Mud Pie Cafe brings lots of backyard fun

Here is some backyard fun we’ve been working on – Our new Mud Pie Café. Some call it a Mud Pie Kitchen. But we decided to add some flair and make it a little more fun, seeing there are three girls around here. It turns out it’s a lot of fun. And a great place to sit for a snack!

It was simple to assemble, using stuff we had around the house and no longer needed inside. Really, the possibilities are endless – using whatever you have on hand or need to clean out from your own kitchen cabinets. Here’s how we did it, where the stuff came from and what’d you find if you came to play.

Our Mud Pie Café is stocked with the following supplies

**Plates from a thrift store which were purchased a long time ago, for a mosaic project that never happened.

**Cake pans, old pots, mixing bowls and wooden salad bowls that were either bought from goodwill or declared too old and cruddy for my own kitchen.

**Plastic mixing spoons and spatulas from my kitchen that were replaced with metal ones.

**Old tablecloths that I no longer needed or wanted.

**Old jelly jars for the kids to cut flowers from the yard and use as vases to decorate the tables.

**Dried beans and expired flour from my kitchen cabinets.

**The green metal canister labeled “dirt” is left from my days of container gardening on an apartment deck in downtown Atlanta (in our pre-kid lives). My oldest daughter found it in the garage, filled it with dirt and put it in a handy spot for making mud.

**The girls took it upon themselves to stock their space with a squirt bottle and brush from the laundry room, to wash their dishes.

The furniture in our Mud Pie Café was all repurposed

**The cabinet dates back to my college dorm room, and was built by my dad. Then it migrated to my Mom’s 8^th grade English classroom. After she retired from teaching and my parents prepared to move from the house I grew up in, I rescued it from their garage and it became a pet food cabinet on my porch. And now this – from a dorm kitchen to a mud pie kitchen. It makes me smile.

** The children size table and chairs was used as an art table until my kids needed a bigger space. It’s well worn and well loved. Now it will live the rest of its life outside in the yard.

** Previous owners left the two larger chairs and the small table in our garage when we bought the house. I love little gems like this.

**The umbrella is from one of those water and sand tables, and is something my kids have loved dearly – in so many ways other than the purpose of what it was intended to do. Really, this is how the best play happens!

**The chalkboard screwed to the picket fence was made using leftover wood from our home renovations.  It was simple to make.

So there you have it – that’s how our Mud Pie Café came together, using things we had around the house, in the garage and in my kitchen. Now the fun begins!

To see more photos,  visit the next post that featured our Mud Pie Cafe.