Road Trip (Packing, Hacks, DIY + VLOG)

Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. So my little family and I decided we wanted to go on a road trip and go camping. We actually took a road trip up to Utah and we went back down to Albuquerque, New Mexico to visit my husband's family. It took a good amount of preparation on both my husband and my part and so I wanted to share with you guys some of the things that I did, some of the little hacks and the DIYs that I did for our toddler and some of the things that worked for us. Hopefully they will work for you too and your family if you're going on a trip or a road trip in the near future. This is actually a two-part series. So the first part is road trip where I'm making a few DIYs, prepping some snacks and packing and just getting ready for the road trip and then the second part is going to be the camping DIYs and just tips and tricks that I used for when we went camping. So hopefully you guys enjoy this video and let's just jump right in. So one thing you definitely have to think about is packing. Anytime you go on a trip, I like to make a list. I generally forget something anyway even if I do make a list one or two things but I will forget way more if I don't make a list. So I'm just making a list, a little checklist. We did forget a few things but it wasn't anything crazy. But yeah I mean there's generally a few things you'll forget but a list will help. When packing clothing for a road trip one thing I wanted to consider was packing lots of layers. When I looked at the weather conditions ahead of time and that's definitely something I would recommend is just looking at the weather conditions of all the places that you're going to be visiting. There was a variation of weather conditions. It was going to be warm in some places, really cold. So layers is really important. Packing layers and packing them in a really compact manner. So I have this really great bag that I generally don't travel with. I use a suitcase but in this case I put all my clothes in there so that it was a little bit more compact since everything had to kind of be thrown in the car and we had a lot we were taking with us. So I tried to pack as many layers as possible. The next thing I wanted to consider was the hygiene essentials. Of course the toothpaste and toothbrush. I usually bring a travel version of those. You can get those travel kits at Target and Purell hand wipes and tissue. I get the Purell hand wipes and they're handed face wipes so they're really good for dirty little toddler faces or sticky hands when you're eating in the car. Things like that. So those were kind of must-haves. I have a little feminine hygiene kit. I have these deodorizing wipes which are really great. A few tampons. I also brought a dry shampoo which really turned out to be great for the camping days. I have an It Cosmetics lip balm that has just a really light pink tinge to it. So it's really really nice. I also have this eye cream from Olay. This is really great because it acts as an eye cream and a concealer. The vitamin C moisturizer I'm using right now. Feminine cleansing cloths and my vitamin C peel pads. A great easy compact skincare item to travel with. And then Yes To Care it's face wipes. So I also had to pack for my son Oliver and so I wanted to share with you guys a few kid-friendly packing tips. Obviously the same as me. I wanted to pack lots of layers. I got these really great hiking boots from Nordstrom Rack on sale. I also have little hunter boots. I don't spend too much on his clothes but I do always invest a little bit more in shoes. I also got those little Adidas on sale at Nordstrom Rack. I got a really good deal on all those shoes. So I also packed a few different jackets. This great little pillow that my sister-in-law made which is great for sleeping in cars. She made that for me. I Heart Stitching is the name of her channel on YouTube. She's awesome. She makes a lot of really cool things. So yeah packed lots and lots of layers. I also packed some pull-ups. He's pretty much potty trained at home but on a road trip it's a little tricky so definitely needed enough pull-ups until we could get to another location and buy more. Warm hats, gloves, enough items to make sure we could layer and keep him really really warm. I also packed some activities for him. I got a doodle pro from Target. These have been around forever and ever. He loved it. I also made a DIY Lego tray before we left. It's really easy to make so I'm going to show you guys how I made it. So with a baking sheet and a Lego tray I'm going to put the Lego tray on the baking sheet. You can use magnets to do this but I use these little kind of velcro. You can find these at Target. These are used generally to hang pictures and things on the wall. So I'm putting the first side down then I'm putting the velcro over that peeling it back so that it has the sticky part and then just putting the Lego tray directly on that. That worked really really well and then I got these little magnet containers at Michael's. These held really great onto the baking sheet and this is where I stored all the little mini Legos. Now when I first made this my first thought was oh my gosh I'm gonna have Legos all over the car but that's okay because it's gonna keep him busy but it turned out we didn't have one single Lego fall. He, I don't know, he just managed to really keep the Legos all in one place which was kind of a miracle and it worked out really well so I put all sorts of different types of little Legos in these containers and it was a nice big tray that he could play Legos on and it kept him busy definitely for a few hours on the road trip. So I would highly recommend this if you're going to go on a road trip. So for the trip I'm going to make some no-bake granola. This is peanut butter granola