For many years, when I watched HGTV, I would tell myself that if only I had a staple gun, I would be reupholstering stuff left and right. And then my husband bought me a staple gun for Christmas two years ago. Twenty-five months later — yesterday — I used it for the first time.

We have had this little art table for the kids since Julian was about two.  My sister bought it at Michael’s, painted it, and decoupaged it with pages from Goodnight Moon. It was cute, but the paper layer didn’t last. A couple years after, Ryan scraped the pages off, sanded it, and sprayed it with chalkboard paint.

Everything I’ve seen online with chalkboard paint seems so charming, but the reality is that the chalk dust makes a mess if it’s the surface of an indoor table.  Chalk in a dining room = not so good. Also? Here’s how the chalkboard painted surface looked after a while.

Covering this table with oilcloth makes it easy to clean, perfect for art projects and snacking. It’s a kid-sized table, coming up just above my knee. I cut the cloth and stapled the edges down. That’s it.

Oilcloth (or laminated cotton in some cases) comes in so many fun patterns. This etsy store is full of them.

Stapling not going to happen? Just throw the oil cloth on the floor and have the kids get messy there.

This project idea is part of our Makin’ It series, weekly posts with ideas for things you can make. Baby too young for this one? Check the list of DIY ideas for a Makin’ It project you like.

To accommodate our holiday guests in our tiny dining room with its four-top table, my husband ordered a new camping table from Amazon.com. It arrived in a cardboard box big enough for a 7-year old boy and a 4-year old girl to lie down in. How do I know this? Because my kids got in the box, of course.

In an excellent post about the most basic and universally loved toys on GeekDad, the author says:

Boxes can be turned into furniture or a kitchen playset. You can turn your kids into cardboard robots or create elaborate Star Wars costumes. A large Box can be used as a fort or house and the smaller Box can be used to hide away a special treasure. Got a Stick? Use it as an oar and Box becomes a boat. One particularly famous kid has used the Box as a key component of a time machine, a duplicator and a transmogrifier, among other things.

He notes humorously that this toy can be procured easily from Amazon.

[They] include one with virtually every order I place there.

Here are a few inspirational photos of cardboard boxes, the most versatile toy in your house this week.

from The Imagination Tree

to make while keeping your box-sitting toddler company: cardboard thank you postcards (via designsponge)

homemade marble run – this one is from a cereal box by Made by Joel

Cardboard shape sorter from Parents.com (this article has 11 more box ideas, but is super annoying to navigate due to the ads and one-idea-per-page format.)

I love the Dr. Seuss feel of this silly bedroom set. Make a few “frames” for kids art? via Tip Junkie who has 32 cardboard box ideas posted.

Probably not feasible for most of us, but we do have a handful of small people, furniture and animals who could inhabit a box, via Busy Being Fabulous

Another one from Parents.com. Unless you are a stylist for Parents magazine, your cardboard kitchen won’t look this cute, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

Have you come up with anything cool to do with cardboard?

Update: Two fabulous friends shared their boxes with us over on our Facebook page.

Cori’s kids show us in fast-motion what fun a box can be.

Mike knocks our socks off with this pirate ship he made for Emme to navigate puddles at the park.

Grammy tries to read to wiggly gigglers

As your next weekly challenge, we’re sharing a favorite activity from our book, The Rookie Mom’s Handbook:

In the long run, Grandma, baby and Mom and Dad will all look forward to this annual tradition. Since you’re still a rookie, however, do this to the degree you feel comfortable.

How it works: You and your partner plan an overnight trip. It might just be to a hotel in a nearby city. Your baby’s grandparents come stay at your place, saving you the trouble of packing up your baby’s things. Train them on usage of the car seat and the coffeemaker and LET GO.

Encourage Grandma and Grandpa to establish special traditions with your child.

Add a night to Camp Grandma each year so that you take a two-night trip next year, and by the time your child is fourteen, dear Grandma will get a two-week fill of adolescent merriment.

