Upcycled Play Pretend Kitchen Seasonings

We're big cookers and eaters in this household. We like to say it's where Mike's Italian side and my Filipino side come together in the most harmonious way. We've started investing in Miles' play kitchen gear after Mike's momgot him a Little Tikes' BBQ for Christmas and he fell in love.

One of Miles' favorite things to do when we cook together is play with the seasoning shakers. So, I thought it would be fun to give him some of his own!

Because he loves opening the containers, I've decided that since he loves opening them up that I probably won't fill these up, but you can definitely customize these for your littles by placing in beads or glitter and sealing off the top so they can't get to it and spread it all over the house (or eat it)!

Here's What You Need

For this project, you'll need to save your empty spice jars (great if you're planning on moving all your spices to uniform containers), labels or label paper, and a printer or markers. As an optional supply, you can get glitters, sequins and beads to fill in the containers, and use an adhesive like E6000 to keep the jars closed. Miles really enjoys opening the jars and pretending to eat straight from them, so we've left his open for now. When he's a little older, we'll be packing these with fun objects and sealing them up.

Here's What You Do

I had label sheets that were 8.5" x 11" and access to Photoshop. If you're Photoshop or MS Paint savvy, you can get label sheets and design up your own designs. Otherwise, Avery Labels is great about having the templates for all their label sheets available on their website so you can design everything on Word. I grabbed graphics from a website called Vecteezy which has free and paid graphics you can download and use for personal use, like I did with these. Another great website I use is Creative Market. Every Monday, they give 6 free design elements (fonts, graphics, templates, etc.). Vecteezy is better if you're handy with Photoshop or actually have Illustrator.

I soaked all the jars in soak water because I heard that's a great way to get labels off. It didn't work. Neither did Goo Gone, which baffled me. This is primarily why I chose to relabel the jars. If you don't have access to a printer, but can get a hold of the labels, you can always make it a really fun art project with or without your child and draw up the labels with simple stripes or line art. Remember, they don't have to be perfect! Your child will love playing with them because they know it's something you use and they just want to do what you do!

And that's it!

Average Dimensions for Labels

The average plastic spice jar will need a 5" label. The small jars are 1.25" height, the average McCormick and Target brand jars are 2" height, and the larger Doll Tree and Walmart brand jars are 3" height. Bouillon cube jars are 2"W x 7"H. Always double check your measurements, though, just in case!