The Star Wars Party

I promised my son a Star Wars party and I promised you a cardboard box creation. 

This time the boxes all came from Auntie Leanne, who moved house recently and brought home boxes from her workplace. This worked out really well for me, as I then had three boxes the same size and I used another single box which was kind of short and stocky.

The great thing about three boxes the same size is that you can stack them to make something tall. See if you can guess what they turned into.

To give credit where credit is due, I need to tell you that my inspiration came from these pictures.

These are templates for small paper toys. You cut them out, fold along the folds apply glue to the tabs and then you have little droids. They come from this great blog and there are lots to choose from. All I've done is adapt the pictures for my purpose.

I turned my boxes inside out, stacked the three matching boxes and stuck them together, shaped the top front flaps and painted them. Then I drew and painted the illustrations on the front and sides of the boxes. The whole thing was done in about seven hours.

The children were very impressed. Mars wanted to be Yoda and Venus was Ahsoka, a Jedi padawan who is a character from The Clone Wars series.

The droids were so popular that the children lined up to have photographs with them!

We also hosted the world's cutest Darth Vadar. That's Bumblebee, who is two and a bit now.

And this is Wicket, my new nephew. At twelve weeks old he is the most adorable Ewok ever seen.

 There's just no denying it. We are a Star Wars family, through and through.

Cardboard Boxes

People say that cats love cardboard boxes but let me tell you, cats hate cardboard boxes compared to how much I love them.

I collect them, I store things in them, I never want to throw them out just in case they might be useful for something.

My favourite thing to do with cardboard boxes is to build with them.

Earlier this year the X-Man had a pirate birthday party. So I got myself a couple of big boxes and spent about nine hours transforming them into something awesome.

Here they are, the Jellyguts and the Squidbones, pirate vessels ready to set sail. That's Venus poking her head out of the front of the Jellyguts.

One of the boxes was from Nana's new heater. The other was a fridge box salvaged from the skip out the back of a local whitegoods shop. I cut them open, turned them inside out and taped them back up, making a long point at one end. Then I cut portholes and flaps for extra fun, and drew all the details on with a couple of big black markers. The flags are made from long cardboard tubes and large sheets of black paper. If you look very closely you'll see one of those skulls is missing a tooth, the same tooth that Venus was missing at the time.

At the time I thought they were a bit small and that really only two or maybe three kids at a time would fit in each one. I forgot to factor in the size of your average three to five year old. When the pirate ships came out to play the Jellyguts was immediately occupied by three mermaids, and Squidbones, the bigger boat, managed to hold no less than five boys at any one time. In fact, the hatch that I had cut into the top of the ship which was 30cm square (the one Venus is standing in) had two small boys sticking out of it most of the time.

There were black balloons which quickly became cannon balls and there was an awful lot of swashbuckling going on. 

I think the best thing about building things out of cardboard boxes is that they are easily transformed, and when the kids first clapped eyes on them, they all started to shout "Pirate ships! Pirate ships!" None of them looked and saw cardboard boxes.

Then when Venus decided to have a witches and wizards birthday party, and by "decided to" I mean Ms Awesome and I suggested it to her and she said "Yes! Yes! Yes!", I got a bit ambitious. I'd seen some fairly impressive pictures on the internet and I became convinced I could build my little girl a witch's castle. Out of cardboard boxes. Of course. Doesn't everyone?

In the end I used three dishwasher boxes, two fridge boxes, one cot box (thanks, Auntie Marvellous) and one TV cabinet box (thanks, Auntie Leanne), and I produced a castle that exceeded my expectations.

Here are the raw cardboard boxes. I cut them all open and turned them inside out, so I could paint on the plain side and not have to worry about painting over text.

Here are some of the boxes in progress. You can see one of the turrets and one of the smaller buildings. I worked out that with the boxes I had I could manage two turrets with an arch, and two smaller individual buildings. I wanted to paint stones on all of them but just ran out of time, so the smaller buildings have their stones drawn on instead.

The finished turrets and archway. I knew they'd look good, but I never expected them to look as good as this. I added a string of artificial roses across the archway to soften it a bit. I cut plenty of peekholes in all the buildings. One of the turrets has a "secret tunnel" and the two smaller buildings have doors.

I rearranged my loungeroom so that the pieces of the castle formed a rough square inside the room. I can't tell you what the guests all said when they first saw it, but I know my kids were impressed when we installed it the day before the party. I can also tell you that those two little buildings were extremely popular. At the time Grandpa told me that all the kids were climbing in and out of those things constantly, playing peekaboo with each other and their parents and generally having a whale of a time. Again, that little house on the left had five kids crammed in it at one point, and they were all having a blast.

This project took about twenty four hours to complete over the space of five days. I learned a lot in that time. I learned that painting takes a lot longer than you think it will, and that you really really really need to think about the size of your work before you build it downstairs in the rumpus room. The large turret on the left was too tall to stand up in the room where I was secretly working away, so it had to be partially disassembled, moved, rebuilt, and then the painting had to be finished upstairs. In addition to that the small building on the left was just wider than our doorways, as it turned out. So getting the whole thing upstairs was quite an adventure.

Having all these experiences behind me, I'm beginning to think I can make just about anything out of cardboard boxes. Mars is having a Star Wars party in about three weeks. I wonder what I can build between now and then... I'll let you know.

Dad

My Dad is gone. Just like that. 

One big heart attack, and several smaller ones while the lovely firemen and ambulance officers tried to keep his heart going, and then thirty six hours later in hospital the machines were all turned off and he slipped away. He was only 62 years old.

That was about two weeks ago and I can only now start talking about it, or thinking about it, without crying. Although, if I'm honest, I'm still crying.

Today I had a breakthrough. We are spending a long weekend down on the coast. I took the car to a remote lookout and I sat there on my own, but not really on my own, looking out over the ocean on this overcast gloomy day. I had a long chat with my Dad and I screamed at the sky and I cried. I cried a lot. I tried to get it all out. All my anger and all my sorrow.

My heart feels like it broke into a thousand pieces and they'll never go back to the way they were.

We gave Dad the most beautiful funeral service. He was a high school teacher and then a university lecturer, and he was also a member (and president at one time or another) of several clubs. So there were hundreds of people at the church and about a hundred and fifty at the afternoon tea that followed.

It was amazing to see so many family members and friends, so many people I hadn't seen for years and so many people who loved my Dad.

I honestly don't know what I'm going to do without him.

While all this was going on, something else was happening too. 

In the space of five days Venus lost both of her front teeth. Guess who's rocking the world's cutest lisp?

I guess life really does just keep going on.