a diy outdoor mud kitchen makeover

as a first time mom, i did lots of fun projects for arlo – a playhouse, a dollhouse, a play kitchen… so i thought it was time to do something for izzy! she loves playing with the kitchen and she loves getting wet, so i thought a mud kitchen for our backyard would be super fun.

i assembled the entire mud kitchen myself, which wasn’t the easiest thing i’ve ever done, but it was totally doable if you want to do it yourself. i used a drill, which made it much quicker.

i loved the muted colors of this mud kitchen when i was shopping online, but once i assembled it i noticed that the blue sink felt a little too blue for this beige mom lol. so i checked the garage and just happened to have some brand new spray paint and spray plastic primer from a project i never ended up doing and decided it was a sign to go for it.

i spray painted the sink and then the water jug thing also felt too blue, so that got some beige spray paint as well.

i thought some little cafe curtains would make the kitchen look so good, so i did some new sew gingham curtains with fusing tape and i love them so much. we just drilled holes on either side and used a wooden dowel i had laying around.

for the accessories, i used a stainless steel toy cookware set, some bamboo plates from our kitchen and some utensils from our kitchen and from the play kitchen.

and i spent a lovely afternoon outside painting rocks to look like food! i just used acrylic paint, and they turned out so cute. i got nervous as i was painting them about how heavy they are and handing a toddler a basket of rocks to play with haha — but hoping no one gets concussed too badly.

izzy is 19m now so we’ll see how she does with them, but the rocks would probably be safest for kids 3 and up!

i mean how could i resist having cute food to play with in here?!

the good news is she loves the kitchen!

the mud kitchen is meant to get dirty (hence the name), but we’ll probably still tuck it away somewhere safe when it rains. in terms of keeping it clean and in good condition, if you live somewhere with winter, i’d probably get a cover for it. i think a grill cover would work well if you check the measurements!