How to make a play kitchen for your kids!

Every time we go visit friends or our playgroup and there is a little play kitchen, Luke spends most of the time role playing. So I have been for the past month looking into buying a little play kitchen for him, one who won't break the bank. They can range from $130 to $400! I really loved the wooden kitchens but of course they were the most expensive of the range. Ikea has a really cute wooden kitchen on display at the moment but still our budget just doesn't allow us to buy it. After a lot of looking around I have decided to make one for Luke from an old empty packing box we had left from our move. After just one hour putting the kitchen together I was surprised by how great it looks. It was also a great activity to make together even if he is just 20months old, he was very excited by the process. So here is how you make a play kitchen for your kids for less than $10.

Supplies:
1 large empty packing box
4 roles of contact paper (any colour u like)
1 stainless steel bowl
2 felt sheets (black and red)
1 empty paper towel role tube
1 kitchen tap- optional
play food
play pots and pans
Stanley knife
ruler
pen


Instructions:

1. Find a packing box that will be a good hight for your child. A tall box could be used for a refrigerator or laid on its side for a sink and counter. I decided to use mine on its side because I wanted to use it as a sink and stove top. Tape the box shut in all its sides. 
2. Cover all the box with contact paper of your choice. 
3. For the oven, on the front side of the box, cut across the top and ½ way down on both sides, to form the oven door. Place tin foil on this pull down door to represent the window to look through.
4. Mark area beside the oven door to make a cupboard and cut so you have two doors so your child can put all their pans/pots and play food away when done playing.
5. Cut three sections of the paper towel tube to make three handles. I made one wider for the oven handle. Glue these on the top oven door and cupboard doors with craft glue.
6. Glue the black felt on the top counter area above the oven and make two red circles with your red felt. Glue the two red circles on top of the black felt to make the stove top. You can also glue some milk bottle covers on the side to make the stove top controls. 
7. For the sink get your stainless steel bowl and cut a smaller circle to insert the sink. 
8. I had an old kitchen tap which I used as a sink tap, this of course is optional.

DIY- How to re-upholster dinning chairs!

As promised here is my first DIY post. I have 4 dinning chairs that were in urgent need of an update. We have had these chairs for more than 9 years. The base had still the linen cover which we kept saying,"we will upholster them soon" but just never did get to it. So this weekend I had enough of the dirty, dingy look and got Rob to get me to Bunnings (its like a home-depot store) so I could buy a staple gun. Yesterday while Luke had his afternoon nap, I got busy. I went to my fabric stash and choose a nice printed fabric that I bought while in the US. It is a cotton fabric for quilting but I think that doesn't really matter. So choose a fabric that you love and get busy. I used this video as a guide. Sure enough, it took me one hour to do all 4 chairs, its so easy that I felt really stupid for letting 8 years pass by before changing the base fabric of the chairs. So here are the pictures of before and after:

BEFORE

AFTER

It looks great!!! I am very happy with the results. So get busy people and don't worry its so easy that you will wonder why you didn't do this sooner. Take care!

Busy as a Bee!!!

Hi Everyone sorry yet again for the long silence but it really seems that there are not enough hours in a day to get all things done, specially updating my blog!! We FINALLY moved in to the "new" house. Of course like any renovation we had more costs involved then we thought at the purchase of the house. As mentioned in my previous post we were going to renovate the kitchen but unfortunately that did not happen seeing we found leaks in both bathrooms in the house. The leaks were so bad that we had mold all over, underneath the carpets on the walls, so we naturally had to replace the whole floors with new timber floating boards, which the costs of this and the repairs to the bathroom showers had us scraping at our budget. So kitchen is not done and looks like a war zone. At the moment I have no cook top or oven, been cooking with our microwave oven (which is on its last legs:meaning we will need to replace the bloody thing soon enough) and the barbecue. I was very fortunate to have my mother in lay give me a electric frying pan, it really saved the day!!! I have no pantry so cant really take anything out of the boxes just the essential stuff that I use everyday. My dishwasher is a storage area for all the plates, cups and cutlery.

