Hey Howdy Hey Tappers!
With Easter in our rear-view mirrors (for most of us) it’s now time to take a good hard look at our Easter hauls and try to figure out just where we’re going to put all that junk stuff! In particular all those fences! While the sucking out quest was great (15 free donuts, who wouldn’t love those?!) it left us all with a LOT of fences for our Springfield! Just what is a Tapper to do with all those fences? Get creative of course!
While going through the comments over throughout the Easter update I came across a great idea from three of our frequent Tappers. DeAdBuRgErKiNg™, spankymcm, & LittleLiske all suggested that those colorful Pastel Fences work wonders around a playground area in Springfield!
Now I thought this was a fantastic idea and wanted to share with you all another Simple Town Design you can do with YOUR Pastel Fence collection and design a Playground Area for your town!
Basically the design of this is up to you, but for my Playground Area I decided the most logical choice would be around Springfield Elementary. So I started laying out my plan with that in mind.
I decided my B town would be the best place to try this out in, since I had more open land because my town designs are more scattered. (Whereas my A town is planned a bit differently and has limited open space). So from the Easter Event in my “B” town I had quite a few Pastel Picket Fences to work with:
Initially my playground was going to be much smaller than what it ended up becoming. I think I had space in mind, but also perception was a bit off because I was initally thinking of putting it next to Springfield Elementary, instead of behind it.
Once I decided to place the Playground behind the school and figured out my overall size I started to lay out the fences. This is pretty basic, but one thing I will mention (if you don’t already know) the fences have the pretty bright colors on one side and brown wood going horizontal on the other. For me I wanted all of the pretty colors to be seen, so I made sure for the far left side the colors were facing the outside, but for the back and the right side that the colors were facing inside the Playground. This also gave me more space to work with inside the area along the back and right side:
As you can see from the images I also brought over Otto’s bus and had plans for Willie’s Shack in the area too. Only logical since they’re both part of Springfield Elementary! I also made sure on the left side I readjusted the fences to line up (sorta) with the side of Springfield Elementary:
Now that I had my Playground Area marked out it was time to decorate. While I wish we had more decorations (like a hopscotch path, jump ropes, a slide, and the roundabout spinny thingy (technical term 😉 )…I’m still pretty happy with the Playground decorations we do have:
Obviously teahterball is premium, but for me it was a nice little addition. For me I also like the Choo-Choo Train (from Valentine’s Day) and the Stolen Bumper Car for the Playground. Reminds me of those little rides you sit in outside of stores, or the ones on springs at parks
So armed with those 6 decorations I started to make the area look like…well a Playground. First, I added Willie’s Shack to the back….back where he belongs:
To finish off the look I added the concrete for a hopscotch/4 square/kickball area. And then filled in some of the bare spots with tress and flowers. I also added a couple of benches, you know so Lisa and Martin could read!
The final result looked like this:
And here it is getting some use by Rod & Todd:
The Pastel Fences really make the area pop, in my opinion. And they’re perfect for the child-like atmosphere. They’d also be great if the Ayn Rand School for Tots is ever added to Springfield!
So that’s it my friends, my colorful fence story! Did YOU make a playground with your pastel fences? Do you think it’s something you’d try? Or do you have a better use for them? Sound off in the comments below, you know we LOVE hearing from you!
