Homemade wooden play kitchen

Well, you know the kind of thing I'm sure, something like this or this one below, both of which are along the lines of £140?

Myriad's Play Kitchen

Here's my version, which cost a LOT less!

And yes, the dials do turn!

About a year ago I found this old unit on Freecycle. Thanks to darling hubs' skills, the rather dull 'telephone unit' was transformed by taking off the two original sliding doors below the shelves and turning them into opening doors, one for a cupboard and the other for the oven. 

This is with the sliding doors off and already sanded (it was originally going to be bare wood): I decided against those hob tops in the end

The girls played with it like this for almost a year quite happily

Jude cut a hole in the base to accommodate a spare dog bowl to use as a sink and added a set of old Bakelite knobs scavenged from a rusting cooker. 

Aw - this was October 2011!

A year (and a new baby!) later, it's finally finished!

The cute little shelves to the right is a spice rack found at the local carboot painted the same colour

  My only extravagance for this project was to buy a tin of Annie Sloane's Chalk Paint, which is probably the nicest paint you can buy, both in terms of toxins and odour as well as being environmentally kind. Jude put in a copper pipe to hang a set of hooks from, and I used a marker pen to draw hob rings on top. Total expenditure £17 (for the paint!) - but I only used a third of a tin and plain emulsion would have done the job just as well.

All the goodies on the shelves were bought in charity shops/carboots or gifted: nothing (our poor deprived girls!) is new. Granny very kindly bought a set of lovely fabric foodstuffs from the wonderful (but pricey) Myriad for a birthday, plus all the kitchenalia - pans &c - she bought from Ikea. A few weeks ago I found a boxful of toy grocery supplies in a charity shop for about £2, and everything else has similarly accumulated over the years.

(repeat after me) Re-use, re-purpose, recycle!

One very happy Milly May!

Unit: Freecycle

Paint: £17 for 1L tin in Old White

Knobs & copper pipe: Scavenged!

Sink: Pet food bowl, hole cut to fit.

Hinge and magnets for the doors: £5

Hooks: already had

Marker pen:"

Total cost £22!


I'm joining Fiona for Green Day today!

NB Sorry for the slightly crappy photos - my camera's been playing silly buggers lately... 

What's on your Workdesk Wednesday no1 (for me!)

As you can see the monster party bags for Milly's 3rd birthday are in full flow... I've got these four pinned and ready to stitch together as & when the girls allow. The trick to parenting and creativity and NOT losing the plot is to be prepared! Even if said prep is being done at midnight the night before so I'll be hanging for most of the day. 

This batch of bags are all a bit more squat than I'd like: being someone who hates careful measuring and planning things out, I just ripped up the lovely old sheet I'm using into rough strips without thinking what size the bags would end up being. Never mind, they'll still do the job, though some of the monsters may have to hold their hats.

I'm trying really hard to keep my desk neat these days; something I find really difficult. I have a tendency when I stop doing anything to just abandon all the bits I've been using until they build up into a shaky towering mess which I then have to undo and put away the next time I get five minutes to work on something. Which of course takes up the whole five minutes and means I don't get to do anything fun before being pulled away onto the next child-based activity.

So, along with planning ahead for future creative time, I'm also trying to be tidy. 

I may even become a real grown-up one of these days and keep the house tidy too.

Nah.

My mum & uncle are visiting tomorrow so in actual fact the house is unnaturally (weirdly) tidy anyway so I'm feeling (tiredly) pleased. I don't know why I have to present my home to my family in this way, it's most odd. Their visits are quite rare, unlike Jude's family who we see a lot more of, so I think there must be some psychological need to impress them somehow; that I'm capable of looking after my own brood perhaps? 

Anyway! Today I'm linking up for the first time with Julia at Stamping Ground for What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday.... it's brilliant having a look at all those creative spaces in full flow! Plus it makes me feel a bit better about the mess I'm usually trying to work in...

x Enjoy! x

Bargain sewing finds

Ooh, the thrifting goddess was smiling on me today! I noticed a charity sale in the town hall today so popped in with Milly and these little bundles of yumminess were calling out from one overloaded table...

A lovely old tin

A pretty lidded basket and a lovely tin full of BUTTONS!

