Wooden food and such

When I was a little girl, playing restaurant was one of my very favorite activities.  My favorite place to play was at my grandma’s house, especially when her good friend, Warna, would come visit.  I would grab a pad of paper and a pen and “take orders” from my customers.  Then I would run to my grandpa’s tv room closet (which housed all the toys at their house) and see what I could dig up that resembled pancakes, hot dogs, or whatever else the order happened to be.  I never had a play kitchen or even real play food, but I did have a Tupperware pitcher and cup set that was a favorite.  This is one of my very favorite childhood memories – and probably the reason that I love playing kitchen with my girls.  Or maybe I’m just jealous of their super cute retro pink kitchen   Either way, I have been having so much fun making all kinds of things for their kitchen.  My most recent has been wooden food boxes.  I saw these wooden food boxes and thought I could probably make something a bit less expensive and with some recycled materials.  Here’s what I came up with:

Here’s the process:  I decided to use the cardboard food boxes that came with their kitchen sets (you know, the ones that last a whole 5 MINUTES before being completely crumpled and ruined??) by cutting off the front and back pictures.  Then I went to Home Depot and searched their scrap lumber area (they usually have a roll around cart somewhere with odds and ends pieces that run about $1 or less).  I found some small pieces and took them to the lumber man to see about cutting them for me.  Not only did he give me the pieces for free but he even cut them for free!  Nice guy!  So all I had to purchase was a small bit of sandpaper.  I sanded them, painted them with some leftover nontoxic paint I had at home and then used some mod podge to put the labels on the front and back.   So easy, even Emma helped (which might explain the crooked Mac n Cheese, but who cares, right?)!  They are a pretty cute addition to the kitchen and cost about $2 – and used up some stuff that would have been trash – great all the way around!

Another fun little project was making mini Valentine books for the girls and Ted.  I used this great printable Valentine mini album from Shabby Chic Crafts and then added some of my own supplies.  Here’s a quick pic of Ted’s  album:

And one of the girls’ albums:

A really simple and quick little Valentine gift.  Abby has been asking to take hers to bed every night – “Mama book” she says – so cute it could melt my heart!

That’s all for tonight sweet friends!  Have a great rest of the week!

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