It is still missing the front door, but the girls don’t care; they love the new Playhouse that Daddy built for them. We had been shopping around for a playhouse/swing set to put in the backyard, but didn’t find anything that we loved. So when my husband’s folks came to visit in January and we wanted a project to do with them, we decided to build a playhouse.

Here we are breaking ground. The kids’ handprints in the playhouse footings. Laying down the floor. The playhouse is starting to take shape, and it’s time for Grandma & Grandpa to head home.

After Grandma and Grandpa left, Daddy finished putting the outer “skin” boards on, but then the project wasabandoned for about a month while we figured out how we wanted to finish it. Well I guess not really abandoned since the girls loved playing in it, painted or not.

With no real ideas flowing we decided to just paint it white. I was actually at Home Depot getting the paint when I picked up a copy of Dwell magazine and saw this house. It was the stroke of inspiration we needed to finish things up. We decided to use the brown and red color scheme that worked really well with the color of our house and our future plans to paint our barn red. Plus the high-contrast colors really played up the super-long rectangular windows, giving the playhouse the modern feel we were after.

The swings are definitely the highlight — thank heavens we put in two. We debated having just one swing and that would have been a BIG mistake. It is bad enough getting them to share when friends are over. I know this is kind of a random picture, but I really love the look of the ceiling inside the playhouse. I think the tin roof and skylights are so fun.

We had three leftover hamburger buns sitting in our bread box. I saw them when I was scrounging around for something to make for lunch and decided I should use them up. So I started spreading peanut butter and strawberry jam on the buns, but I was a bit worried my girls might balk at the buns and want “normal” bread.

Then I had a stroke of genius: I grabbed a banana and cut it up into french-fry pieces and got some strawberry yogurt out of the fridge for “ketchup.” I called the girls over and told them we were having silly hamburgers with french fries and ketchup for lunch. They looked around at the table a bit confused and then started laughing.

“These aren’t hamburgers,” Atty said.

“Sure they are. Just use your imagination,” I replied.

They quickly joined me as we dipped our silly french fries in the silly ketchup. We decided that the silly hamburgers actually tasted yummy dipped in the ketchup too. The girls giggled all through lunch and ate up every bite.

Has to be the best use for leftover hamburger buns ever!