Road Trip Travel Bag

Well first of all, the BIGGEST gift of my day yesterday was reading through all your comments and smiling HUGE smiles at your stories of how you stumbled upon this humble little blog and what you like to read. Seriously. Better than a cupcake. {Whoa. That's a bold statement. Let me pause for a moment.} Thank you for being so kind as to let me know you're there! I think I met some of you for the first time, and I dearly loved it.

Today's post is kind of different, but maybe you'll find something inspirational in it that can fit into your world no matter your life station!

A few weeks ago, Ryan's brother and his family went on a mission trip. We weren't able to attend the fundraiser dinner their church had several weeks before that, and I felt really bad about it. I wanted to do something to encourage and support them, so I decided to put together a little travel gift. I found some coloring books and little games for the kids, a bag of iced animal cookies {do those thrill anyone else's soul like they do mine??} and a selfie stick, just for fun. I put them all in a bag and gave them to my sister-in-law.

You know what I loved? Halfway through the lonnnnnnnnnnnnng day of travel they had, she sent me some pictures, taken using the selfie stick, that showed the whole carload of them having fun with the games and coloring books.

I thought about that this week when I ran across a pin on Pinterest that had some ideas on keeping your kids occupied in the car, and I have to say, this is something my mom did very well when I was little. By the time I hit my teen years, all I needed was a pack of batteries for my Walkman {WOW, I'm old!} and a stack of novels. But when I was little, road trips were just long days in a small space. This was, of course, before electronic games and portable DVD players. This was back when imagination was required.

The trip I remember specifically was our family vacation to Washington D.C. I was between my second and third grade years of school, and the Freelan-mobile at that time was a snazzy station wagon. This was before the rules of car seats, and I was blissfully able to curl up in the way-back of the station wagon with my pillow and blankets and watch the world go by through the hatchback window of the car. And I did just that all the way to Washington D.C. and back.

{BONUS! My mom pulled out the photo album from this trip and took some pictures of pictures. Please excuse the 80's camera quality and 80's hair, but enjoy a peek at our trip!}

Indiana to Washington D.C. isn't horrible, but when you're eight, it's not the quickest. Mom planned ahead and purchased little games and gifts, wrapped them, and assigned each gift a time slot. When the time slot arrived, she'd pass the gift to my sister in the back seat who passed it to me in the way-back, and I'd open it and enjoy something new and different for the next couple of hours before a new gift time arrived.

I still remember that, 30 years later. And now I do it for the Shafferland road trips. Hey, you don't have to have kids to need games on the road! You can BE an overgrown kid who needs games on the road. So anytime we take a trip, I print out some new and fun things we can do while we roll across the miles.

So all of this led to the next portion of my thought process {boy, I bet you're glad you don't live in my brain, huh?}..which is the point of the post.

I am always on the lookout for gift ideas that are budget-friendly, easy to make, and a bit on the different side from what everyone else is doing. This is especially important now that we're on a more limited income than we were!

Enter the newest gift idea in my brain: a travel bag or travel binder. I started a Pinterest board {of course!} to keep track of my ideas, and I'll put it below for you, but I think this is such a fun and different idea, whether for your own kids, for grandkids, for nieces and nephews, or just for people you love who have kids and like to travel.

The ideas I found had already-designed printables that you can just print out at home.. You could also laminate them or put them in plastic sleeves if you want them to be usable with dry-erase markers so they can have a longer life span.

There are also ideas for little games that use supplies you can find inexpensively at a dollar store or maybe even garage sale/thrift store {with good cleaning, of course}.

This is a great time of year to stock up on supplies like dry-erase markers, crayons, and other similar supplies, since back-to-school stuff is on sale.

Even if the kids in your life don't travel a ton {travel is expensive, and I know sometimes families can't afford huge trips...been there!!!}, a travel bag or travel binder could make even an hour or two in the car a bit more pleasant. And it's a great break from electronics, too. {My sister-in-law...the same one from the mission trip...was telling me the other day about some article she read that talked about some of the negative effects already seen in small kids who spend a lot of time on electronic devices, and she said it really made her think about her own kids' time on such things. So even if this idea may seem strange at first to the recipient, I really think it's something they'll appreciate as they see it really IS possible to be entertained apart from a handheld device!}

I'm excited to make one for a gift and thought I'd share it with you in case you want to do the same! And of course, Pinterest has way more ideas than I've pinned on my board. This is just a starting point. Happy hunting and creating!