Birthday Presents

For Cruz's birthday this year I decided to flesh out his play kitchen because it is his favorite thing and we spend countless hours playing there. His new favorite kitchen thing to do is play with spices, probably because he sees me using them almost every night when I am making dinner.

Well, last week he wanted to pour cream of tar tar in the coffee pot which I usually wouldn't care about but I had just bought the spice for making playdough and I didnt want him to spill it all. So in a moment of genius I decided to let him play with the only spice that I happen to have two of...cinnamon.

Fast forward about 15 minutes and everything, everything is coated in cinnamon. For those of you who dont know, it irritates/burns your skin. Cruz and I were covered in bright right splotches all evening. It also coats the inside of your nose and stays put for a good long time causing you to go into coughing/sneezing fits at frequent intervals.

Needless to say it was not my best move. But it did inspire me to come up with a way to satisfy Cruz's desire to play with spices without sacrificing my ability to smell anything for several days.

So this little project was born. I made them as a birthday gift and I can't wait to see if he likes them.

I thought glitter was a good representation of "spices" plus they come in little jars with tops just like spice jars. I got these at Michael's but you can get glitter at almost any craft store.

I took the original label off of one jar to use as a template. I taped it down on the paper and then folded the paper over several times (I made 4 labels, so 4 times) so that I could cut them all at once.

I used butcher paper from the thrift store that I had laying around. Its pretty thin so I had to tape it down to keep it from moving around. It made it much easier to paint.

You can get creative with the labels. We have a lot of McCormick spices so I was sort of trying to emulate that look with the stripe. 

Let the paint dry. During this time I put the chickens in, burnt my dinner, ate my burnt dinner anyways, folded Cruz laundry, tripped over the dog and went to the bathroom. 

 After it dried I wrote the spice names with a thin, black sharpie. Again, get as creative as you want. I made "pepper" for the silver sparkles, "cream of tartar" for the white, "cinnamon" for the red and "coriander" for the gold. 

ed: this post was written in advance and scheduled for today which is actually Cruz's birthday! We are most likely in San Francisco at the kid museum and Cruz may or may not have already opened this gift. I will be sure to let you know how he likes them!