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.
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.
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
