Restaurant Finn

Restaurant Finn started as just a dream. OK, it actually started with the IKEA pots and pans set; when I first saw them Finn was only 9 months old and not even walking yet much less about to open a restaurant, but I coveted the little stainless steel ladle and the pans and lids that look exactly like Cuisinart cookware.

Before we bought the pots and pans, we gave her a set of dishes that she used to serve up “rock soup.” This consisted of rocks from the yard, which was fine until she got more literal and started putting them in her mouth. Knowing they weren’t REALLY food, she never ate them, but still…We gave her the pots and pans for Christmas, along with (finally!) a set of play food (from which we removed all the really disgusting things like hot dogs that looked like fingers and beef patties that looked like something a dog left on the sidewalk. And all of the boxed/canned items which we can give her after she’s well acquainted with fruits and vegetables).

So Finn honed her cooking skills, making “egg soup” and “pie soup” and “bread and strawberry and cheese soup” until my parents came to visit and I had the time to construct a play kitchen. There are a lot of play kitchens out there, and I could’ve just bought one, but:

- most of them are waaaaaay too tall for little Finn

- I wanted one on casters so we could move it around (ok, we could’ve added casters, but then it’d be even taller)

- the plastic kitchens are too ugly and the wooden ones (even the ones that look like they came out of Hansel and Gretel’s cottage) are expensive

- neither the plastic nor the wood kitchens look all that great

- I really wanted this

- No, what I really wanted was a kitchen that looked like our kitchen, with a stainless steel oven, fridge with bottom freezer, black countertops and wire pulls

So I designed it, and built it and now it has a sort of rustic (uneven), funky (quickly built) charm. And Finn loves it, and that’s all I care about. Restaurant Finn (serving all sorts of soup and sometimes “peas tea”) is open for business.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 8:37 pm and is filed under general, playing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.