Toy Spice Container DIY Tutorial

My funny little niece received a beautiful play kitchen from my sister and her hubby this year for Christmas. My sister asked for the other gifts from the family to go with it. Play dishes, food, etc.

In the midst of making dinner (and consequently, a grocery list…) I emptied a few spice containers. Thought about washing them to use for herbs from this year’s garden, and then realized I really have enough. So I thought about tossing them.

And then I remembered Christmas.

Win.

I did wash them.

And here’s what else I did with them.

I could’ve left them as-is, and it would have been fine, but I just can’t help myself sometimes. So I got out the construction paper, mod podge, marker, stencil, and a couple other fun things.

I had asked my sister whether her daughter would have fun with little things to shake in the spice containers (I’ll never forget the little toy salt and pepper she and I had growing up- they had little plastic bits you could see shaking around as you “salted” you play-food. It was delightful.), or whether she’d be frustrated at a glued-shut lid. My sister replied that her daughter loves to open things and would probably either get frustrated that it wouldn’t open, or break it open, one of the two.
Since I wanted neither to happen, I came up with a compromise, as you’ll see below.

First, I have a very technical way to measure the paper.

Lay the container next to it, make a little mark where I want to cut. Then roll it around to see how big it should be to go all the way around, and make another mark. Cut accordingly.

Told you it was technical. Ha.

When I had all the papers cut, I wrote on them. I used the Tupperware alphabet stencil I found at a garage sale. It made such adorable letters! I could have freehanded it, but I was happy enough with the stencil that I decided to go the easy route and stencil it.
I went for “Sugar”, “Spice”, and “Everything Nice”… because that’s what little girls are made of.

Not that she’ll be cooking up little girls any time soon…

I hope.

For the pepper container, since it wasn’t round, I looked at the faint folds in the paper from when I wrapped it around to see where I ought to write the words. And I wrote it on both sides. You can do yours however.

I mod-podged them on (See my newsprint tray tutorial for tips on mod podge if you’ve never done it before, so you don’t end up with wrinkly labels on your play-kitchen spices.) and then added some little paper-punch stars. I used a scrapbooking star punch, and punched various colors. I even used the construction paper packaging from the store (The one that is on the top, like the label for the pack of paper. “250 sheets! 8 colors!” or whatever… Yep I saved that.) to punch stars with. It made some of them have a fun color pattern. (I must not have gotten any pictures of that part.)

I modpodged the stars on as I did my second coat of mod podge. By the time I got to the fourth spice thing, the first was dry enough for me to add a third coat. I have no idea if it really needed that much mod-podge but I thought more is probably better when it’s going to be a toddler toy. More durable that way.

So about the shaking/opening dilemma. I really really wanted to put something in there to shake around, but wanted to honor my sisters request to just leave them all openable. Here’s my compromise.

The two “Spice” containers and the “Pepper” container I left openable and empty. They weren’t really see-through enough to warrant shaky little pieces inside anyway.

But the more clear one (from parsley or something?) also had the two-way lid (pour and shake) so the lid opened with a flip top, instead of just the screw-off. With me so far? After punching a decent amount of fun-foam confetti and putting it inside (actually I gave up on using the hole-punch and just cut little tiny pieces with scissors. It was faster)  I cut a circle in the fun-foam the same size as the lid and superglued it inside. Then I superglued the lid onto the container over that. So you can still open the shaker, but no pieces come out.

Win-Win.

And that’s all I did! You can go easier or more complicated- totally up to you. You could do more writing on it, or cut out some pictures from magazines to mod-podge on there, or whatever!
I’d love to see pics or hear your ideas of what you did.

Toddler Sorting Games

Hello!

And another 'Hello' for good measure. I have been absent from blogging for what seems forever. I do have a good excuse, however. A very cute excuse. One that likes to snuggle. One that wears baby clothes and will one day call me Mom.

He's sleeping, so here I am with just a short post about something easy you can do with your toddler with stuff you have around the house.

Best kind of post, yes? One that requires no shopping. Just a touch of creativity and you can be on your way to doing it too!

The first part is actually from a few months ago.

I had been trying to think of more activities to stimulate my little guy's mind. He is so busy, and so very smart. (I know. All moms must say that about their children. But it's so true.)

So after a bit of Googling and a bit of Pinterest I came up with some ideas I wanted to try, but most of them from Pinterest required a trip to the store. We have no construction paper, for example.

So I looked around at what we had. I found these two baskets I'd purchased for a party game at some of my Arbonne parties, and gathered up the ever-present Megabloks. I took away all the other colors except what I had baskets for (until I make it over to the Dollar Tree to see if they have more), and gathered up my one-year-old. It did not take a lot of explaining- I just showed him the colors, and put them in the right basket. Toddlers are great mimickers. He picked it up right away, and sorted them all, and dumped them out to start again. 

This kept him busy for a half-hour. No lie. Anything that keeps a 21 month old busy for that long and is not only a safe (for my house!) activity but also helps build his brain, I'm all for it!

Try it with other things too! Today we played this same game, but instead of just blocks, I grabbed all the red and blue toys I could find in his toy basket and added them to the game. Ironically it did take a minute for him to catch on, but he got it.

We also played another version of sorting today. This time it involved number recognition and matching. This is a skill I wanted him to learn for pre-piano skills- recognizing groups by number.

I took some scrap paper and a fat marker, and doodled some blocks on them- a side view, showing 1, 2, and 4 bumps on the blocks. (If there were any of the 3-blocks handy I'd have done 3 too.) and I went ahead and wrote the numerals on the papers too. He's been announcing numbers when he sees them. Today he surprised me with "Mom! Mom! Nine!" and showed me a 9. He'll tell us what speed limit signs say too... "Three. O." I told you he was smart. 

He picked up the concept right away on this one too. (Win!)

 Do excuse his toy-mess.

Make it as simple as possible! Toddlers do not care.

I'd love to hear what variations of these you have tried with your kids!