Art attack

When you do a craft project for your children, is it really for them? I asked myself this question a few times while working on my latest idea: a medieval castle. The twins would have loved the box as long as it had a door to get in. If we had time to cut in a window or two, they would have laugh at us while looking out. So why did we (my husband and I) built a proper castle with a draw bridge, towers, windows and then not happy with one coat of grey paint, we also spent time adding fake stones to the paint job? Surely not for our 11 months old twins. They have never even seen a castle before!

Lately my brain has started to work in a funny way. Between the hours of 6 AM and 8 PM, I am the mum. I’m responsible, reliable, serious, busy, extremely busy, very very busy and mostly importantly, I cannot stop for a second. After 8 PM, when the boys are in bed and the husband is cooking dinner, I transform into a 5 year old who wants to build castles out of cardboard boxes. So when my husband took home a pair of coffee table in an old box, my brain started to formulate ideas, draw blue prints and imagine a world of possibilities. Apparently I have also married the right person to help with my crazy ideas, because as soon as I explained what I wanted to do, he went to the garage and reappear a few minutes later with everything we needed and more… Did we really need a spirit level to cut the windows straight?

Did we need a coat of arms to put at the entrance of the castle? Obviously not. Definitely we didn’t need multiple designs and a 30 minutes consultation on how to paint it. And were two coats of paint of the draw bridge needed, because the first “didn’t look quiet right”? I would guess not. Was it fun to do? Oh yes!

So the answer to my original question is undoubtedly no, it’s not for them. The craft project is probably something you would have liked to do as a child, but couldn’t; it is a way to unwind at the end of a long day; it is an unusual way to bond with your husband when you can’t go to the cinema anymore and finally it is a way to get amazing pictures of your twins to put on Facebook!

If you would like to attempt a craft project, I would start with something smaller. We probably spent an hour reinforcing the towers, couple more cutting windows and the bridge, 3 or 4 hours painting it and a whole week taking super cute pictures of the boys playing with it. It was definitely worthy!