Play Eats: Whip up a batch of fabric pretzels

Today's awesome guest post is courtesy of Jess from Craftiness is Not Optional. She has done some amazing tutorials on her blog so I was so excited that she agreed to design something new for Play Eats.

These fabric pretzels look super cool but look how easy she makes it. They are a really great idea. My kid is starting to get into junk food (we've been lucky enough to hide it from her for a long time) so these are on the radar.

Click over for the full tutorial.

Thanks so much to Jess for baking up this batch. Make sure you check out her other play food tutorials here and these awesome upcycled kitchen canisters. She is super talented.

All photos courtesy of Jess.

Play Eats: Sew Some Pots and Pans!

Today the amazing Sabra of Sew a Straight Line brings you a tutorial on how to sew a set of pots and pans for your play kitchen. I seriously don't know how she comes up with these clever ideas. She does such a good job writing tutorials that her projects become super easy.

Check out these action shots! Clearly, her boys are psyched to have such a fabulous and talented mom.

It makes me want to have a boy. Maybe.

For the complete tutorial, click here. I think I might just make some of these to store stuff!

Photos courtesy of Sabra and her boys (who appear to be wearing cooking related shirts!). Thanks so much for participating in Play Eats!

Play Eats: PBK Play Kitchen review

There are a ton of play kitchens out there and in every price range imaginable. PROJECT : project correspondent, Carolyn, who you know from her amazing nursery furniture rehab project (original post here), has offered up her Pottery Barn Kids play kitchen for review:

My daughter's play kitchen began with one consignment store purchase made by my mom, before my daughter was a year old.  She picked up the Pottery Barn Kids Classic Kitchen Stove for $40 and it came with pots, utensils and oven mitts and potholders.  It is the perfect size for smaller kids- my daughter was able to pull up and play on it before she was walking and she still loves it at 3 years old. It is very sturdy and all of the knobs turn and the timer/clock clicks when you turn it. My parents added to her kitchen collection the following Christmas and bought her the matching fridge. It was very exciting for Eloise to have such a large package on Christmas morning and the fridge was an immediate hit.

Pottery Barn Kids had discontinued making the Classic Kitchen pieces, but brought them back for the 2009 Holiday Season.  We live very close to a PBK store my mom bought it there when it initially went on sale and then had the price adjusted after it was marked down again to $99. Which I don't think is a bad price for a new non-plastic/non-particleboard play kitchen piece. I love that it came fully assembled!

I had looked into having a fridge made by someone on Etsy and the total cost including shipping would have been more than $99. Even though PBK is not a local business, they do have a store less than 5 miles from our home, which serves as a great pit-stop/play area when we have to go to the mall.  Both pieces are very sturdy and well made.  I like that the pieces are heavy and stable enough to withstand being pulled up onto by smaller children.  The fridge came with a "tip resistant kit" so I guess if we were better parents we could have attached it to the wall, but we have never had any mishaps.  The doors have magnetic closures and both have withstood being pushed upon and are still very sturdy. The appliances are constructed from wood for the frames, handles, knobs, etc. and MDF for the panels. It would be great if they were all wood, but the MDF is definitely nicer than plastic and particle board that many play kitchens are constructed from. The pieces are very simply designed and don't have any extra decoration, which is nice. Even though there is a lot of pink on the icebox and a few pink touches on the stove the boys that visit our house love to play in the kitchen.

The stove was in good condition when my mom bought it, but there was some wear on the faucet. The stove with its knobs, faucet and stove elements has been exposed to a lot more play than the fridge. I have noticed that that kitchen sets now sold at Pottery Barn Kids have metal faucets, not wood. The use of metal pots on the stove has probably added to the wear. Overall we have been very pleased with both pieces.

Thanks so much to Carolyn for this very thorough review! Of course, all pictures are courtesy of Carolyn and her son who is demonstrating that even boys can play with a kitchen too. Even though the set is discontinued, it attests to the quality of a PBK piece and all will help as these kitchen sets are going to be popping up on Craig's List all the time as kids grow out of them.

Play Eats: Play Kitchens

A couple of years ago we made a play kitchen. I drew a sketch of what I wanted in the car on the way to Ikea. Our plan was to hit AS-IS and gather as much as possible. Then we toured around the store picking up a few other things. As we constructed it, I bought stuff at Lowe's, Target, and several of our local dollar stores, of which we have many. The whole thing cost us $68. You can check out the flickr set here and the previous post here.

I could do a round-up of amazing DIY kitchens but why waste all that time with Ohdeedoh has already done it. Check their search here.

If you want some other inspiration, there is an amazing group on flickr called, surprisingly, Play Kitchens. Eye candy, people, eye candy. Some really great stuff.

And since we're on a flickr kick, find some great inspiration for play foods in the Play Food group organized by Robert Mahar of the awesome Junior Society blog.

And here's the deal: don't beat yourself up if you go to the store or Craigslist and buy a play kitchen. Most of next week will be dedicated to reviewing cool play food and play kitchen accessories that you can buy. Not everyone is crafty and not everyone has time. I'm just trying to keep this series organized.

Hey, thanks for all the emails and comments so far! I am so glad people are liking these posts.

