Playing House

The kitchen is the heart of the home, as the expression goes, and now it's the heart of the nursery too with this little addition to my daughter's play things.

The eagle eyed amongst you might find this box to be somewhat familiar. It's actually the bus I made for her in the summer, recycled to become a play oven.

I've been looking on line recently at some of the beautiful wooden play kitchen's you can buy and longing for something along their lines, but sadly my budget was not going to stretch to one. So I thought about it for a little while, and then figured the next best thing was to raid the recycling box, grab the glue gun and make something myself for far fewer pennies.

 The bus had been well played with but after a fair amount of, ahem, vandalism it had been retired from service and was acting as a capacious toy box. After re-homing the toys (dumping them in a corner, pretty unceremoniously) I cut two doors into one side, glued an additional piece to the back, added some old cupboard door knobs for dials and painted some paper plates to make hot plates and gave the whole thing a freshen up with an extra coat of paint. Et voila, an oven!

This is by no means perfect (as evidenced by these photographs) but children don't care about perfection (or pinterest worthy pictures) and so I'm not worrying about it either. Life's too short, and the life expectancy of a cardboard toy in the hands of a toddler is potentially even shorten, so don't let fear of not being 'perfect' hold you back from trying something like this.

A few props and this kitchen is ready to go!

My mini chef was eager to get started and immediately began wipping up some delightful treats.

Even bath time only provided a brief interlude to her culinary endeavors as she ran straight back to it afterwards and gave a rather literal interpretation to the title 'naked chef'!

I'd love to know what unusual uses you've put cardboard boxes to, for kids or otherwise, so leave me a comment!

Coco Blue