My daughter has always done 'themed' holidays since she became a mom. They generally pick the main gift based on what Eleanor asks Santa for and then she asks everyone else to 'fill in' around it.
Eleanor's Second Christmas
For Eleanor's second Christmas, Krystle got a 'play kitchen' off facebook market place for nothing and then did her designer remodel on it.
Gramps built a fridge, because what kitchen is complete without one?
Gigi Went Nuts
I was asked if I could make felt food for the kitchen. Honestly, I could have bought an entire house full of play food for the amount of time and money I spent. {And I petered out halfway through the project.}
I found Sweet Emma Jean on Etsy and I bought 6 patterns: Pizza; Summer Cookout (the burgers have grill marks!)); Cookies; Deluxe Lunch; French Toast Breakfast & Taco Dinner! I then printed out all of my patterns and created a spreadsheet to figure out how much felt to buy and in which colors. Let me tell you - I way over bought and a friends child might also have a complete set of felt food. Also, for the Summer Cookout and Deluxe Lunch sets, I doubled everything because if you're playing kitchen you want to be able to have a sandwich with your friend, not make her one and be out of bread!
These patterns use layers of 'stiff felt' to give depth and dimension to the different foods. If I remember correctly, the bread has 3 layers of stiff felt between the 2 layers of white bread colored wool felt, The outside is a darker colored felt - to resemble the crust and then the whole thing is sewn together by hand using embroidery floss.
This food was so much fun to make and incredibly realistic. The strips of bacon have a small piece of pipe cleaner in them so they are flexible like bacon! Both sides are the same with 'meat' and 'fat' areas on the strip of bacon! There was even an incredible slice of olive loaf for sandwiches (of course I forgot to take a picture).
Pizza
The best part of the pizza set was the pizza cutter! It actually spins! Gramps cut the pizza peel from thin, hard wood. The felt food set came with all the toppings! Olives, mushrooms, bell peppers, onions, pepperoni and cheese sticks with a marinara dipping sauce! Let's not forget the 6 slices with tomato sauce and cheese!
Back Yard Cookout
I'm pretty bad at taking photos - but these things were so much fun! The doritos have a layer of tin foil in them so they bend! I did sew them with my sewing machine and they are fine.
Grilled onion on your burger anyone? There was also lettuce leaves, tomato slices, top & bottom buns with sesame seeds. But those onion slices were ridiculous!
What's a cookout without watermelon? Can you see how the stiff felt came into play to give this slice of watermelon dimension? The stiff felt was very hard to stitch through neatly and on the edges you are just sewing around it. I learned to add any decorative elements first before putting it all together.
Finally - have you ever seen such a good looking deviled egg? This was fun, if a little bit fidly to make.
Cookies
I had to learn some new embroidery stitches to really make these look like the store bought version.
I don't think I finished all of the cookies!
Let's Wrap This Up!
I had to pull all of my supplies out to figure out what was what. Little H will turn 2 in a few months so it might be time to finish what I started. If I gift him the French Toast Breakfast - which ham slice & fried egg and the Taco Dinner then Big Sis can't be mad if he plays with her kitchen, right?
Also, the next time we are there, I need to ask to see the felt food just to see how it's held up to play.
