From the Inside Out

So if you look at a Pottery Barn Kids catalog, you see lots of nifty play kitchens and boxes and easels and things that are so... color coordinated and perfectly proportioned and meant to look nice.

And, I think you can spend $250 or more just by looking at one of the pages for too long.

Yesterday we scored a big box.

So I consulted with my 2 kids on what to do with it. We took it outside and cut it in half. We discussed how to make it so it wouldn't fold up on them. We cut out "trap doors" in the top.

After that, they grabbed their boxes and took off into the house.

Did they paint them pretty colors? Cover them in cute drawings? Um, no.

The first thing they did was locate a suitable wall in their room and put the box up against it, creating a little cave.

Then, they put things in there. Like a "rug," or a "bookshelf." And they added things like buttons, which control something I think.

These are so not Pottery Barn. But it's not because they aren't up to the task of making things cute and colorful, it's because they are looking at these boxes from the inside out.

The minute they saw a big box, they saw a cool space that was theirs. They set them up and burrowed into them.

Art projects are often judged on what they look like, but some projects should really be judged on what they feel like. What it's like to push them around, or create a new little space to be in or use materials in some new way.

They may not be much to look at for the Pottery Barn crowd, but there are whole little worlds in there.