Okay, so I have a new obsession–building with corrugated cardboard. I haven’t actually built anything yet, but I have grand plans. And more important, I have grand plans to buy totally awesome stuff if my homemade stuff turns out as poorly as my previous projects.

(This post is full of links, but the otherwise brilliant person who coded this blog theme made links a soft grey color you can barely see–sorry, and here’s hoping you can find the links in the too-light text.)

I was looking into buying a kitchen for Peanut–he needs something special when we get to the new house, and he loves, loves, loves play kitchens. Well I’m not doing plastic or made in China, for obvious reasons, which got me to some gorgeous wood masterpieces that cost more than most things in my house. Even if we had that kind of money, that’s not where I’d spend it. A savings account would be nice, for starters. (That’s why I’ll never get picked to be on a gameshow. Aside from the not applying thing, that is. I would tell them, when they asked “what would you do with xx dollars if you won?” and I’d say, “pay down my mortgage, give at least 10% to charity, and put the rest in savings.” Bye, bye weird lady. Middle America doesn’t want to hear that. Of course they do, but Hollywood doesn’t think they do. Hollywood thinks Middle America is considerably more shallow and pathetic than we actually are. Mostly because Hollywood is shallow and pathetic. But I digress.)

So Meems sent me this link for a diy cardboard kitchen. Are you kidding me? Freaking genius. We had a dio (did it ourselves) cardboard house for a while after we bought a big ol’ wagon for Peanut, and he played in that box (which we turned on its end, and into which we cut a door flap and window flaps) every day for months.

A cursory webby-web search found that you can buy and make tons of affordable stuff out of this sturdy, recyclable, eco-friendly material. Bonus points when we take boxes from friendly local retailers and make stuff out of that which would have been trash.

Want some? How about:

a playhouse and a teepee

a freaking bed for your kid (are you kidding me? makes me want to have another Peanut just to put it in this bed and tell people we make it sleep in a cardboard box. artists are freaking awesome.)

a rocketship

toddler chairs

a slew of cardboard kitchen appliances and a whole multi-tiered parking garage.

You can also build pretty much anything you can imagine out of FREE cardboard that you recycle yourself. Paint it or cover it in paper as though it was a fourth-grade history textbook. Yay, yay, yay.

We’re gonna make the kitchen and a dollhouse. Hear that Spouse? Your days of living without a to-do list while we live down here and try to sell the house are over. Over. Start collecting the cardboard, and start gluing.

I’ve planned a hutch for my computer, storage bins for Peanut’s room, a coffee table, chairs, a dollhouse, and a huge fort. ‘Cuz Peanut’s been awfully good about this whole “I have no control over my world and considerably less control over my motor skills than I’d like” two-year-old who has dozens of strangers tromping through his house threatening to make him move from his vbfitwww summer, and he deserves a little something special. But I’ll be damned before I buy stuff to make him feel special. Making, yes. Buying, no. You call it an anti-capitalist agenda, I call it a budget.

Yee haw!