Homemade car town for my children

Ana has been bugging us lately to play on either the Xbox, Wii or the computer. She asks us at least once a day. I just get SO tired of her always wanting to play on video games. I don't mind if she plays here and there but if she could play video games all the time she totally would. I was thinking that we need to get back to the basics like playing with barbies, playing dress-up, playing with baby dolls, stuff that didn't have to do with video games and encouraged creative play. Then I was thinking about what I did with my siblings when I was little because we didn't have video games. My parents didn't have a lot of money and I remember when I was a little girl my older sisters made a car town for my brother, sister and I. We loved it! We played on it for hours and hours! So I got the idea to do that for my kids. I thought that this would be a new and fun way for them to play together without any video games. So I went to Walmart and found some thicker cloth called "Duck Cloth" that would be great for this. It was about $6.00 a yard. I got 1 yard of it. This is how I made it:

First I drew in pencil with the help of a yard stick the roads for the car town. Then I traced the pencil lines with a black permanent marker:

You can make your roads more interesting if you want. I just wanted to make it a little more simple.

Next we wrote down on a piece of paper what we wanted our car town to have. Like:

Hospital, Police/Fire station, School, Library, Car wash, Grocery store, Post office, Church, Gas station, etc.

We also came up with different stores that our kids would like. For example, Ana likes Dinosaurs so we did Ana's Dino (because I couldn't fit dinosaur) museum. Kimmy is always dancing so we did Kimmy's Dance studio. Hunter loves cars so we did Hunter's car wash. Claire is the baby of the family so we did Claire's baby boutique. James is into sports so we did Daddy's sports den. I like to read (when I get the chance) so we did Liz's library and also because of the L's. 

Then we had the kids pick the spots where they wanted me to draw their house. They had fun with that! So what I did next was I started drawing all of the buildings in pencil. So if I did something wrong I could kind of erase it. I would suggest drawing EVERYTHING in pencil first. I even had the kids tell me what they wanted their house to look like and then I drew it according to what they wanted. They loved that! Here is what it looks like with everything in pencil. Look really close because its hard to see. you can click on the picture and it will go bigger.

The last thing I did was trace everything I did in pencil with different color permanent markers. I had the kids tell me what colors they wanted their house to be. They thought that was pretty cool! The kids could NOT wait until I was done with the whole thing! They hovered around me almost the entire time I was working on it. They were super excited when I was finally done with it!! I was pretty happy with it and thought it turned out great! It took me a good 3 hours to do. Not too bad. The kids have had SO much fun playing on it. I find myself getting down on the floor with them and playing. :) Now when ever we go to the store we have to go see what cars they have to so we can add more cars to our car town.

Here's what it looked like all done:

Here is a closer look at the car town I did:

  

I am not a very good artist, but this was the best I could do. ;) What's most important is that my kiddos love it! And it's more personal to our family then buying a generic one at the store. :)