bars and I'm starting with one cup of peanut butter and a half a cup of honey. I'm mixing those together in a medium saucepan over medium heat and I'm just going to stir it until it is pretty much melted together. Then I'm going to add one and a half cups of old-fashioned oats, a half of a teaspoon of vanilla and you can either use chocolate chips or shredded coconut. I really like shredded coconut so that's what I'm going to be using and a little tiny bit of cinnamon. You can add however much you want and I'm just going to mix that together. I'm going to put that on a baking sheet and flatten it out a little bit with a wooden spoon and stick it in the refrigerator to harden for a bit. So after it's had a chance to harden a bit in the refrigerator I'm going to take it out. I'm going to make little bars. Basically it's just granola but I wanted to make sure there was big enough pieces that we could hold on to them in the car and this was a total hit. It tasted amazing. Everybody loved it. So on long road trips there will be times where you don't see a restaurant or a gas station for a really long time so I wanted to make sure I packed all of our lunch. I'm making one of these DIY Uncrustables. I've made this before on my channel. It's really easy. It's pretty much just using a cutout with your peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I try to make a little bit of a healthier version with whole wheat bread and a little bit healthier jam and peanut butter but then I just cut out and I make it look like one of those Uncrustables which you can actually freeze this and these work really great for making ahead of time. I'm just going to put this in a little ziplock bag so he has a sandwich and I'm just going to pack a traditional lunch. I got this container at Target. I use it all the time for when we go on flights or whenever I want to pack him a lunch and he does get hungry so I like to make sure I have snacks for him so I put a Kind Bar in there, a little Mama Chia, some cheese and some banana chips and then I also wanted to pack other snacks. These are some of our favorite healthy snacks. We have the little Annie's fruit snacks, these fruit roll-ups which are super yummy and pretty healthy and they make them and they're pretty... they don't have too much sugar and things like that. The Kind Bars, the Justin peanut butter packets, the little Mama Chias, also some dried mangoes which everybody likes and I also packed some kale chips. I'm not a huge fan of kale chips to be honest. I usually think they're pretty gross but this particular brand is amazing. I love them. So I... those were pretty much for me. I ate those and then I packed some of our favorite drinks. Obviously not just three. I packed a bunch of them but those are kind of our favorite go-to drinks. So next it was time to pack the car up. So I'm showing a few extra things. You can see bread and avocado and tomato here. So I did pack sandwich items to make sandwiches but I'm going to touch on that a little bit more in the camping video. I'm just putting all of our kind of dried pantry goods in a grocery bag and I'm also going to pack away all the hygiene items in a grocery bag as well. If you don't have a trash can in your car you definitely need one on a road trip. So I just took a cereal box. It's just a plastic cereal box. I put a garbage bag inside there. This worked great for the campsite but it also worked great for our car. We would fill up the trash bag and just empty it out when we got to different stops. And then as we collected bags on the way I would use it as garbage bags. So this is a really great option for sticking in the car. And then it was just time to start packing up the car which when you're packing... I didn't show everything in this video. We definitely had something on our roof that held all of our camping gear and fishing poles and different things like that. But as far as packing the car I put the two bags so I could really easily access all the pantry items. I packed Oliver's toys right next to him. I packed him a few extra things like the legos. I took the little lego box and a few cars and things that I knew he could play with in the car but also when we got out of the car. I packed the little trash can that I made and I also wanted to pack a few extra little things like hand wipes, tissue, a flashlight, things that I could easily access. So I just put that in the little center console there. And then I also made a kind of emergency kit with vitamins and medications and different things that I wanted to take. I'll talk about that more in my next video. And then I made sure each door had a water in it. And also I would highly recommend bringing a AAA kit when you're traveling. And also a first aid kit. I talk a little bit more about this in I did a cleaning out my car video and I talk about some of the things I keep in my car. So I put that on the bottom of my trunk. And then I'm packing up the Yeti with all of our drinks, our food, the things we took to make sandwiches. And we used this for camping but we also used it for the road trip itself. So now that the car is all packed it's time to get going. Alright we are off to Vegas. Oh I heard something fall. All of our car falling? Right. You having fun Oliver? Trying to get out of this urban jungle. What are you doing back there bud? Kale chips. We're listening to the Harry Potter soundtrack. It's kind of fitting. Bye rock shop. Oliver can you say rose quartz? Rose quartz. Mommy had to get a rose quartz in order to use the port-a-potty. So I thought that was going to be a gift shop but it turns out it was a crystal store. I had to pay $16 to use their port-a-potty but I got a rose quartz out of it. And a quiet toddler because now he's holding he's taking his job very seriously. Do you like it? Cool. Here we are Navajo Lake.