Rainy Day? Try These Activities From Mom’s Bag

Most moms carry around a lot of baggage—and by this we mean the fruit snacks, hand wipes, straw wrappers, pens, receipts and unidentifiable objects that clutter up the bottom of our supersized totes. (You know, the stuff you keep meaning to toss but never do.) But if you happen to be stuck in a hotel room on a rainy vacation day, you’ll be thankful you didn’t clean out your bag. With a little imagination, that stuff you’ve been lugging around can be transformed into rainy day activities that’ll keep your kids busy for hours—and keep you from hearing “I’m bored!” every 10 minutes. Disorganization never felt so good.

What’s in your bag: plastic straws

Use straws to create paper rockets your kids will love shooting around the room.

Use them for: paper rockets. Grab or cut a piece of paper about 3-4 inches wide and a few inches shorter than the straw. (The blank side of an old receipt would be perfect.) Decorate the paper with crayons or markers; then put glue (or nail adhesive) on one of the longer edges on the undecorated side. Roll the paper around a pencil, starting from the opposite side. Fold the top over and seal it with scotch tape. Slip the pencil out, slide a plastic straw in, and blow to launch your rocket.

What’s in your bag: seashells or rocks

Use them for: shell or rock animals. Break out the markers that are hanging around in your purse and transform these treasures into ladybugs, butterflies, frogs or whatever animal you love. When the sun comes out, hide your creations around town for other vacationers to discover.

What’s in your bag: makeup

Tigers, pirates and butterflies? Let your (and your kids’) imagination run wild and use your makeup as face paint.

Use it for: face painting. Just lay out your cosmetics case and get to work creating butterflies, tigers, pirates, princesses and even Spider-Man.

To make a tiger, apply bronzer or blush all over the face. Draw dark lines with eyeliner on the cheeks to create whiskers, and outline each eye. If you have white eye shadow, highlight the eyelid, the brow bone and the chin with it. Top it off with a pink nose and get ready to roar.

To make a pirate face, take a black eye pencil and draw a circle around one eye and fill it in a bit to suggest an eye patch. Add a curly mustache and a goatee, and your tyke will be ready for the open sea (or an in-room screening of Pirates of the Caribbean).

To make a butterfly, use your shimmeriest, sparkliest eye shadow to draw the shape of butterfly wings across each eye, and extend down to the cheeks. Use black eyeliner to draw a body on the nose and antennae between the eyebrows. Finish with a dusting of glittery eye shadow for good measure.

To make a princess, use a purple or pink shimmery eye shadow to draw a tiara on the forehead. Finish with more shimmer on the cheeks for a design fit for a queen.

Bonus game: Hotel scavenger hunt

Get ready to set off on an indoor adventure! Head to your hotel's business center or front desk and print out this rainy day hotel scavenger hunt checklist.

Why not break your travel group up into teams for a little friendly competition? The first group to finish wins—and gets bragging rights for the rest of the trip.