DIY shoebox fire station (City of Friends)

 (August 25, 2012) Nico has been watching City of Friends on the Quebec French kids channel for a while and has been asking about a fire truck since then. I looked everywhere in town and the next town even, I couldn’t find a fire truck for his birthday. But yesterday we went to Walmart in the US and found a whole fire station kit from their own brand Kid Connection for only 4.97$! Of course he flipped out when he saw it, so we got it and had to open it in store so he could play with 2 vehicles at a time while sitting in the basket. It has 1 firehouse building (front half), 4 vehicles, 1 helicopter and 14 accessories (signs, fences, barrels, etc). Once home we pulled it all out and he played for a good hour with it, but it was lacking structure. While I was sitting with him playing, I looked up and saw an old shoe box of mine he played with earlier in the morning and

This is a box with a lid attached, I wanted to make the front yard with sky blue background, but my blue construction paper was too dark so I used white cardstock and painted sky blue. There are no measures as each box is a different size so just make your paper fit. My mother wanted/did to cut grass out of green construction paper and 1 green tree top, Alex did the tree trunks and the rest of the tree tops while I measured and painted. I painted the inside of the box red, to signify the firehouse section and the lid green, to show the backyard.

I cut holes for the doors and then I pondered how to make the firehouse stick to the box…. with the flaps I just cut from the doors! Still attached to the box, cut to fit under the station and make one more (upside down one compared to the doors) to attach the roof, stick with good clear tape, 1 piece per flap was enough to be solid and voilà! (See pic)

I could have gotten fancy and decorated the inside but all I put was the fire station logo that I cut out of his kit, very nice sign, and stuck it in the corner inside with rolled tape behind.

We just rolled tape behind the tree stuff and stuck it to the blue background which was also taped, I tacky glued the grass. Used a Q-tip and red paint to make the trees apple trees for Elphie, the elephant. If you watch you know she LOVES apples. Alex also cut a blue circle for her pool and did screenshots of Elphie and Gi and put them to a good size and we printed them on cardstock. Cut them out and you got yourself characters

We, of course, got told that Raffe should be there and not Gi and that Elphie is too big for the basket of the fire truck, but I think he liked it

If you do this, we’d LOVE to see a photo of it. Email it
to us or post it on our Facebook page. We’d love to do a Facebook album, a Pinterest board and a page of your creations

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