Play Eats: Thrift it and repurpose it

One of the best things about having a kid is getting to buy silly drinks at street fairs. I would never spend half a million dollars on super sweet juice and crushed ice for myself, no! But if Z wants it, I tend to indulge every now and again, especially if we can reuse it. So this pineapple wasn't half a million dollars but it was at least twice as much as all of the other overpriced street fair grub but I knew that we would remember our fun day way longer if I bought this. This has been a huge hit in the play kitchen (even though the drink was so syrupy we didn't even finish it).

Yes, this is a shot glass. But it is a Dinosaurland shot glass. Yeah sure, the first thing I want to do around realistic (what do I know?) fiberglass dinosaurs from 50 years ago is get wasted so why not buy a shot glass to make that easier (I'm joking). Anyway, it's a cool play size tumbler and another memory of a fun day. And it has yet to break.

Another awesome part about life with a child is getting to dig through bins of toys at thrift stores. I was raised at yard sales so I feel like I have a trained eye. But I think it is a skill that can be achieved through lots of practice. You just have to keep an open mind and use hunter's vision. The orange juice was a quarter; the eggs are from Easter last year; that round thing is a piece of bologna (weird -- one random slice in a bin of dinged up Happy Meal toys); and the tea set pictured is part of a larger set that came in a little basket. The basket was trashed and some of the pieces are missing but I figure that they could just as easily get lost at my house.

Dig deep, people and don't be afraid to get your hands dirty.

Play Eats: Make more play foods

Not all handmade food has to be super involved or time consuming. This ravioli just requires pinking shears and an iron.

First, iron your Wonder Under to the dough colored felt. Cover the whole project with a cotton dishtowel or you'll melt the felt and ruin your iron.

Next, cut your felt into strips and then squares. I found it easier to make these one at a time. Peel off the paper backing to your interfacing and place a triple size cotton ball right in the middle of the square. Put another square on top (interfacing together) and iron each side. Don't forget your dishtowel! Don't worry about being neat because you'll trim your edges.

Snip snip with the pinking shears and you have some easy no-sew ravioli. If you didn't do a good job with your ironing, you can always pull apart where it didn't fuse, dab some glue stick on it, and iron it back up. To make the cute jar, I just hot glued some vintage ribbon to a Christmas container from the Dollar Store.

These peas and carrots are even easier. Buy some tiny pom poms and you have peas. The orange carrots are made from polymer clay rolled into a cylinder and sliced and baked.

Tomato slices take a bit more time. Embroider some veins onto your solid and stitch to your backing fabric RST (right sides together) leaving a gap for turning. Stuff with a smidge of polyfill. Turn them inside out and handstitch up the little gap.

There are several different tutorials out there on this bowtie pasta. But it does take a long time to stitch each one together. They look really cool though so the effort is worth it.

We eat lots of wrap around here. This is just some thick cotton fabric from the clearance bin at JoAnn's. I took some Tupperware from the cabinet and traced around it. Sew them together RST just like the tomato and clip the edges because you want nice round wraps. Stitch up your opening. Since these are flat, I just used the machine to finish them off.

And for the final step, I put all those painting skills that I got with that BFA to make char marks with the edge of a flat brush. I actually put a real tortilla on the table and copied it for the highest realism.

Let me know if you make any of these fun foods. Put some pics in the flickr pool.

Play Eats: Make some food

These cherries are super easy to make. The original idea is courtesy of Catherine Hug of Hyggelig. Instead of the rope, we used brown pipe cleaners, cut them to size and sealed them in the holes of the wood beads with some hot glue. To make painting the beads easier, we stuck them on the ends of chopsticks and just painted half at a time. The tin is from Michael's and those are just stick-on letters. Super quick and easy project. My sister-in-law helped with making most of the play foods so the other part of that "we" is her. I do recommend tackling these projects with a friend, you'll get a lot more done and it's a fun way to spend the day.

Now these strawberries were a lot more difficult. The pattern can be found here. I was not about to do any hand-stitching out of sheer laziness so I added a seam allowance to the whole thing and used the sewing machine to create the shape. My sister-in-law and I both stuffed them and closed up the top (by hand, there was no other way) and I hot glued on the leafy top.

I think the tiny polka dot print is what really makes these work. It's from Jo Ann's. Oh, and we just cut the tops freehand so they would look more realistic. That's green fleece.

And don't forget, you can reuse your container from the grocery store for some realism (although I think blueberries or tomatoes came in this). Now, if only we can find the rogue strawberry that's been missing since Christmas...

These tea bags were one of the most difficult play foods to make but certainly worth the effort. I stole the idea from my amazing friend Nikole of A Happy Nest.

I used some muslin I keep around for well, muslins (test garments), and cut up some Beatrix Potter scrapbook paper to make the tags. What was difficult was folding the tops in and stitching them up so they look nice and neat. We filled them with quinoa but I think lentils would work better. They are bigger so you won't have to worry about them spilling out if your sewing is crap. We were thinking it would be nice and fragrant to put some actual tea in each bag but I had already finished them by then.

The little tin is something my sister in law picked up at Ikea and more sticker letters for the top.

Finally for today, some peanut butter and jelly. My mother in law made these. She said they are just a simple single crochet and she reduced and increased whenever it felt right. Each one takes less than 20 minutes. I just traced a piece of our play bread and asked her to do whatever she wanted. These have yet to be used as peanut butter or jelly though. Z likes to put them in the blender, in her tea cups, on the pizza...