Mushroom House

I saw this mushroom house over on Frugal Family Fun, a blog filled with creative and doable projects for young kids, and immediately bought a tub of oatmeal.  I wanted to make the house immediately but it took me about two months to eat it all because I’m the only one who eats oatmeal, and I only eat it every other day.

I didn’t get around to making it until Christmas Eve, when I acquired a yard of red sale felt and a square of white felt from Joann’s, a paper plate stuffed with paper and cotton and secured with hot glue, and some paint. It took two or three coats of acrylic to cover up the Quaker man.  Fun side note: Eldest used believe the Quaker oats man was her grandma.  I then added plants with markers.

Then it proudly took its place under the tree with the other toys.  It didn’t get the immediate attention of the bike or the Rapunzel tower, but like other open-ended toys, it is used every single day.

Now it’s a house for  this Mickey Vinylmation figurine  and other small critters. Sometimes the oatmeal box is a Littlest Pet Shop mansion, sometimes it’s a mini Disney princess hideout, and currently it’s the house for the little chameleon from Tangled.

So cute.  And if I hadn’t just moved back, I probably would have had a lot of this stuff around already.

We just cut down the top to make it easier for little hands to manipulate the stuff inside.

Supplies and Cost:

• Oatmeal: $2 (on sale at Target, but I would have eaten it anyway, so let’s not count it.)
• Red Felt: $2.50 a yard on sale; I used about a quarter, so that’s 62.5 cents. I saved the rest for some other project requiring red felt.  Flame breathing dragon?  Bleeding zombie scarecrow?  Who knows?
• White Felt: $1
• Paint: $2

Cost: $3.63

Note about the Mickey Vinylmation figure: these are available at Disneyland.  My friend visited and bought three for my kids.  They came in foil packets so you couldn’t tell what you were getting.  The woman at Disneyland told my friend we could trade them, like those Disney pins, but the packets are all stamped “Non Returnable” so I’m not really sure if you can trade them or not.