:: a happy nest ::

tea time.

handmade tea bags for Thea's play kitchen

In this house, we drink a lot of tea. During the colder months, I usually sip hot tea with a touch of honey all day long. Yum.

Thea has fallen in love with tea too - not drinking it - but the ritual of making it. Each morning, she helps John prepare tea for the two of us. She helps him open the tea and put the bag into the pot or tea cup. (Now that I am drinking mostly loose tea, I'll have to come up with another way for her to help).

She knows whose tea is whose by the color of the tag - red tea (English Breakfast) for dad and yellow or green tea for mama.

For her birthday, I had been looking for a tea set to add to her play kitchen. I finally decided on this one, made from recycled plastic milk jugs. The set is very sweet, but it just didn't seem complete without tea to go along with it.

So, I came up with some simple little tea bags that Thea can use to make her own tea.

I had originally planned to make them out of felt, but then had the idea to use some natural muslin instead, making the tea bags just a tad more realistic. I put a little bit of quinoa inside to give them a little weight, and added some cotton strings and felt tags in red, yellow, and green. Simple and sweet.

 

If it wasn't for my sewing machine jamming up, this project would have taken only about 20 minutes or so. Super easy.

I'm curious - if your child has a play kitchen, what types of food or accessories does he or she love the most?

naptime crafting.

Yesterday marked the end of a very long week. When naptime came, I needed to make something.

For a while, I've been wanting to make Thea a few more foods to use during kitchen play. Being a tad short on brainpower, I needed something simple and easy - and something that I could start and finish during Thea's nap.

whole-wheat felt pasta

I ended up with felt whole-wheat farfalle pasta. I sort of made it up as I went along - I tried a few things before getting it just right. 

felt pasta in Thea's cooking pot

So far, it's a hit. And considering that "freshy pasta!" is one of her favorite things (and one of the few foods she can eat), I'm glad that the pasta was the start of my felt-food experiments.

Next up: green beans.

felt cookie set.

 

the complete set

I've been experimenting with some making some play food for Thea's kitchen. The first thing I tried was felt cookie dough and cookies, as well as flour and sugar sacks. (original inspiration for this project was found here.)

flour and sugar sacks

I was lucky enough to find a massive quantity of burlap at my favorite thrift store for super, super cheap, and ever since, I've been trying to think of creative ways to use it. These sacks were really simple to make. I cut a rectangle of burlap, folded it in half, stitched along the sides, and turned it inside out. I used recycled paper shred to stuff the bags and then used a large needle and some red hemp cord to make long stitches along the top of the bags. The words were stamped on with an alphabet stamp set and some black fabric paint. (To give the lettering an "aged" look, I brushed the paint on the stamps.)

felt cookies

The cookie dough and cookies were made from some oatmeal-colored felt snagged from the remnant bin at my local fabric store. First, I cut two 12 x 12 inch squares from the felt. With both pieces of felt pinned together, I cut some texture into the edges to make it look less like a square and more like rolled out dough. I used a star cookie cutter to trace the cookie shape onto the dough. I then carefully cut through both layers of felt.

After all of the cutting, I machine stitched around the outer edges of the dough. I placed some cotton batting (to give the dough a little thickness) between the two layers of the cookie dough and hand-stitched around the edges of the stars.

To make the sprinkles, I hand-stitched some tiny beads onto the top of one piece of the cut cookie. I think placed a bit of batting between the two layers of cookie (again - to give the cookies a little texture) - and hand-stitched around the edges.

 

felt cookie dough

The hand-stitching made the project a little more labor-intensive, but I really like the finished look.

And what a joy it is to see Thea cooking with goodies made by my own hands.

play kitchen, continued.

I wanted to share just a little bit more about Thea's play kitchen.(The original post can be found here.)

 

I think I mentioned earlier that the oven window is made of plexiglass. I drilled through the plexiglass and used a screws and washers to attach the "glass" to the oven door. To keep the door securely shut when not in use, I used a small magnet. As I said before, I'm still searching for just the right thing for the oven rack.

