Simple Kid's Lemonade Stand/Puppet Theatre TUTORIAL, A New Pillow and Growth Chart Winner

 I know you've already seen the lemonade stand, puppet theatre, and ice cream shoppe, but I am just now finally finishing up the tutorial. After today I promise I won't show any more pictures of this stand. I have to say, though, if you have young kids this is such a fun idea and although it does take a little bit of time, it is really easy! I have definitely made a few projects for them that they quickly lost interest in. This one, though, they have been playing with non-stop and Lillie has a new plan for what it is just about every day! Even some of the neighborhood kids who are a good bit older than her have had fun playing with it.

Okay so here goes:

Here is what you will need:

1 piece of wood approximate 4' by 4'

2 pieces of wood approximately 1' by 4'

4 small hinges

wood glue

a few nails or screws

paint or paint pens to write with

cardboard for signs

some long skinny boards for making signs (and for the little brackets)

fabric for curtains (optional)

2 hooks (optional)

1 tension rod (optional)

 *a jigsaw or access to one 

*Don't let this throw you off - I didn't own one when I started this project. You probably have a dad, brother, friend, neighbor, etc. that could help with the few basic cuts needed for this project.

 Oh and I apologize for the awful photos. Many of them were taken either late at night or with my cell phone with my helpers hanging off me.

Step One: Get your three boards. I used birch which was all that was available when I was making this but I wouldn't recommend it. I cut six inches off the top of my boards so that they were 42" instead of 48" but in retrospect I wish I had kept them 48" high.

Step Two: Next give each board a coat of paint on all sides. I first painted mine with Revere Pewter, because that's what I had on hand but I then recoated it with Ballet White later on. Both of those are by Benjamin Moore. 

Step Three: Here is where the jigsaw comes into play. I actually brought my center board with me when I went to visit my Aunt Patty and Lauren a few weekends ago and some of their wonderful friends helped me out. Here is Mr. Hove showing me how the jigsaw works. I had always assumed they were really expensive but after learning you could buy a good one for between $50-$100 I promptly went home and purchased one - thank you Mr. Hove! I love it and can't wait to do more projects with it! 

 

Mr. Hove and Mark cutting out the center rectangle. For this I would just recommend deciding what size looks best and then tracing it out on the wood and then start cutting!

 This is what it should look like now.

Step Four: Now it's time for the hinges. Here are the ones I used. You want to use ones with small screws so that they don't poke through the wood onto the other side.

I put mine on each side about a foot from the top and a foot from the bottom.

I screwed them all in but needed Jon to tighten them. Needless to say, both the girls wanted to help too! 

This is what it should look like at this point. You could actually stop here and it would be completely functional. I wanted to add a bit more detail though.

Step Five: Next I wanted to make a little shelf and also wanted to make some "feet" for the base to prevent it from tipping forward when Lola was playing with it. I used some of the scrap wood I had left over from another project. First, I marked off the angle I wanted. Then I cut using my new jigsaw. I cut four of these. If I were to do it again I would make the "feet" ones a little bigger.

 Step Six: Now it's time for the wood glue. I used some on each triangle.

Step Seven: I then attached them in line with the bottom part of the cutout.

Step Eight: Then I attached them to the base. After a little accident though I ended up also using nails to secure all four of them.

 Step Nine: Now it's shelf time. I used the rectangle cutout from the center board. It already was the perfect width. I then just cut it down to the depth I wanted it to be. You can kind of see my sketch marks here. Then I added some more wood glue and attached it! I forgot to take pictures of that step - sorry! Then I added a fresh coat of paint to the whole thing and it was essentially done!

 

Step Ten (Optional): This part is only necessary if you want to add a curtain rod. First here are the hooks I used:

I just screwed them in to both sides of the window, a couple of inches away from and a little bit above the cutout.

Then I added the tension rod and now it was ready to add curtains if I wanted to.

Step Eleven: Finally, I added a few little nails to the front so I could add signs and it was ready to go!

Now it's time for the signs. For the ones that were going to go on top I painted some skinny pieces of wood I had in the garage and wrote a few different things on them. Then I added a simple sawtooth hanger on the back. Some I hung on straight and a couple I intentionally did crooked (like the wooden lemonade sign) to make it look more childlike.

And for the ones on the bottom I mostly used cardboard. (I had one piece of wood that I used but the rest are all cardboard). These Priority Mail boxes work great! 

I just painted them black (some I used chalkboard paint and some just regular black paint) and then I used both the chalk ink pens and some white Sharpie Paint Pens. The Sharpie Paint Pens were awesome! They went on so smoothly. The only problem was I couldn't erase them when I messed up. And for the ice cream cone I used a mix of leftover paints from the garage. 

Then for the backs of these I just hot glued some ribbon on the back of them. 

Along with a lemonade stand, ice cream shoppe, and puppet theatre, it has been used for a multitude of other things as well. Lillie's favorite show is Doc McStuffins. We made her a little sign that says Doc McLillie and then downloaded the exact sign "Doc" uses on the show to say whether "the doc is out" or "the doc is in". I have to say this and the ice cream shoppe are definitely Lillie's favorite two uses for it.

It is also a regular doctors office, a grocery store and a toy shoppe, just to name a few! 

And there you have it!

 If you would like to see the full pictures of the lemonade stand, ice cream shop, or puppet theatre just click on the words and it will bring you to the full post on each of those.

I will try to do a tutorial next week on how I write some of the words. 

Also, I wanted to introduce our newest 1776 pillow, a white ink on 100% navy colored linen.  They are for sale now in our shop. 

 And lastly congratulations to the winner of our Ivory Growth Chart in our first ever Pin It to Win It Contest:

Thank you all for entering! 

I hope you all have a fabulous Wednesday!