My little Gizmo has been very into playing house lately. I’ve been trying out the Montessori inspired trays on a shelf in our kitchen. I had pouring and sorting trays and a sensory bin. But all she wanted to do was take the materials out and serve them to her stuffed toys. I finally just decided to go with it because this is what she is interested in right now. I’ve set her up a play kitchen in a living room corner for now.
I was inspired by a frugalfamilyfunblog post where she made a play kitchen for small places or travel. I love this travel kitchen!
But because ours was put together on a whim I had to use what we had on hand. Namely, clothes from our rag bin*.
(*These are clothes we don’t use but that have small tears or stains that prevent them from being donated.)
It started with a chair from our kitchen table. I thought it could stay in the kitchen and still be used when it wasn’t being playing with. I used an old long sleeve shirt and I cut the top off off of it, but I kept the sleeves.
The burners are more scraps that I traced from an oatmeal lid. I then drew the rings on with a permanent marker. The knobs on the stove are from soda and juice bottles. I also sewed loops onto one side to hold spoons. I like this because the shirt is tied onto the chair, I just have to untie it when we want it up.
As I said before this was going to just stay in the kitchen to be played with but that didn’t happen. Gizmo like playing with it so much she kept trying to move it to the living room when we were in there together. So far now it has become part of a kitchen set up in our living room.
We used some lids as plates,a few cleaned out yogurt cups for dink cups and a few boxes as a “refrigerator.”
I also made her a carton of eggs out of some leftover eggs from Easter some white material and yellow felt.
Gizmo had a lot of fun with these.
I gave her an old pan to play with and I also made her one from an oatmeal canister that I cut, painted and hot glued tissue rolls to.
I’ve also added a tub for washing dishes, something that Gizmo let me know was missing yesterday.
We’re definately having fun with this set up right now. I plan on adding more playfoods soon but for now Gizmo is happy cooking with her eggs, dry beans and pom poms. She even threw together a dinner for some special friends. 
