Mazzy found a shoe box a few months ago (it was from a new pair of sneakers that Mike bought) and has been working on it steadily ever since, turning it into her ideal miniature bedroom. Some key features include the gold pompom chandelier hanging from the ceiling, the full length mirror made from reflective silver paper (“You can really see yourself in it, Mommy!”) and the floating cardboard desk with a built-in garbage chute and a cardboard laptop on top. The best part about that laptop? If you look closely, you can see that it has a drawing of Mazzy and Harlow as the screensaver.
This is one of the first projects that Mazzy has worked on over time, continuing to build and improve on it. Just the other day, the tail fell off her panda onesie and she realized it would make an excellent beanbag chair for her miniature room.
I posted about Mazzy’s creation on Instagram and a friend messaged me about a video that went viral a few years ago about a boy named Caine who made a cardboard arcade in his dad’s auto parts shop, when he spent the summer going with his dad to work. I had never seen the video before and it brought tears to my eyes. Apparently, one customer (the only customer who had ever actually paid to play on one of Caine’s arcade games) decided to organize a surprise flash mob of people who showed up to play at Caine’s arcade. The flash mob request hit the front page of reddit and well— I guess the rest is viral history.
If you haven’t seen it, I hope it brings you as many happy tears as it brought me!
I’m showing Mazzy tonight. Caine, even if this happened years ago, you continue to inspire.
There was a follow up video “Caines arcade 2” and there are hundreds of cardboard challenge events all over the country the came from the original video. It’s really awesome. There are also really cool cardboard building materials available now. So much fun!