But What If It Rains?

Who here travels? Like, gets in the car part way through your day and drives to another school? Maybe one ten or so miles away? Hand in the air over here.  Now, I don't travel every year.  It's usually every other, or sometimes there's a bit of respite in there for a while.  But this year is my traveling year, and I was all prepared in my mind to spend one morning every third day of school at a school closer to my house, and BAM! few days before school started, the plan changed.  So I'm driving every third day around 1:45 to another elementary school and teaching two sections of second grade. I find it easiest to just teach exactly what I'm teaching to the second graders at my home school at the 'bonus' school, thus, the rolling cart:

On the mornings of my travel day, I teach second grade first thing and put everything I used in the cart for the afternoon/travel school.  Because I can't handle things rolling around while I'm driving I seat belt it in the front seat. Looking at that thing, I could not handle all the dust in every little crevice--guess when it sat unused in the corner of my room dust got everywhere and it's DISGUSTING.

Hmmm, doesn't look as dusty in the photo,
but TRUST, it was GROSS.

And then, (maybe because I'm the teensiest bit neurotic) I started wondering what happens when it rains? How will I keep all the supplies and examples in this cart dry? And I spent way too long thinking about it: if I simply cover it with a garbage bag it'll drip or won't cover it all or rip . . . I needed something better.
Yesterday was my travel day, Mr. One Happy Art Teacher was working late, and rain was in the forecast for this morning, so the time to act was right the very second I got home from school. I put my children to work cleaning everything with cleaning wipes while I pulled out fabric scraps from the mountain in my art and sewing room:

And got to work.  I want it to be water resistant, so I used some leftovers from my diaper making days (if you're looking for reasonably priced cloth diapers, check out one of my Etsy stores here).  No pattern, just a vague plan in my head lead me to lots of pinning:

This is the water proof diaper fabric (PUL), and if you're going
to make anything with it, a walking foot is a must for your sewing machine.

After sewing the lining, I got this:

Then I did the same pinning process for the outside:

It took a while, and I had to take a brief break to cook a nutritious meal for my children heat up Labor Day barbecue leftovers and throw some chips on plates. It would of been faster but I realized I couldn't sew the lining completely to the outer layer or in wouldn't go on (duh) and I still wanted to be able to seat belt the crate in.  Here's almost finished:

 Finally, I added flaps to the side to cover the cut outs for the seat belt holes, and buttons to keep everything secure.  This morning it DID rain, and I had to bring everything in, and it worked perfectly:

Now that it's done and working, it'll probably never rain on my travel day again.