Homemade Playmat: Ready for Christmas

I completed the train table last weekend! I'm so very excited about this present, and I really hope Sebastian likes it. It was actually really easy and cheap to put together - a little time consuming, but easy. I made all the roads, trees, houses and the school house out of felt, and I glued it with craft glue to the larger piece of felt. I attached velcro to the back of the playmat and squares of velcro to the table.

 

And oh yes, the table! We painted two coats of chalkboard paint to the top of the table. It looks really nice, and hopefully will be durable.

 

My little guy is just starting to get really into coloring and playing with his trains, so I think this will be a great present. There's a shelf underneath which will house a couple of plastic bins to store extra trains and cars, and a smaller one to hold chalk.

 

I can't wait to see his face on Christmas morning, and I'm hopeful that this will look really cute in our playroom. It's the last thing we needed to make the playroom complete. After the dining room serve as a playroom for a couple of months, I have to say it was one of the best moves we've made in revamping our condo to fit our needs better. Sebastian plays in there every day and night. He can pull out his bins of toys, shoot hoops, play the keyboard, read books in the chair and soon, play trains or color on his chalkboard. It's nice to have this area right in front of the kitchen, so I can cook while I keep an eye on him, and it's also nice not having to play in front of the TV (now that he can turn it on himself, if we play out in the living room play time quickly devolves into a TV battle). I haven't really missed having a formal dining room, either. We kept our dining room table in storage, so at Thanksgiving we pulled it out, put the green chair in the living room, and were able to host a big, fancy dinner. All other nights we eat in the kitchen, and that works fine for us.

 

Now that I've finally completed the train table, I have my eye on making him a play kitchen for his birthday this spring!