Kara and Mike's Happenings: Boxing Day Gift

In our new house, I have this super awesome room that is completely devoted to being my craft room. My Mom used it to sew and iron curtains for 3 rooms in the house. Well, over the last couple of weeks, I tackled my first big craft project in this house and, ironically, spent no time using my craft room for it. The room, however, did make a great storage space for supplies when I had to hide the project away. I did this every day after working on it as the project was meant to be a Christmas gift for Dylan and I didn't want him to see it.

The reason I didn't end up using my craft room was simply due to the scale. It was too huge for my craft table. I worked mostly on our kitchen island and the floor. What was this grand scale project? A car mat for Dylan.

I was inspired to do this by a crafting blogger's mat. The one she made out of felt was so cute and seemed fairly straightforward to make. Plus, it brought back great memories of the one I (and my brothers) played for hours on as a child. The one I played on was painted on fabric. Now, I can be a crafty gal but I'm definitely no great artist when it comes to paint on canvas so I went with the crafty felt way.

I started planning this in plenty of time. One night in November, after Dylan went to sleep, I headed to the fabric store and bought a stack of different colored felts, with a coupon, for around $12.

Then, my lovely pile of felt sat in the bag, in my craft room, for a few weeks untouched. One night during the first couple of weeks of December, I cut the base of the mat, the strips that would be used as edging and the roads.

The Road Map
(See my helper in the top left corner?)

Then the project sat untouched for another week or two. There just seemed to be so much going on in December and my energy level was just not keeping up. But, nothing like a deadline to fuel the fire of productivity. The week before Christmas, I kicked productivity into high gear. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite enough time and I needed another couple of hours to finish. I did this during Dylan's nap time the day after Christmas so he got a nice Boxing Day gift from Mom and Dad. (Even though it was my project, Mike was a great helper\assistant in it so he did do a lot to get it ready for Dylan too.)

What's in the bag?
(You can see the post Christmas mess still lingering in the house.)

Wow! That's Cool!

It's a blanket!

After explaining it was not a blanket, but Dylan's Town,
a place for him to play with all of his cars, he excitedly jumped
all over it. Then asked, "what's a town?"

Getting the Tour of Dylan's Town

Yay! More jumping and excitement.

While I was disappointed to have missed giving to him on Christmas, Mike was absolutely correct that it would be even more special of a gift to be given to him outside of the rush. The joy he had opening it made the hours of cutting, hand cramping from cutting, gluing, burns from gluing and late nights all worth it!

So, now I present to you "Dylan's Town." Here's your tour of Dylan's car mat with which I hope he will get many years of fun.