Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts

Monday, January 9, 2012

A Healthy Craft

Ok, here's the big reveal of the felt craft that captured all my attention throughout the holiday season. Back in the spring when I was buying Maddie a play kitchen for her birthday, I knew I wanted to give her some food to play with. I had this in mind actually, something which I had seen long ago:
(which can be purchased on Amazon.)

But then I started thinking, I could probably make fruits and veggies on my own. I was just to the point of figuring out how to make a fabric sphere when I saw a pin on pinterest to buy patterns for felt food of all different kings at umecrafts.

Once I visited umecrafts I got a little impulsive. There was a nice little sale going on and I ended up buying four different sets of patterns. Hence my HUGE pile of felt that I showed you in my previous post.

Throughout November and Decemeber, I set my little crafty fingers to work and made tons of food for Maddie and my niece's Christmas gifts. Here are some pictures of most of them...


Veggies including eggplant, summer squash, broccoli (it's small so you might not see it in the basket!), artichokes and cabbage.


Fruits including watermelon, oranges, tomatoes, banana, apple, and grapefruit. In the background is a grocery bag I made for Maddie from an old coffee sack.


A Barista set which I made as a joint gift for Maddie and her dad, who is a barista. The set includes a brownie and ice cream, hot cocoa, coffee, latte, cheesecake and lemon meringue pie (in the takeout container). Also not pictured is a cappuccino, mocha and tea.


Pizza set with deep-dish and thin crust pizzas and toppings including pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, green peppers and tomatoes (hmmm, which are mysteriously missing... perhaps I need to clean!) This also includes a pizza server and cutter.


Also as a tribute to Maddie's daddy, I personalized this by making a pizza box with a special "Pizza Girl" logo since her dad used to work at "Pizza Man" in Covington, Louisiana.

I may have gotten a little obsessed and truthfully I'm still going long after Christmas. Once I got into the habit, it seemed easy to come up with a few more items on my own. I'm started deviating from the pattern and turned squash into eggplant (easy!) and blew up my orange pattern to make the grapefruit. Then I played with the apple pattern and made the tomato. I also played around a bit to make the fruit segments to stick together. The apple pattern called for the core to be made in velcro, but nothing else seemed likely to bond. I played a little bit with craft magnets stuffed inside the orange pieces but it really didn't work. You can see I added snaps to the tomato to make it bond. The grapefruit was easy --I just added velcro to the pith section. I may soon have another post with some new patterns that I'm working on. But I do highly recommend umecrafts. These patterns are super easy to follow and really got me into a great new craft.

Monday, October 24, 2011

No Picky Eaters Here!

A little while ago I noticed that Maddie was snacking more on cheese than the fruits and veggies that she will actually eat if I remind her. So I came up with this idea to give her a little visual reminder and put some choices out there. (By the way, I'm in love with felt lately, in case you can't tell...)


Fruits (and a few veggies) from clockwise from left to right: broccoli, strawberry, orange slice, peach, pear, raspberry, blueberry, banana, grapes, apple, tomato.

Veggies, clockwise, from left to right: squash, corn, tomato, green beans, beet, peas, carrot, broccoli.

These were super easy. I just cut out two of each shape, sewed them together in a nothing-fancy stitch with a craft magnet in between layers (although you could probably hot glue a magnet to the back -- I just felt safer sandwiching it). Some of the fruits and vegetables I got a little creative with and made a little bit of detailing. But for the most part, I kept it simple.

Now I put the fruits and veggies that we have on the fridge for Maddie to play with and remind her to grab them for a snack -- which actually does work! And I stash the ones we don't have up on top of the fridge to remind me to pick them up.

So far, Maddie seems to like them!


If you want to try this for yourself, feel free to use these patterns (but really their nothing special):






Ok, and now you also know the truth: those fruits and veggies also cover up the stickers I've scrapped off my fridge.