Felt Potatoes

"Po-ta-toes" said in my best Samwise Gamgee voice :-)  Felt potatoes that is! We went down to visit my parents for a few days and my mom and I couldn't resist sewing up a new felt food for Charlotte's kitchen. We have another sweet treat in the works, but that will have to wait for a bit! We thought potatoes would be a quick and easy project to work on while Charlotte napped one afternoon. We followed this tutorial for felt potatoes (it comes with a pattern). My mom used her trusty old sewing machine to mend the pieces together and I stuffed, closed and added the eyes. Another great addition to our felt food supply! Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and a happy Cinco de Mayo!

Felt Cheesecake

I know I have been making a lot of fruits and vegetables for Charlotte's kitchen, but I have a long long long list of sweet treats to make as well. I decided to start off with a slice of New York style cheesecake. It's cute, it's the perfect size for tiny hands to handle and best of all - it's calorie free!!!! Here is a link to the tutorial that I followed. This pattern had a lot of little parts to it, but it was actually quite easy to sew together. I followed the instructions until the very end. The only thing I changed was the cherries. I personally didn't like how the pom poms looked. Plus I imagined my little tot ripping them off one day. Instead, I made tiny cherries out of felt. I traced the top of my spool of thread for the perfect cherry circle. I then ran a running stitch around the edge and pulled it together to form a shower cap shape. Fill that with your stuffing, sew the hole closed and you have the perfect cherry. When complete, just sew them to the top of your cheesecake. Don't you love the little drip of cherry sauce running down the side? Charlotte has been feeding us bites of cake all afternoon.

21 Month Update

Charlotte is 21 months old today. My baby girl has become a full blown independent little toddler in a blink of an eye. I have had such fun watching this change in her this past month. She's understanding more, practicing a lot of pretend/imaginative play and having a blast exploring and experiencing new adventures. Thought I would give you a quick update while my peanut is snoozing.

Charlotte continues to talk up a storm. Some of the newest words to her vocabulary are: welcome, avocado, asparagus, bathroom, taxi, pirates, helicopter, watering can, lemonade, amazing, heavy, playground, airport, recycle and loofah. She has also been saying several phrases such as: thank you, bless you, I chase dog, I see you, and I okay.

Her new favorite activity is blowing bubbles. A few days ago she actually learned how to master this task and has asked to go outside and blow bubbles every day since then. It's so cute watching her huff and puff and then she gets so super excited when she actually blows a few into the wind.

She still loves going to playgrounds and has just started to learn to come down the slides by herself. Would help if she started on the baby slides, but no - missC wants to go down the tallest, steepest slides she can find. This causes my heart to stop beating constantly. Girl has no fear whatsoever!

Pig tails!!!!! Thank goodness for pig tails. Charlotte's hair hit a growth spurt and one day she woke up with hair half way down her face. Problem was she always ripped out the barrettes/clips that we used to pin her hair back with and there is no way on this green Earth that she will sit still for a quick haircut. Then along comes pig tails. We introduced them last week and so far she keeps them in all day. Hopefully it will last. Plus they look uber sweet and cute!

Charlotte's new favorite afternoon snack is shredded coconut. She found it in the pantry one afternoon and brought it to us asking for cheese (guess that is does look like shredded cheese). We told her it was coconut and gave her a taste thinking she wouldn't like the texture or flavor. Wrong. She loves it and brings me the coconut bin and a bowl every day so she can have a little snack.

Her imaginative play has really improved this past month. She feeds baby dolls and loves loves loves to fix and serve us food. We play sandwich shop a few times daily. We sit down and she greets us with a cheerful, high pitched "Hi, eat". She then constructs a sandwich, naming the items as she goes  before handing it to you and staring all over again. I can't wait to finish up her kitchen for her birthday. She is going to have a blast with it. We are still playing with Easter eggs too. She currently likes us to hide eggs inside eggs inside eggs. She then shakes them and opens them all up. She also likes to stack all of the halves on top of each other.

Fun, Fun, Fun very active age. She constantly keeps us laughing, smiling and always astonishes us with the new things she has learned. I love my little Panda girl.

Felt Strawberries

My post went missing so this is a repost. Sorry! The new blogspot format is odd.

The felt project that I have been working on for the past few days is felt strawberries. Strawberries are a huge hit in our house at the moment. Charlotte loves eating them, watering our plants outsides, searching for ripe berries and now playing with her felt versions. First up, I followed Amy's tutorial for making a felt strawberry. As always, her patterns and tutorials are super easy to follow and the end result is always great. I started by only cutting out and making 6 berries, but when I saw how quick and easy they were to sew up, I went ahead and made 6 more. I used this tutorial on how to tie a french knot for the seeds. Charlotte saw them and immediately screamed out, "strawberry". She then pretended to bite one and said, "mmmmmm, mommy bite berry". That's always a great reaction to get!

I went ahead and followed this tutorial to make a few strawberry halves. I thought it would be great to have so she could add them to several of our other felt food options. Who doesn't love sliced berries on their pancakes, ice cream or chocolate cake :-) It took no time at all to sew some halves together. I love the little hearts in the middle. I saved and cleaned out a carton to store all of our strawberries in. Perfect addition to our felt food collection.

Felt Asparagus and Broccoli

I added some green veggies to our felt food collection this weekend. We all love asparagus and broccoli and we cook with them often. When I stumbled across felt tutorials for both, I immediately saved them. It was the perfect project to work on during a lazy, rainy weekend. First up, I made felt asparagus. Amy over on While Wearing Heels came up with this pattern and tutorial. Her directions are always super easy to follow and the results come out perfectly each and every time. The tops on the asparagus along with the triangle pieces sewn along the body really make it look realistic. Plus I taught Charlotte a new word - asparagus. It sounds super cute when she says it.



Next up, was the broccoli. Hands down the easiest, quickest felt food project I have made to date. It took me 25 minutes to cut out and sew up these four little stalks. Can't beat that! You can find the tutorial here if you want to add it to your felt collection. Off to pick out another project and continue my felt crafting obsession. Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy your week!

Felt Grapes

I completed another felt food to add to the play kitchen. For this week's project, I made a bushel of felt grapes or apes as Charlotte likes to call them! I used this tutorial for the pattern and directions for the stem and leaves. I did follow the directions on how to sew up the individual grapes. However, I ended up making 30 grapes instead of 18. Sounds like a lot, but they were super quick to sew up late at night while we watched T.V. I made more because I wanted the bushel to be long and thin and I tend to sew things tightly together so it looked more natural in the end. Charlotte's birthday is a little over three months away. Gasp!!!! I can't wait to fix up her new little kitchen and fill it with food. I've got quite a good collection so far and a ton of ideas that I want to complete for her. Off to pick out a new project. Hope you have a wonderful day!!!!

Easter

Did everyone have a nice Easter celebration? Charlotte woke us up at the crack of dawn. She had no clue that there were eggs hidden all over the house and a basket full of goodies waiting for her to discover. She was very surprised when she rounded the corner and saw everything. She immediately went straight to her basket and started pulling everything out. She loved the felt goodies that I made for her and was super excited to get some new crayons.



We then pointed out all of the eggs to her and showed her how to put them in her basket. That was all of the direction and prompting that she needed. We just saw a blur running through the house after that. She would gasp each time she spotted a new egg. We hid and re-hid eggs all day!



Holidays have always been special, but now they are fantastic with Charlotte in our lives. I love making them fun and exciting for her.