If you’re a rookie grandma, we recommend The Granny Diaries to head off potential power struggles with rookie moms such as ourselves (because we know we can be difficult — sorry about that!). Here’s our review.

Are you ready to leave your baby for the night? Tell us about it!

This challenge, your 48th, goes out to all the urban mamas who need a scavenger hunt for the day.

Take a picture of your baby in front of graffiti – as explained by Dutch, the dad who writes on Sweet Juniper. He has an awesome set of Flickr photos that inspired us to do this. We set out to find the best graffiti in Berkeley and packed up the boys and our cameras. Now, we have to get really brave and try all four five kids!

Please share your attempts here in our comments or on the Rookie Moms Facebook page. If you have any tips on getting your kid to stay put while you take the pictures, let’s hear them.

Your baby too young? Choose another challenge.

Too wet to go out? Too cold to play ball? Too sick for preschool? With a can of shaving cream or a bar of soap, here is lots of good fun that is funny:

Microwave Ivory Soap. Take a cue from our friend Wendy and put a quarter bar of Ivory soap in the microwave for 90 seconds. Ooze. Squish. Awesome. Great for preschoolers through adults. Though it is incredibly cool, Wendy cautions, “Be forewarned — it only takes about 5 minutes, so don’t plan your day around it or anything.” Do it yourself or click the picture to see the incredible results.

Squishy fun. For toddlers who can’t grasp the amazement of microwave science, spray a dollop of shaving cream into a bowl and let them go for it. Sensory nirvana. Details and more pictures at champuru.net.

Santa beard. Seasonal fun for all ages. Pant on a shaving cream beard and take pictures. Could this be your very clever holiday card?

I’ll be sharing a few foamy art projects in two weeks, in the meantime, what clean fun can you get into with shaving cream or soap?

[photos by wendolonia, champuru, and portraitsimple]

If you’re up for making a quickie toy for your toddler to push around, read on to find out how to make a doggie rolling toy from a simple paper plate.

Materials:

• flimsy paper plate
• markers or crayons
• scissors
• hole punch
• drinking straw
• two small empty spools

Instructions:

1. Fold the plate in half. Draw the outline of the profile of a dog’s head and body on the plate so that the fold will run down the center of the dog’s back. Cut out and decorate your dog with markers or crayons.
2. Hold the front legs together and punch a hole in them 1/4 inch from the bottom. Do the same for the back legs.
3. Cut the drinking straw in half. Slip one piece of the straw through a hole in the front leg. Put a spool over the straw, then put the straw through the hole in the other leg. Even out the straw and trip so 1/2 inch sticks out from each leg. Repeat this process for the back.

Now your dog will stand up on the spools. Give him a little push and watch him roll.

Extra fun variations:

• Make other four-legged creatures like cats, cows, or horses.
• Make two roller toys and race them. Which is faster, the tortoise or the hare?

This post is reprinted from Make These Toys: 101 Clever Creations Using Everyday Items by Heather Swain by arrangement with Perigee, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., Copyright (c) 2010 Heather Swain.

I saw this on my local parenting listserv (no further source available) and couldn’t resist typing it up.

Argh! Shiver me timbers, Monday is Talk Like a Pirate Day, so I offer a thematic scavenger hunt for little kids.

Some folks might tell you that to be a pirate, all you need is an eye patch. Or a parrot. Or a peg leg. But in my house, all you really need is the head scarf (and please, don’t call it a ribbon!) Holden got this little outfit as part of a pirate-themed birthday party he attended. And luckily Milo got a matching ensemble.

When we want to indulge our inner pirate, we don’t need to go any further than the house because a scavenger hunt can be as easy as you want to make it.

My friend Sunny says that she and her then-four-year old could wile away the minutes with their indoor hunts:

I make a list of things around the house (mirror, refrigerator, etc.) and ask him to find these things, then he crosses them off the paper. I try to challenge him a little by saying, “where do you see your reflection?”, “what keeps the food cold?”. You get the picture. He loves to cross things out. We did this one day for about 1/2 hour.

