I am totally in love with play kitchens. I had a plastic FisherPrice(?) plastic kitchen as a kid, and I remember loving it. I loved feeling so grown up, pretend baking things and doing dishes. Ohhhh, if things were only still so fun now that it is for real!

Every time I take Jude to the mall, we go to Pottery Barn Kids and I let him play with their toys. He loves their little play kitchens, including the frontload washer and dryer. I don’t really feel like play kitchens are a girl-only toy. There’s no reason why boys can’t play with kitchen stuff — they eat too, right?

While I love the cuteness at Pottery Barn Kids, I don’t like how expensive they are. And they tend to go pretty quickly on Craigslist. Today, I took J to the Just Between Friends sale here in OKC (a FANTASTIC kids’ consignment sale — definitely go if it’s in your area!). It was nuts — it took 30 minutes just to get in the door and then once Jude laid eyes on the bicycles, it was all over. He is obsessed with bikes these days, because his daddy is big into cycling. In fact, last week I let J take Simon’s bicycle helmet with us to run errands. At the first stop, I didn’t let him wear the helmet in — big mistake. So at our second stop, I went ahead and let him wear it inside — you wouldn’t believe the pitying looks I got from the sales ladies. Like, oh, poor little child, he has to wear a helmet! I even heard myself say, “Now, you have to keep your helmet on, Jude – don’t take it off.” I was worried he was going to take it off and leave it somewhere, but when I heard myself say that out loud…. ::shaking my head::

Ok, well, I got off track. Back to play kitchens. He was obsessing over the bicycle section at JBF, but I had my eye on the play kitchens area, and I found this little gem for $35. Please ignore the poor quality photo – I shot it with my iPhone, and for some reason it looks like it’s leaning, which it totally is NOT in real life.  It’s perfectly straight.

I just love it! I love that it’s not all-plastic and that it also has some kind of funky European flair to it. It’s too cute! Here’s a top view:Maybe Jude will get some cute felt food for his birthday! He would love it!

I plan on sticking it upstairs in his room, in the playroom area. I’d like to hang up some floating shelves above it to mimic kitchen shelving. Maybe also I might paint the faucet silver too…. hmmm, think of the endless possibilities! Do you have any other ideas for what I could do to make my kitchen cute?

Over at Ohdeedoh, they feature play kitchens a lot that people have DIY’d or hacked. I really like this one, below — obviously a little too girly for our needs, but cute nonetheless:

It’s all about the cute felt food. Totally. I’m lovin’ it. Check out these darling offerings from Haba, at Moolka.com, a great resource for European kids’ toys that are too cute.

Look how cute this little microwave is! I love that it’s all wood, too.  And this toaster?! With wood “toast”!?! AHHH!!

So. Send your DIY ideas my way,  if you’ve got ’em! I want to make our little setup as cute as can be.