A sweet little leather needle case

Full of old needles

and more needles

and more

Plus this pretty tin! It's not as big as it looks here

 There were lots of other bits and bobs in the basket too, and I bought the whole lot, buttons and all, for a fiver!!

Jude thinks I'm bragging, but I just wanted to share my thrifting joy with you! :-)

Milly was given a little Lion King book, which she is really pleased with. Funnily enough, her sister is off to see a performance of The Lion King with her Granny at the weekend. She wants to go dressed as Snow White - don't ask me why....

Monster fever

I can't stop making monsters!!!

  I'm starting to think I'm only having this party for Mil so I can play monsters all day!

Maybe I've finally found my path in life.

(Jude's slightly worried that some of the monsters are a little too sinister for a 3 year old birthday party - hey, they're MONSTERS!!! - but I have given some of them hats and silly specs to make them a bit friendlier!)

One! Ah ah aaaaaah....

Yup. I've made one whole bag. That's fine if Mil only invites one friend... 

It's taken me a week of five minutes to get this much done. Tula's crying now as I type. Hey ho.

(That was the Count from Sesame Street in case you didn't realise)

Autumn woodland and Monster Plans

We had a lovely walk at the weekend, in lovely Autumn sunshine. The light at this time of year seems to try harder than usual to illuminate the beauty of nature, with long shadows falling across paths and adding contrast to all those jewel-like leaves all a-glow.

Milly will be three in December and whilst I know that's a little way off yet, I'm trying to get myself organised in advance because I know that I will be doing all kinds of Christmas stuff when it does swing round. So, I'm planning a Monster party for her and her nursery friends. Here is a prototype invitation from an idea I found by Sarson on Pinterest. I think I'll be using LOTS of googly eyes!!!

I've also started sewing up some simple little fabric party bags for the children to take home. Already this year Jess has been to two birthday parties and each time come home with a plastic bag full of crappy plastic toys, so I'm keen to do something different. After all, I don't use plastic bags when I shop and if I buy the girls plastic toys they're always second hand; why should it be any different for a party? Plastic is probably one of the biggest environmental disasters in the making, as I've written about before so even if one parent sees my efforts and decides to follow my example, it'll be worth it.

Knitting progress, unPinning and um, backing-up

Well, I'm having (another) break from the damn blanket.... and have taken up a new personal challenge: knitting in the round! Ages ago I picked up a collection of needles and amongst them were a set of double-pointed needles which I had never used before and now finally I've discovered how to use them. I'm following a pattern found on Pinterest for some fingerless mittens, having been coveting a pair from Toast for some time which are beyond my means to purchase. They aren't quite as I would like, as the ones I had in mind had a pretty cable pattern, but I figure if I practice on these, I should eventually be able to work out a pattern of my own.

Five needles is bloody tricky!! That's all I can say. I've had to undo/redo several times and I haven't even got to the wrist yet! 

I figure, unlike the blanket which will be big enough to hide most of the smaller mistakes, these will show up every little detail, so I'm trying to be extra careful. Hard to do when you have to grab some time inbetween kiddoes to get it done! I'm using a 70/20 acrylic/wool blend which I found at the carboot a couple of weeks ago. Ideally I'd love to be knitting with some yummy merino, but hey, beggars and all that.

I adore Pinterest; I've always been a scrapbooker, collecting images from magazines and making collages or just keeping them as idea sparkers, so it's right up my street! However, the biggest danger with it is that you can easily end up Pinning endlessly without ever using any of the beautiful things that you find. It's mesmerising that way. So, I have decided to un-Pin some of the things I've found, by printing them out and working my way through the ones that seem usable.

Here's one of my kiddie/crafty pages... Feel free to come and have a look at my boards to see if anything inspires you! Let me know if you would like an invite to join, but I warn you now, you may blame me later for all that lost time spent Pinning!

In other news, the baby's getting bigger day by day! She's already 6 months, unbelievably. And weaning is going VERY slowly. She really isn't all that keen, though typically if you're munching on something, she's desperate to grab it from you!

Last but not least, a quick message to all you fellow-bloggers out there - do you know how to back up your blog? Not only was I completely unaware that you could do this, I had no idea you even should! The lovely Carina at Carina's Craftblog will show you how here - go ahead and do it now, it's easy peasy!

Take care my lovelies, have a good week x