Train Table

Since he has had the ability to stand, Spencer has been pretty rough with the coffee table. At first he liked the sound of hard plastic toys bouncing off of it and now he likes to stand there and play with his toys- which seems to still involve a lot of throwing.

Spencer has also become obsessed with trains. The very first thing he says when he wakes up in the morning is "choo choo?" We live about a mile from the train tracks and hear trains all day, so he's just checking if he really heard one or not. He also thinks that any form of transportation is a train. Planes are choo choo's, the garbage truck is a choo choo, our neighbor's motorcycle is a choo choo and semi- trucks are choo choo's.

We recently bought a train set for Spencer to indulge his choo choo obsession, but we didn't have anywhere for him to play with it. What we really need is a train table, but they are expensive and we don't have space for one. What we do have is an increasingly beat-up and scratched coffee table. I decided to kill two birds with one stone- a way to protect the top of the coffee table while creating a train depot. I don't consider myself to be incredibly crafty, but I am all for saving a buck where I can.

First I took a $5 piece of plywood and painted the edges with leftover paint from the guest bathroom.

Then I used $5 spray adhesive to attach a city scene play mat that we already had (I bought it to display all those car shaped cakes I made for Spencer's first birthday).I used a $5 piece of fleece fabric to cushion the underside. For $15 dollars we got a pretty sweet train table that has become Spencer's favorite. The only problem is that he derails the train quite often and in his best "I'm almost 2 years old" way throws the trains on the ground and screams and cries. Oh boy- what's more fun? The 4 months of colic or what looks to be over a year of the terrible 2's?