picanicking

A road trip, for us, has always been a camper in tow, complete with kitchen & fridge – plenty of storage for groceries and the ability to prepare our own meals. This most recent trip however, we were staying in motels and cabins; no trailer with space to bring a lot of groceries, just a small cooler bag with the days snacks. I didn’t want to be buying takeaway for every last meal, but equally, I didn’t have space for a full picnic basket. So it was time to do what I do every trip – get my craft on.

I hit up the picnic & entertaining section of Coles, and grabbed some reusable cutlery, plates and cups. At home, I dug through the bag box, and pulled out a calico tote I’d made previously (I believe it was as part of the prep for my Beginners Guide To Cricut email series?). Cabin life being cabin life, it had a little mishap that required it to go through the wash, leaving it crinkled and the infusible ink half of the design faded. A bit of a bummer, for sure, but also meant it would be perfect for our trip. I wasn’t going to be precious about a bag that had already been through the wars, was I?

Everything fit in neatly on the first test, but I felt like it definitely needed some tweaking. The first thing on my list? A pouch for the cutlery, to keep it all neat and tidy and not running riot everywhere in the bag. Project two was another pouch, this time to fit a tea towel and a chux. A million years ago I picked up some clear vinyl on clearance from my local fabric shop, and it was the perfect addition to my pouch to make a chux pocket. The point of a washing up cloth is to, you know, WASH UP, which requires the cloth to get wet. A wet cloth just shoved in a fabric bag with a tea towel would just get everything manky, so the vinyl was an ideal way to keep the future-wet cloth quarantined.

The finishing touch was to sew velcro across the top of the tote bag to keep everything contained. My little DIY picnic set worked an absolute treat, and as a bonus, it’s nice and compact for storage, and easy grab for last minute day trips, of which we’ve had a couple since getting back from holidays. I was even able to grab it out and with 30 seconds of rearranging, use it as my mess kit for scout state rally.

All up, it cost me $20 for the picnic gear from Coles, with everything else coming from stash. It might not be the fanciest picnic set out there, but it’s exactly perfect for what we need. The simple nature of it makes it easy to empty, run everything through the dishwasher, and get it packed back up again with a clean teatowel and cloth ready for next time it’s needed. With spring just around the corner, there’s sure to be plenty of weekend adventures coming up, and having this bag set and ready to go will make it that much easier to wake up on a Saturday and decide to hit the road.