Car Travel with Kids

Being in a car with two small children can be challenging! As much as the curated holiday snaps can have you believing everything is sunshine and rainbows - we all know that kids and long car trips generally don’t mix. We do own two tablets that were gifted to us by grandparents but we actually don’t use them often, the kids end up fighting over who gets the iPad and who gets the Samsung.

I wanted to share with you some other activities that get us through the “are we there yet!!!” stage. Depending on how much time you want to spend doing up a busy bag, you can make these items or source little toys through a store. I go for both options, the handmade ones seem to entertain them for longer but a mixture of both keeps things interesting.

Most of the items were hand made by me while I was pregnant with River, so they’ve been around a while! The absolute favourite would have to be the Mr Potato Head game, it is super simple to make and just requires felt, glue and scissors. I chose to take the easiest option ever and just cut out the shapes, I didn’t bother sewing anything because I am super impatient and luckily everything is still in tact 4 years on! We also used felt to make our “build a pizza” game - simply cut a circle of felt as your base then some yellow felt for cheese, maroon felt for pepperoni and whatever other toppings your kids love!

Click here for template!

Another home made favourite is the picture puzzle, simply get some tongue depressors, line them up and glue on a family photo (or photo of your choice) use a stanley knife to cut between each tongue depressor and viola! Let the kids line them up to make the photo whole again.

Most of our store bought items are actually left over stock from a business I had with a girlfriend - “Little Roamer” unfortunately we decided to shut down shop as our busy lives took over but you should be able to source similar items elsewhere. Favourites for car trips would have to be the wooden camera, prompting the kids to take pretend photos of interesting things they see out the window. Alphabet busy bag, best suited to kids that are a little older to string together words and if you can stand noise in confined spaces - the harmonica!

Another great small edition to our busy bag is the my first iPhone from The Timba Trend. It’s a great compact wooden toy with a chalkboard painted screen, allowing the kids to draw and write on the road - if you check out their online store there are a few items I wouldn’t mind adding to our collection including “Game Board” which has a maze puzzle on one side and chalk board on the other. Pure genius!

Click here for wooden toys

Hopefully this post has given you a little inspiration for your next car trip - may there be whinge free road trips on your horizon!

♡

Best Camping Tip

A lot of people have commented on how amazing our trips are and that the kids really look like they enjoy themselves. I suppose in the moments we choose to share (because no one is really going to snap a photo of one of the kids melting down in the car - we are too busy trying to deal with difficult situations and parent accordingly than document it) it can come across as though we are always having the most fantastic time.

Well I’m here to tell you that half of the time we go camping, it rains. There’s mud EVERYWHERE, if it’s torrential we are all stuck in a tiny space together for hours. Because our van isn’t insulated it gets very cold whenever we free camp, the kids always interrupt our sleep and more often than not there’s four of us trying to sleep in a cramped double bed. There is no toilet or shower in our caravan which means if we are staying in a caravan park it’s a decent walk to the bathroom and I’m not going to lie, I’ve used the kids potty in the middle of the night plenty! Any woman that has birthed children can relate to this night time bladder party. And if we free camp it means no showers and a stinky dump toilet - baby wipe baths all round!

I’m not telling you all of this to scare you, weirdly enough I kind of love all of the inconveniences of camping. We are there to enjoy the outdoors, spend quality time together, experience life away from suburbia and the creature comforts of home. You can only laugh when things get a little crazy and learn from our mistakes, like never ever forget to pack coffee. Try not to get wrapped up in seeing other peoples images portraying a lovely relaxing trip, you are seeing their highlight reel. Focus on what enjoyment you can make in your situation and remember it’s meant to be a fun break for everyone.

Let me know in the comment section below any burning questions you have or if you’d like to share some camping tips!

♡

Fingal Head NSW

One of our very first trips was to Fingal Head NSW, we stayed at Tweed Coast Holiday Parks for 2 nights. The caravan park was very much how we like them - not too many awesome kid facilities so that they want to actually leave the park and explore! The park has a small playground for the kids, BBQ areas, toilets, showers and a laundry - if you don’t have a little home on wheels there are also cabins and glamping tents.

It did rain while we were there which worked in our favour, a double rainbow appeared and we spent most of the first afternoon running around beneath it. There is an amazing little lighthouse on the headland and the short walk to it is through a gorgeous coastal rainforest, perfect for little ones! The size of the lighthouse definitely won the kids over and they were running around checking out all of the tracks surrounding it.

The tracks lead off the main trail to either Dreamtime Beach or back to Letitia Spit, you could spend hours exploring the amazing basalt rock formations that were formed by nearby extinct Mt Warning (which is an AMAZING mountain climb!) after exploring the headland and rock pools we walked on to Dreamtime Beach. Dreamtime is absolutely stunning and feels very secluded, despite the freezing cold weather we all had to have a little swim in the crystal clear water.

Fingal is definitely a sleepy little town, but that’s something we love. Because of the weather and short stay we didn’t get to explore the town much, so a second trip is in order to find some awesome coffee and lunch spots! If you’re looking for somewhere to unwind, do a little beach exploring, swimming and maybe a surf without all the crowds - this is your place!

♡

The Beginning

We picked up our 1971 Viscount Ambassador for $5,800 on Gumtree after having many late night conversations about wanting to holiday as a family without it costing a fortune. This blog post is titled “renovation” but really we didn’t have to do much work to Sadie other than the external paint, for those of you that are interested in what we have done, and also what we got for our 5k, read on…

At 47 years old Sadie had good bones, the previous owners had enjoyed caravanning with their young kids and had done quite a lot of work to keep her going including installing solar panels, LED lighting, extending the drawbar, rust treatment, painting the interior and re-upholstering the seats. We were very lucky and have encountered no issues with water damage, rust or any of the other common problems that pop up with caravans of this age. If you were looking into purchasing a second hand caravan some things that we made sure to check were -

• any signs of rust

• that the frame looked solid

• all windows and frames are secure

• water damage (leaks are very common)

• tow ball and security chains are in good condition

Obviously majority of older vans have any number of these issues, it’s up to you to decide your ability to fix these issues yourself or how much it would cost to repair. The main damage in our case was from hail which we didn’t care about - we actually think it adds some character!

 One day we would love to completely re-vamp the old girl but for now she suits us perfectly. I’m normally a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to keeping our house in order, with two small kids this can sometimes be impossible and a little stress inducing. The whole point of buying the caravan was so that we could reconnect as a family and spend quality time together, which is made a whole lot easier with everything being a little old and dated. The kids can run wild in there and no one has to stress out over the little messes they love to make.

My dad has an aircraft refurbishment business - very handy whenever you need to paint anything! We were able to sneak the caravan in there one weekend to spray paint, it took my brother and husband approx two days to complete the job. We know a few people who have rollered their vans, but we decided to spray as we had easy access to all of the equipment.  We purchased auto paint from a local supplier and at the time older vans weren’t as popular as they are now and I’d not seen a mint green one with a “V” I was in love with all of the progress shots the boys were sending through!

Other than that, our caravan has had nothing else done to it. I’d say all up we spent a little over $6,000 on the purchase price and paint costs which we’re so happy with. We have had so many wonderful adventures, most of which have been very cost effective or completely free. Our van definitely delivered the goods, we’re now able to holiday in some of the most beautiful areas in Australia for a fraction of the cost of holiday apartments.

So if an older caravan sounds appealing to you, I say go for it! You’ll be happy you did!

Big Love

Mia