 

(sorry for the blurry photo)

I originally intended to secure the faucet and the sink so that they were not easily taken out. I was successful with the faucet (gorilla glue), but I tried several things and nothing seemed to work to keep the sink secure. Thea frequently takes the sink out to play with it alone - and I realized today that this is a good thing. She's taken to pourning water from her cup into the sink - and the removeable sink makes it pretty easy to clean up.

In the above photo, you can also see the towel rack.

This photo shows the hooks I put on the oven side of the kitchen, so that Thea's apron and potholders would always be close at hand. The apron and potholder you see above were made by my super friend Michaelann.

more apron detail

It is amazing to me how Thea just seems to know how to cook, without me even really showing her. Right away, she was mixing things up, putting things in the oven, turning the knobs, and using her potholder to remove her pans from the oven. I suppose it just shows how our wee ones really are watching us all the time, learning every single second. 

In the next few days, I'll be sharing some other kitchen-type things I've made for her to experiment with. 

Happy Wednesday!

thea's play kitchen.

Since last summer, I've wanted Thea to have a play kitchen. I looked at dozens of ones for sale before deciding that I wanted to make one myself.

A friend pointed me to ohdeedoh and their roundup of DIY play kitchens. I fell in love with this one first. Then I found this one and this one and this one on flickr.

I searched local thrift shops, consignment stores, and craig's list for a piece of furniture to repurpose, but nothing was quite right - everything I saw was either too big or too small, or otherwise wouldn't work. So, I decided to make it from scratch. Thea's finished kitchen measures 18 x 32 inches and is 37 inches high.

I started out with 1/2 inch plywood. I took my measurements to the hardware store and had them make some initial cuts. Then, my mother-in-law let me borrow her jigsaw and gave me a lesson on how to use it by helping me cut the hole for the sink. 

Most of the kitchen was assembled using some heavy-duty screws and my drill. I used L-brackets to secure the panel dividing the oven from the area under the sink.

I decided early on that I wanted the top to be curved. I used the back of an antique buffet that we have in our kitchen to make a template for the backsplash. I used the jigsaw to cut the back of the kitchen as well as the window for the oven door.

I drilled plexiglass to the inside of the oven door. The oven handle (and the towel rack on the side of the kitchen) are cabinet handles from the hardware store. The oven door is held shut by a magnet designed for cabinet doors. I am still working on finding something just right for the oven rack, and I hope to add that in the next few weeks.

It was important to me that the knobs be something that Thea could twist and turn. After experimenting with a few different ideas, I ended up getting a set of replacement oven knobs and using dowels (and hot glue!) to hold the knobs in place. (I drilled holes slightly larger than the dowel to allow them to turn).

I added a small wire shelf under the sink for a little extra storage.

The curtain is made of vintage fabric from a sweet little etsy shop - craftvintage. I added some blue and green gingham fabric to the bottom. A simple tension rod holds it in place. 
 

I had originally planned to have a shelf similar to this one attached to the backsplash. I even found one at the local thrift shop. But once I started figuring out the sizing of everything, I decided that the shelf would make the back of the kitchen too tall. When I saw the shelf on this kitchen, I instantly loved it. I used the same template I had used for the backsplash to make the shelf. (I used the jigsaw to make the cuts). 

The cooktop is a 1/4 inch piece of plywood. After it was primed and painted black, I used a white wood paint pen to create the burners. With the paint pen, I traced around two circle templates I made out of cardboard. To keep it nice and secure, I drilled the cooktop to the main body of the kitchen. 

I have to say that while I made the kitchen myself, I couldn't have done it without my sweet husband, who kept Thea occupied for hours and hours while I worked. It also would not have been possible without my mother and step-father generously allowing me to take over their garage. My mother-in-law's jigsaw was absolutely essential. And my fantastic friends Michaelann and Beth provided endless support, encouragement, and ideas. So in truth, this project was not done alone.

And Thea loves it. What more could I ask for?