Turtle Power!

Years ago, I made a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles dollhouse out of a cardboard box. I put a lot of work into it, and it would always get a lot of attention when I displayed it at libraries or maker fairs.

We recently went to see the original film in Portsmouth at a 30th anniversary screening:

It was great seeing the movie on a big screen again, and the pizza was fantastic! Afterwards, I got inspired to dig out to TMNT house so that John could play with it. I was disappointed to find it damaged and warped though, from years of moving and storage.

I was able to salvage the 'sidewalk' top that I made out of a piece of Styrofoam and coffee stirrers. There's even a little compartment that I made to look like nuclear waste was being dumped:

I made the dumpster out of a tea tin.

I found a new cardboard box to make the turtles' lair. It's not finished but it looks pretty good so far. I added some tiny pizza lights that I found at Dollar Tree, and I let John set up all the furniture the way he wanted inside, and he did a great job:

He loves to turn the lights on inside at night time and play with it, and it's great to have something to occupy him for a while:

Not too bad for something we slapped together in a couple days!