Pretend Play on a Dime — Garden Center
Emily loves to pretend that she works at a garden center. She can spend hours arranging and re-arranging the flowers (as seen here), planting pretend seeds, and caring for her pretend plants. So Mark and I put together a little store front for her about a year ago, and she has been playing with it virtually every day since!
Mark put together the frame for the store front using inexpensive PVC pipe (thanks, honey!), and I sewed a banner from an old bed sheet. I painted the lettering using a freezer paper technique.
Over the course of last Spring, we kept adding fun accessories to the garden center….We made lots and lots of tissue paper flowers —
tutorial available here.
Emily’s garden apron was made from a tea towel — a very quick, easy, and frugal sewing project! She uses it for painting too!
She and I glued layers of tissue paper onto empty plastic mayonnaise containers to make pretty vases for the flowers! A watering can from the dollar store makes a great prop too!
What’s a garden center without seeds?? We made these seed packets from old junk mail envelopes. We stamped them with corks, like we did
here.
The store comes apart for easy storage, but we had it fully assembled in our family room all Winter long. Emily was able to practice her gardening indoors — even when the ground was completely covered in deep snow. Plus it helped remind us that Spring was not too far away!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to order a flower arrangement during her fabulous sale…. these deals won’t last forever!
Have fun!!
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