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Mom Squad: Make a castle out of all those empty toilet paper rolls

Hoarded toilet paper before the crisis? Do something fun with the empty cardboard tubes. See how Maureen Kyle helped her girls turn them into an Elsa castle.

CLEVELAND — Why is it that an empty paper towel roll is more fun than most toys you buy at Christmas? My kids love the empty cardboard tubes. Suddenly, it becomes a horn, a telescope or a slide for toys.

So, when we collected a few from both toilet paper and paper towels, I figured we could take our tube-crafting up a notch.

“Do you want to make an Elsa castle?” I asked them.

Their eyes lit up and they started jumping up and down. I took that as a “yes”.

(Have boys in the house? Try making a city instead of a castle.)

Luckily, I have some acrylic paint in primary colors. I put down an old plastic tablecloth from someone’s birthday party, squirted some paint into a paper plate and let them mix away to make light blue and purple paint.

Credit: Maureen Kyle

They sat for more than an hour, painting with precision. As they worked, I made “tower tops” out of paper by cutting circles and cutting a triangle out of it – think “Pac-Man” shape. Then I taped the cone together.

Credit: Maureen Kyle

A hot glue gun attached the towers to the small shoe box they had also painted. I had some plastic jewels left over from another school project, so we glued those all over the castle.

They couldn’t wait for their multiple Elsa Barbies to play inside the castle! And I was happy that the cardboard tubes pulled double duty in our house.

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