Pop Up Pied-a-terre

POP UP PIED-A’-TERRE

July 12, 2013 

A few nights ago, I found myself alone at home with 5 girls growing antsy as witching hour approached.

I had ordered pizza in for dinner.

As chaos brewed, I sat staring at the mess in the kitchen. My feeble attempts at making clean up a game were quickly destroyed by my 9 year old letting me know she was on to me.

I reached for the pizza boxes to recycle when it occurred to me…great gift box.  I quickly filed it away in the I LOVE WRAPPING department of my brain.

The girls were fidgeting with the mess on the counter…the pizza boxes ending up on the floor with a 3 year old attempting to fit inside. 

Light bulb went off…POP-UP-PLAYroom.

A few months ago, we were on a real ‘shoe box-doll house making’ roll. The girls made rooms for their polly pockets out of shoe boxes (decorating with tape and stickers and paint and glitter and all of it). We stacked the boxes on top of each other after decorating, creating a house.

Shoeboxes to pizza boxes…Inspiring mind trying to change up the erupting energy, I asked if they wanted to gather supplies to make a Pop-up-playroom or better yet…a POP-UP PIED-A-TERRE for their little animals & people & furniture.

They loved the idea and started decorating away…

Painted floors, glitter windows, a plethora of possibilities…

• We used tape as our flooring for this particular one
• The girls painted white paper to use as wallpaper
• We cut small slits in both sides (in the back) to wedge corners in so our room held itself up
• We painted windows on the flaps
• We used dollhouse furniture, animals & polly pockets to play

The girls took it a step further…Using only furniture and dolls that fit when closed as well. They thought it made an excellent packable playroom. From the mouth of a 5 year old, “look Mom (as she placed the box under her arm and walked away) this is great… I can bring it in the car, to dinner, to play dates and to France… “

The recycled pizza box pop-up pied-a’-terre will go anywhere their little imaginations will take them.

Here's the process broken down by pictures: 

LOVE...

My favorite words about LOVE from the amazing Dr. Seuss…

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” 

In love … 

with life…

yourself…

one another…

Love is contagious and my 3 little girls LOVE for everything with hearts, candy and cuteness surrounded us weeks prior to February 14^th.

Valentines Day is not about lovers when you have kids…. My husband calls it a hallmark holiday… My girls however were on a mission to decide what gifts to share with their friends at school. 

When I was a kid, we made cards or if we got lucky, mom would get us a box of 100 at the store with all the Be Mines already written out.

This year these were the girls chosen ones…

“I cerealsly like you…”

mini boxes of cereal with ribbon and wooden spoon we found on etsy and homemade heart tag…

 

“I woof you…”

 mini stuffed dogs from Oriental Trading with homemade heart tags…

goody bags with stickers and treats…

girls getting their craft on…

The girls Valentine bravado sparked my creative juices flowing when my friend Jenni Kayne http://ripplustan.com/blog/view/190/valentines-day-dinner/page=3 asked me to do the kids table for her V-day Dinner. She was inspired by gift wrap I had made over the holidays and wanted us to create a table cloth with the same LOVE and hot pink splatter paint. 

Klara painting 14 ft table cloth for V-day Dinner…

My 8 year old suggested we should make gardens like Dr. Seuss would (we had recently seen Seussical the Musical).

So with the mighty Dr Seuss as our inspiration, we began creating with Pink Pom Poms…we ended up  making birds and it all just evolved from there…. Effortlessly… like all done in Love is!  

birdhouse made of cardboard, scraps of paper, felt, pom poms and lots of glue & glitter…

Birds made with feathers and lots of glitter covering some blue jays left over from Christmas wrapping….

We then needed someplace to put the birds and house, so we created magical, gardens of love in bark covered containers with live Kalanchoe, moss plants, curly willow branches to create trees with anemones w/ hot pink pomp poms glued in as center and fern green branches with painted tips hot pink and green moss.

Small glass gars were wrapped with strung pom poms and filled with Anemones with pom pom centers…

Tree of Love with party favor necklaces hanging…

Necklaces were made with hot pink sculpty and heart shaped cookie cutters with metallic hemp cord and glitter/silver bells (all supplies available at http://www.michaels.com/)

Love all wrapped up...