teeny tiny kitchens.

thanks to an impromptu stop at ikea on the way home from an out-of-town wedding last weekend and her momma's penchant for all things mini, my daughter is now the proud owner of a teeny-tiny pots & pans set, little bitty baking cookies set, and miniscule silverware set. [or at least she will be when christmas comes around.]

now she just needs, um, a kitchen.

unfortunately, the perfectly sweet and gorgeously adorable ikea kitchen had a not-to-adorable price tag to go with it, especially if you add on the tiny microwave.

then i remembered that surely i had seen some crafty creative blogs out there where folks were making amazingly cute and personalized little play kitchens for their kids out of cheap things like leftover bedside tables. and let me tell you, there are some CUTE ones out there! here are three that are insanely inspiring me to run out to goodwill right now and search for a little discarded wooden something that could become a lovely little play kitchen for my girl:

play kitchen from a nightstand by my little gems

play kitchen renovation by domestic simplicity

[make sure you check out the before picture!]

and a very manly little future-chef gender neutral play kitchen by homemade by jill

[inspired by vintage songbird!]

and even if you had absolutely zero intention of ever making a play kitchen out of anything when you started out reading this post, if you check out the flickr group for play kitchens i pretty much promise you're going to want to by the time you're done. man i love flickr for that!

[seriously, this one? could that be my real kitchen please?]

now that i think about it, i must admit that my current bedside table would be pretty perfect for this particular project, and would be pretty special since it used to be my mom's until we redid it together when i was in high school.
but i'm not quite ready to give it up as a bedside table just yet.

and if i'm going to make her a kitchen, i'm going to want to make her an apron and matching cake. of course.