes for an eye sore, but is oh so convenient.

Here is a list of most of the items we used and Duplo sets we have since added. Some not pictured here.

• Lego Duplo base plate
• Planes set
• Ambulance set
• Construction worker set
• Farm set
• Fire station set
• Jake Hideout set
• Batman Batcave set
• Batman: The Joker set
• We built the Zoo, Hospital, Jail and House from hand-me-down sets 

This was a fairly easy project, especially if I could do it. So enlist a pal, prep with a lot of wine, get your creative juices flowing and have some fun!


It's the Little Things

Christmas Cheer...and A Lot of Other Christmas Stuff {Part Deux}

 

Alright, now onto the good stuff - the Christmas celebrations. As per our usual, we had four Christmases in four days. While it can be a bit hectic only getting to spend a day in each location, I can tell you we've done it this way for so long that we wouldn't know any different. Plus, I love being able to see ALL of our family over the actual Christmas holiday itself and not in the weekends before and after.

{If you are dying to read more about our early December happenings, you can find part one here.}

Here goes....

Christmas Eve3 (Sunday before - Christmas on the farm)
Sunday morning was spent on the farm in northeast Nebraska at Nick's grandpa's house. Per our norm, we had a day full of eating, drinking and playing cards. Cruz had a great time opening presents, not just his own, but helping everyone else there since he was the only one under age 26. He loved the black cat grandpa picked up for him in a gas station and did not like the Sully monster that came with his Monster's University movie. To be exact, I believe he said "Sully needs to go back in the box" no fewer than five times. That didn't stop uncle Mook from torturing him with it. Afterwards, we had to go check out the cows in the field and the masses of cats that have shown up to help grandpa "mouse" on the farm.

 

 

Christmas Eve Eve (Monday)
This was a relaxed day at Nick's mom's place which also included more eating, drinking and some Cards Against Humanity. Prior to all that nonsense, we made a trip to the movies - the guys went to Anchorman 2 and the ladies & Cruz hit up Frozen. This was the first time we've taken Cruz to a movie in a theater since he was still an infant and he was so good! I'm sure it didn't hurt that we had the biggest bucket of popcorn ever to occupy him.



 

 

 





Christmas Eve
The morning of Christmas Eve we headed to my parent's house and were the first to arrive so Cruz had lots of time to himself with Grandma and Papa. As soon as my brother showed up, he immediately took off my niece's jacket and revealed a "big sister" tee - ahhh, so excited they are finally expecting again as they have been trying for some time. This time next year we will have a little baby at Christmas!





Santa brought him the truck he wanted...a John Deere pick-up of course!

Christmas
After filling up with twelve three helpings of mom's egg casserole (seriously the stuff is bomb), we got on the road for Omaha to see Nick's dad's side. And as you can guess we had one last day full of food, cocktails and fun just relaxing with the fam and watching the kiddos open mountains of presents.

Ahh, my heart is just so full of love for our families after the holidays! We are very fortunate to have some of the best family to celebrate with and love every minute with them all.

Hope you all had the best holiday season ever. Merry Christmas ya filthy animals!

 

 

Christmas Cheer...and A Lot of Other Christmas Stuff {Part One}

I realize that I've missed the boat as far as Christmas recaps are concerned, but let's be honest, it wouldn't be me if I wasn't a little late to the party. Therefore, our 2013 recap will have to wait while I entertain you with all of our holiday details! =)

*****
I have to say, I really impressed myself with my Christmas cheer this year. I mean going from bah hum bug last year and not even having a tree to all-out decorating the house and just really embracing this jolly season.

Now don't go getting too excited, it's not like I hung a wreath from the grill of my car and blared Christmas music non-stop at any point over the holidays...that's just not me. Buuuuut we did go and get ourselves a real tree (even if I only half-assed decorated it), introduced C-man to Buddy the Elf & his friend Alpine the Reindeer, wrapped our hearts out while watching as many Christmas movies as possible, lumped four Christmases in four days, watched Cruz's first holiday program at school (little man rocked it!), took in a movie on Christmas Eve Eve (wouldn't mind making that a new tradition), adopted not only one but TWO families from Angels Among Us, wore our matching "Merry Christmas Ya Filthy Animals" shirts and found out we will have a new little Fuchser babe this time next year care of my brother and his wifey.

Phew. I'm tired just typing all of that.

Without further adieu, I figure this is as good a time as any to recap this past little holiday of ours. Let's get started with part one.


Cutting Down Our Tree (first real tree for the Mango family)
Ok, so we didn't get all Griswold and trek deep into the woods, selecting our tree straight from the ground or anything. But we did make our way to the local nursery to pick out a tree that was freshly chopped from their tree farm just that morning. Basically the same thing, right? Right. Little man had a blast with the large train and decor. We couldn't catch up with him darting all over the place as he just had to check everything out. 

Aftewards, at the gas station, he decided to sneak the biggest piece of jerky ever and it was out of the container and in his mouth before I could even swipe my card for his Gatorade.

Introducing Buddy the Elf (and his pal Alpine the Reindeer)
We had a great time introducing the elf to our little guy this year. While he wouldn't understand all of the crazy, fun Elf of the Shelf concepts you see plastered all over Pinterest, he did enjoy waking up and looking for his "elfie" every morning....and his mama had fun picking out locations for it. That is, when I remembered and wasn't left scrambling to throw a bag of marshmallows into a bowl for its make-believe bath. (Man, I had big plans for those marshmallows...)

 

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree (school program)
His daycare concert was just about the cutest thing ever. I doubt I have to tell you that little man stole the show and sang louder and prouder than the rest of the kiddos. Just look at him belting it out next to the little dude with his finger up his nose. Future JT? ... Maybe.

 

Santa...I Know Him!  (first time seeing Santa)
Call me the worst mama ever, but this year - yes my boy's third Christmas - was the first year we brought Cruz to see Santa.  In my defense, the first year he was like a month old, so that just seemed silly. And last year, we tried, I promise we did. But after waiting in line for a half hour we finally got close enough for C to see Santa and he was not having it. At that point, I didn't even want to try and risk a full-on meltdown.  Therefore, when we were invited to brunch at my sister & BIL's country club, we jumped at the chance to get Cruz on the old man's lap. And he loved it.  Plus he actually told Santa that he wanted a "big truck" for Christmas - prior to the exact minute he was on Santa's lap all he would tell us is that he wanted "presents", but once he was put on the spot, I tell you the boy delivered and knew he had to let the big guy know what he wanted. Smart kid.

Holiday Angels (adopting an Angels Family)
One of the traditions our little family has been doing for the past four years is adopting an Angels Among Us family for the holidays. I just love getting my spirit on and heading to the shops to pick out some clothes, toys and much needed supplies for these families. This year, not only did we adopt within our family of three, but the brothers/sisters/in laws on my husband's side decided to forego buying silly gifts for each other for a white elephant and instead put that money to adopting another family AND my parents adopted another family as well. Seriously love them all for doing this! If you've been reading for some time, you know that Angels is near and dear to my heart and I've love being involved with this organization for the past five+ years.  And I cannot tell you how special it felt to deliver the gifts to these families and hear how excited they were to receive them and be able to provide a better holiday for their kiddos. Tis the reason for the season.


*****

At risk of this being an even longer post than it already is, I will stop there and continue on with more holiday festivities manana.

Hope you all had an amazing holiday season...just typing this all out makes me want to go back and relive it all again!