Kid Sized Hutch and Color Plate Flashcards

Doug and I had recieved a antique kid-sized hutch from his mom, who had gotten it from her mom. We had it for a while, but decided to re-do it and set it up for Lily. We dusted, cleaned, and repainted the tiny hutch in the same Quail Egg by Valspar that we used for our hutch.

We gave the hutch to her, as well as some play pots and pans, as a Christmas present from us. Santa surprised us and got some super cute play food from IKEA.

As fun as it was, her kitchen set was still lacking some cuteness, so I decided to spruce it up with some accessories.

The top two shelves of the her kitchen are hard for her to reach, and although I didn't want to store toys up there, I didn't want them to stay empty.

I wanted to make some canisters for Lily similar to those on my own hutch. I found Christmas themed plastic canisters, scrubbed off the decals with my favorite scouring paste,

painted on a chalkboard label, and filled them with pantry staples like beans, popcorn, rice, and sugar. I then used Gorilla Glue to attach the lid securely to the canister so that we wouldn't have a huge mess 24/7. 😉

What do you think? Here's my hutch with its canisters:

and Lily's new maraca-style canisters

She loves shaking the canisters and pretending to pour them into pots! 🙂

I thought the top shelf would be a perfect plate rack, but couldn't find cute ones that were unbreakable. I decided to make my own out of felt. Since Lily is almost 2 years old and working on her colors and numbers, I thought the plates would be perfect for making color flashcards!

I traced one of our ceramic plates onto some fusible interfacing (which is similar in texture to felt), then onto a Trader Joe's grocery bag, to give the plates some stiffness.

I then painted the name of each color into the edge of each plate, as well as a design to go along with each color. I had no black or yellow paint on hand, so no "black," "orange," or "yellow" plates until I make a trip to JoAnn's! 😉

so far every plate is "blue" to her... but we're working it! 😉

To top off the hutch, I took a Halloween sign from Dollar Tree and coated it with chalkboard paint. There were holes to hang the sign, so I threaded a ribbon through the holes. I glued it to a cardboard back of a picture frame so it would stand easily

and painted a menu prompt with a white paint marker.

The inside of the hutch was lacking big time (and I forgot to tell Doug to paint it... oops)

so for now I lined it with some Contact paper from Dollar Tree (same print sells at Target for $8, scoooooore!), added some white drawer divider baskets from Walmart for her play food, and pink wire baskets from Target's dollar spot for her other kitchen supplies.

I removed our bookshelf from the foyer area (too much stuff, too much clutter - more about that later),

and the area is the perfect spot for her kitchen and play table. She can play kitchen, have a snack, or play with puzzles while I am in the kitchen cooking dinner and she loves that she can see me and I can see her.

I feel like this one small change has made a huge difference in eliminating (at least one kid's) pre-dinner-time meltdowns. Thank you cute kitchen, you have saved mommy's sanity! 🙂

Do you have a play kitchen, felt food, or any cute accessories? Link them up in the comments, I'd love to see them!