Now enough ranting....Luke is doing very well. He is almost crawling properly all his little teeth are coming out and he is just an adorable little man. My mom left back to Holland on the 5th of Feb and we do miss her so. Luke specially, was very cranking for a week! I have been pretty busy getting our garden looking descent after many years of neglect of the previous owner. But we can see the light on the end of the tunnel. I have planted a little herb garden which is looking pretty good for some one who never had a chance to do any gardening in her life! Unfortunately I have no pictures for all of you because I have no clue where my cables are to be able to upload pictures on to the computer, this is another item on my to do list for this weekend. We also managed to start of our compost bin last weekend so all the veggie scarps and bread scraps are being put for a good use. We also have a recycle bin now which is a great relief because in the previous house there was none and every time I had to throw out glass, paper and plastic my heart filled with guilt! We also had insulation put in, in the nick of time before the government rebates were scrapped because of government scandal regarding it. So we only paid $120 to insulate the whole roof. We can really feel the difference now, its not as hot as it was when we moved in, seeing we had no insulation and no air-con, it was blood hot in here!! But all in all the house does look much better, we had everything painted and new showers. Once I find the cables I will put pictures up of before and after. Its far from done but its getting there slowly.

In the crafty front I have started a little sweater for Luke. Its a free pattern from Lion Brand. Also two weekends ago had a great Saturday with my mother in law. We took grandma to these really nice fabric shops for patchwork and also had a coffee with some cake at Wolly Latte's (its a yarn shop that has a really nice little cafe inside with some great coffee and wonderful cakes). Also when we went to get Tiiu's things as patchwork workshop that she organised, there was this lady who gave the workshop who takes care of little orphan Joey's (Baby Kangaroo). She had one with her and it really was the sweetest thing ever, Luke was so impressed and he even stroked it a couple of times. So so sweet, I have the pictures but yet again no cable grrrrr... Well that is all the update I have time for today. Hope all of you are well. Take care!

Home Sweet Home!!!

Its been really busy around here in Oz. So many big events going on that I don't even no were to start. First, a month ago we received notice that the owner of the house we are living at the moment was having issues with the tax department. Because of this he will be needing to move back into the house in January 2010, so we found our selves homeless! So we started at full gear looking for a new rental place and re-thinking the whole, "lets wait another year to buy a house". So we started looking into sale properties and rental. After some search in the past two weeks we found an affordable 4 by 2 in a good neighbourhood, just walking distance from my mother in law. Its a great location, the neighbourhood is very green with loads of beautiful parks. The schools in the area are one of the best in Perth so for Luke this will be very good. The house is only a short walk to the shops and almost in front of the house there is a small park with huge gumtrees and a little playground for Luke. It is also in a cul-de-sac which means no big traffic so if Luke wants to play on the street he can. The house itself is on a big land 736 square meters (for Brazilian standards this is not very big but for Dutch standards this is huge!). It has an awesome big back yard with two peach trees, one mandarin tree and one lime tree so loads of "caipirinhas or margaritas" in the future. The house inside is very tiered, it needs a good scrub and a good paint job. A new kitchen is also a must in the house and floors too. All in all its a great house with so much potential, so we bought the house!!! I am very excited because its my first property and its all mine which makes a big difference from renting all the time. We got a good price for it and because we need to gut the inside we can change and do what ever we want. So very very exciting times to come ahead, I made some pictures of the inside and as you can see there are still tenants in the house but they will be gone by next week. So we probably will get the keys in December. So will start a DIY section on my blog with all the before and after photos to inspire anyone doing some renovations or thinking of renovating.

Second big event around here was Luke today, he started crawling backwards or pushing himself backwards. So he is mobile now, which means for me more work in getting the house baby prof, so I guess in a couple weeks to come he will be crawling.

Third big event was my brother in laws first photographic exposition in an art gallery. He was in the newspapers and all. That was last night, Rob and I were very proud of him and already ordered our Christmas presents (just kidding)!!

Yesterday was Halloween and we spent it at Tania's and Glen's place. It was so funny Tania had dressed up as Princess Leia from star wars, she looked awesome!!! Glen was Count Dracula, rob and I just didn't have the time to really dress up though, but we had a great time. The boys smashed a pinhata and had a blast with the treasure hunt. Unfortunately forgot to take my camera so no pictures...naughty Alex. So very busy weekend, now we are leaving to have brunch with Rob's uncle and the rest of the family. We all are going to say goodbye to one of Rob's cousins who is leaving to South of France to work as a wine expert in a winery. Have fun with all the new videos and pictures of Luke and the new house.