Did you see the awesome kitchen that Carrie refurbished for Ethan? How cool is that! Carrie told me about her project and mentioned wanting to get him some food for his kitchen, so I set out to make him some felt foods. Perfect crafts for watching movies and relaxing in the evening.

I started with these fun sprinkle donuts from Carrie’s 2010 Sewing project calendar (pattern also available here), which is an awesome set of daily sewing projects.

I also found a lot of patterns online for felt foods, so I made a mix of things.  I was just blown away by the awesome crafters who share their patterns online! These felt orange slices followed this pattern. I made the blue woven place mat out of strips of blue felt in my stash using some fusible interfacing to set them and added a simple fabric background.

Sandwich (lettuce, tomato, cheese, veggie bologna OR the classic PB&J) and chips from here. These took the longest to make, but I was happy how they came out.

And a shot at the inside goodies (you can see even more pictures on Flickr).

And of course some potato chips (or the healthier banana chip)…

I found so many fun patterns online but ran out of time. Here are some patterns I had wanted to try, but didn’t have time for:

Pumpkin pie, grapes, broccoli and cauliflower

Cake stand and chocolate box

Lollipops

Pancakes! (they even look yummy)

Now I need a visit to Ethan’s kitchen!

I love to cook. (Surprised?) I love to bake. I love to encourage others to cook and bake. So with the help of my Mom (thanks, mom!), I made my newlywed cousin an apron with a pocket filled with recipes for Christmas!

She’s young so I wanted to keep it hip. I wanted her to feel young and crazy as she tried new recipes for her and her hubby. I hope she gets a lot of use out it!

This is not my cousin, but a sweet friend, Alex, who willingly tried it on for pictures! Thanks, Alex!

Have any fun recipes you’d pass along to a newlywed? Post them in the comments!

Every quilt has a history. Usually the history starts after the quilts are made! Not these two quilts though…

* Oldest sister makes announcement, “Twin babies to be born next June!” – November 2008
* Tracy & Carrie decide they’re making quilts for the twins! – December 2008
* Boys! Okay, we’re making quilts for twin boys! – February 2009
* Pattern selected from 101 Fabulous Rotary-Cut Quilts – April 2009
* Fabric purchased from Intown Quilters in Decatur Georgia during Carrie, Mike, and Ethan’s visit – April 2009
* Pattern shared with Carrie and we decided who would sew what and plans to put it together – April 2009
* Fabric washed and cut – pieces pieced separately – April through June 2009
* Twins born! – June 2009
* Visits with cuddling, sweet boys – July 2009
* Scattered craft days to work on quilts – August 2009 – March 2010
* Tops finished and aiming to have them all done for 1st birthday! – April 2010
* Life intervenes…. Katie born and Tracy and Matt get married! – May 2010 and June 2010
* Twins turn one! – June 2010
* Someone hints about the quilts… will they be ever done? – June 2010
* More life happening… – Summer 2010
* Quilt tops and backing pressed and ready to go (found while cleaning up post wedding projects) – November 2010
* Quilts dropped off at machine quilter and patterns picked out – November 2010
* Quilts picked up from quilter and binding added – December 2010
* Hand stitching the binding on – Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!
* Quilts given to the boys! Yay!

All the pieces were cut and sewn to match, although the order is a little different on each one. We wanted them to be similar yet distinct for telling apart and reflecting their individual personalities, so we used different backing fabrics. The Michael Miller fabric was a dream to cut and press.

Michael’s quilt is above with a caterpillar and ladybugs quilt pattern in honor of his fave book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

For Max’s we went with a sports theme with soccer balls and baseball gloves.

I hope at some point we’ll get to see some pictures of them in use!

For a boy, my son sure does like playing with pretend kitchens. and pretend cash registers. and shopping carts. and all that. I’m ok with it. In fact, I hope he grows up to be a great cook as he practices with me. I really hope he knows how to do his own laundry when he gets to college and doesn’t trick a girl into doing it like his Daddy did. Of course, he might not be here if I didn’t fall for it, but I digress…

So I set out to make him a kitchen. I found great ideas online including this one from Baboo baby. But then a friend of mine actually gave me an old Little Tikes kitchen that was headed to the dump. It was in a sad state but I like a project!

Here are some before pictures:

Ignore the basement… I had to keep it out of sight! But notice the chair. Take in the “little tikes” yellow. Enjoy the lean. It’s custom.

With the doors closed. Still sad.

What about this kitchen screams “Party” to you?

And, oh, the blue roof with floral bunting. So classy.

So insert me. Plus a bottle of soft scrub, hot water, rubbing alcohol, four cans of spraypaint, two CDs (you’ll see why), and some accessories.

Tada!

This is his favorite present. He’s been making us breakfast, lunch, and dinner five times a day! He quickly removed the burners… I guess gorilla glue has got nothing on a preschooler:

Overall, I’m pleased with how it turned out. Any ideas for new burners? He requested that I “fix it, Mommy!”

Matt and I try to make a holiday card every year. Since we wanted to share copies of photos from the wedding with family and friends, we need to make a lot of cards this year. Lucky for me, Matt gave me a Gocco for my birthday and I had been waiting to try it. I should say, he gave me a Gocco for my birthday two years ago… but, you know when you have something special and limited supplies you wait to use it for something special… Anyways, it was a lot of fun to pull it out and learn how to use it.

We started with the idea of using a paper cut out snowflake that had the word Peace cut out of the middle… you can see it evolved quite a bit. Matt made a few snowflakes of different sizes that we scanned and used Photoshop to do a simple layout. I handwrote peace in the bottom corner.

Gocco works by creating a screen using a flash bulb. You then apply your inks and print to paper – it is actually pretty simple. Unfortunately supplies are no longer made, but you can find them on ebay and other online shops. Save Gocco is a great resource for learning more about the process, as well as seeing some fantastic projects others have made with their Goccos.

Here it is after printing.

The white and gray ink on the blue paper was nice and subtle – just what I would expect a snowflake to look like. In the end it took us a few hours, but it was a lot of fun and felt very productive. We needed around 100 cards for mailing, but we ended up with maybe four times that… This super fuzzy photo is just to give you a shot of our total card making process!

Eventually we ran out of paper, the screen started to degrade which caused the ink to run, and we lost our steam. I did post a set of extras to Etsy… we have quite a few! I’ll be bundling them as sets for gifts next year, too. If anyone reading this is interested in a set, leave me a comment and I will be happy to share with a few lucky readers!

Peace!