If thinking of household items is not your specialty, I have a brief list for you to adapt (oh yeah, worth noting, these are things you FIND, not things you grab and put in a box) — make it longer or shorter based on what your kid can handle:

1. bathroom mirror (where do you see your reflection when you brush your teeth?)
2. refrigerator (what keeps our food cold?)
3. front door (where do we leave the house?)
4. kitchen sink (where do we wash the dishes?)

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I originally wrote this post for the Savvy Source blog and it appeared there when my big boy was only three. Awww. I share it with you now as an attempt to be on maternity leave from my mommy blog.

A few weeks ago, a stroke of genius hit and I laid these “train tracks” down on the rug in Julian’s room. At four-and-three-quarters, he is over the whole Thomas thing, but larger scale train action definitely still turns him on.

All you need is a roll of painter’s tape, the kind that removes from walls with minimal damage.

As you can see, Julian has he has an extensive dress up collection (see his cowboy hat, santa hat, and tiger suit?) , and he put his engineer get-up on every day after school for about a week. We collected all of the stools and small chairs in the house and lined them up in rows of two. He sat in the front with a cardboard box that was his “control panel”.

The icing on the cake was the hole puncher we gave him. He passed out magazine reply card inserts for us to use as tickets. When he announced “Tickets, please!” we would present our paper for him to punch a hole through. Somehow this made it all very official. I think a toddler close to two would be inspired to play imaginatively these tracks, too, but of course without the hole puncher aspect.

Inspired by the idea to turn a Pack ‘N Play into a ball pit, Rebeca from averageparent.com took it in a new direction. She takes an armful of her son’s stuffed animals and puts them into a cardboard box, or empty laundry basket, to create a cozy play area. He loves it, and it’s a good sensory activity as well. If she really wants to mix it up, she’ll push him around the room in his new seat.

Rebeca's son is very happy

Rebeca is a self-described “average mom living a busy life in the Midwest” but her site averageparent.com is stuffed full of above average goodies. She has a busy toddler (pictured above), a husband, and two spirited beagles who all keep her on her toes.

Thanks Rebeca for sharing this fun and EASY idea with us!

Whether you’re in charge of toddler playgroup or just trying to balance some one-on-one playtime with all the other things you’ve got going on, we have a few tips and tricks for you.

One more nugget of hard-earned wisdom that didn’t come up during our video is to keep all breakable glasses out of the play room. I remember the time that I broke a full water glass and had to clear out all the kiddos into the other room so I could use the mega shop-vac and clean up the damage. More fun than wiping someone’s tushy? Debatable.

Please share any other playtime tips with us in the comments!

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We made this video with the folks at LEGO/DUPLO (as you can probably guess); the kids in the video are not ours but the ideas are.

In theory, my family likes to camp. We celebrated Holden’s first birthday with a camp-out barbecue bash. We camped in a big group when I was pregnant with Milo (pregnant camping is questionable). More often, we fall apart trying to reserve a spot, pack the gear, be healthy, and coordinate with friends.

One solution: Pitch a tent in your own backyard!

Alec reads to baby Holden in the tent

There are many benefits to this modified camping adventure:

• It’s great to do a practice run to see if you and your baby can handle it
• No such thing as forgotten gear
• No traffic or carsickness
• You can cook on your own grill for dinner (with cheater access to a fridge)
• You can bail really easily if needed
• Indoor toilets that are actually pretty clean
• Less laundry and dishes

If you’re so inspired, you can register with the Great American Backyard Campout and plan your night under the stars to coincide with a greater happening to support the National Wildlife Federation on June 25, 2011. Frankly, I think the benefit of being in your own back yard is that you can do it on your own terms and timeline. And even walk to a cafe for brunch!

Related activity: Go camping with a baby (includes kickass gear packing checklist).

Find more fun outdoorsy ideas on Babycenter for Big Day Out.