Family Market (2015)

Like most families with young children, we purchased a god awful plastic toy kitchen for our kids a few years back.  I hated the way it looked and it was a huge eyesore, smack in the middle of our dining room.  Despite how bad it looked, I learned to accept it as my kids loved to use it to  pretend to cook.  This past Christmas, my daughter received a shopping cart as a present at a Secret Santa gift exchange.  She would push it all over the house, throwing everything should could find in it.  I thought it would be fun to try and make a little fruit market for the kids to “properly” put the cart to use.  We don’t have much space at our place so I used the backside of an easel that was already out (they drew on one side of it).  I also used an old Ikea paper roller that we weren’t using to house the lower level shelving.  I then bought some wood crates from a craft store for $1.50 each and made some small shelves with loose pieces of wood.  Sourcing the food turned out to be the hardest part, but also where I had the biggest break.  I’ve been watching these Ikea plush foods for some time but to have a good effect, you need some serious volume but I didn’t want to spend the coin.  Turned out as I was working on this, there was a boxing day sale for plush toys at 50%+ off –  perfect timing!  I got all the food for less than $25.  Total cost of this project was probably under $50 all in.  In the end, the kids’ loved it but to be honest, I think I’ve gotten more of a kick out of it than them.