Our sons love cardboard and the tv show Buurman en Buurman, originally known as Pat & Mat. More about Pat & Mat here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_%26_Mat Where we live (United States), nobody has ever heard of Pat & Mat, let alone the Dutch version Buurman en Buurman but our boys love it. I teach them the Dutch language and it's great for their Dutch, its nuances and Dutch sense of humor. I watched it as a kid so I'm happy to be able to share this with our boys.
We frequently watch Buurman en Buurman on youtube and play DVDs on our region free player.
We live rurally and both our sons' birthdays are in February. They like to celebrate it together (best buds) and to make sure kids will come to their party I want to it extra fun and memorable.
This year's party we decided to go ahead with Pat & Mat as the theme. At first, I wasn't sure if we should do it as nobody knows it but on the other hand, it's a fun show, the theme colors are great (yellow, red and blue) and it inspired me to come up with a great activity: Cardboard Village with plenty of fixing opportunities.
The boys wanted to dress up as Pat & Mat so I bought them the red and yellow turtleneck sweaters, got my mother-in-law to knit Pat & Mat hats, got my mom to send some Pat & Mat party supplies (she lives in the Netherlands where Buurman en Buurman is very popular, so easy to find party supplies) and I contacted our local cake lady who always does our special birthday cakes and sent her some pictures and ideas.
CARDBOARD VILLAGE
Last year I felt I went a bit overboard because I spend two whole weeks in the guest bedroom, secretly building a rain forest and shipwreck for the boys' combined themes of Pirates and Diego.
It was so much work but totally fun and the boys just LOVED it. This year I wanted to do something easier and get them involved so I didn't have to do all the work.
So I thought, I'll just get some big boxes from Lowe's and put them in the garage and the kids will have a great time. But then I thought it would be great if they can build stuff. And so I decided to cut out doors and windows for the kids to put back up using nuts and bolts and tape. That would really fit the theme as Pat & Mat love building and fixing things. I also thought of cutting the boxes up into 4 walls so they'd have to build the houses back up by the seams but that was really too much work. I just stuck to same-size doors and shutters on each house so it would be easier for the kids.
I also would have liked to find a big batch of plastic Black n Decker Junior nuts and bolts but unfortunately, these are only available when you buy whole sets of tools. I contacted Black n Decker a couple times to see if I can order just the nuts and bolts but never got any reply. It would have been so much more fun because the kids could have used their own toy tools. They should really make extra sets of those available. SO BLACK n DECKER JUNIOR people, if you read this, get on with it!
Getting real nuts and bolts new was too expensive so I went to goodwill stores and antique sheds to browse in bins and bins of old hardware, nails and screws to find some nuts and bolts that might work.
Found some doorknobs, too.
Our local Lowe's was wonderful, even though they're in a program where they get money for boxes they recycle, they were willing to set aside two big loads of boxes for me.
I made invitations in Gimp, inspired by a design I found on Vistaprint. Added a picture of Pat & Mat, a little explanation of the show and mentioned the cardboard village.
I ordered mini wrenches and measuring tapes on keychains as party favors (to be used at the party, the wrench was a fun idea but not very useful. If you want to put pieces of cardboard together you need bigger nuts and bolts and these wrenches could only work with nuts and bolts that were too small to work with cardboard).
I downloaded all the Pat & Mat music I could find on youtube and made a playlist, alternated with upbeat fun pop songs and then the real work began.
Cleaning the garage (thanks hubby!), cutting doors and window shutters out of the boxes (Wanted to make sure not much cutting action was needed during the party, with all the kids running around).
I turned two houses into Pat & Mat inspired houses for my boys, created a Hardware store, a Cardboard Depot, a train station and some fantasy building with a bell tower and 12 plain houses.
The boys helped with ideas and color schemes for the houses.
I ended up painting every single house. It was a lot of work but totally worth it.
Both kids and parents dove in enthusiastically, using their own tools, helping with decorating, putting in doors and shutters, gutters, floorboards, some kids built sinks, furniture and one boy made a crazy cat man house, totally hilarious!
The cake was really wonderful and delicious, everybody had fun and all the party-goers got to take home their house, a wrench, a measuring tape and a goodie bag with playdough and some candy.
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