Food for Play

KidCraft Kitchen $30 from craigslist (regularly $140)

Lady genevieve discovered her new kitchen, that was supposed to be a birthday present- though upon discovery it was not hidden very well.  It was in plain sight actually.  We've had it for over a month, and only recently had I been concealing it with towels.  She hadn't taken notice of it before then.  I briefly had it uncovered to check out the shelf heights.  And then I never draped the towels back over it.  As I was working in the kitchen, she stood in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room.  In amazement she said, "kitchen!" and ran over to it.  And the rest has been history- she loves it to pieces.  It it seriously hours of fun, and I hope that remains.

I decided to make play food out of our empty containers.  We took a field trip to the grocery store in search of small size packaged foods.  We came away with an individual bottle of milk, Tropicana Orange Juice, a tiny single service of Naked Juice (Green), a small ice cream container, Parmesan cheese, ketchup and a few canned items.

To make it fun, we filled each of the bottles with a little bit of kids Crayola paint & water to coat the inside of the bottles with appropriate colors.  White for milk.  Orange, Yellow & White for Tropicana OJ.  Green, Yellow & Teal for the Naked Juice. Red for the Heinz Ketchup.  I may have added too much water, as the liquid still slowly moves around inside the bottle.  But I like that it re-coats the inside when I shake it around, so I don't mind.  They turned out super cute.

I saved and cleaned one single serving of Peach yogurt.  Cut a piece of thin cardboard the shape of the foil lid, as extra support.  Then used Mod Podge to glue everything together.  I used chip clips on each corner to hold it together tight while drying.  I coated the entire outside of the yogurt with the Mod Podge to make it smooth and keep the label from peeling off.

For canned goods, so far we have a can of tuna.  Our can opener cuts from the side, which is awesome since it cuts without creating sharp edges.  I used the Mod Podge to glue to top back onto the can, and then completely coated the exterior of the can to make it smooth and keep the label from peeling off.



For kitchen tools, I found a few cute pieces from Savers (our local Thrift Store).  A small sauce pan, a small mixing bowl, and mini-muffin tin.  I found some other things around our kitchen to add to her collection.  I also cut a new sponge in half so she would have something to clean her kitchen with.

We made some canisters for flour & sugar out of basic brown boxes from the craft section at Joann's.  Spray painted the lids Rubbed Oil Bronze, and the bottoms a textured cream- both spray paints I already had on hand from other projects.  I coated them with Mod Podge to smooth out the exterior and keep the spray paint from chipping later.

As easy as it would be to go an buy play kitchen food & utensils, it is so much fun to make your own unique collection.  I also tend to think this may be the more economical route to go as well- as toys are quite expensive.  This food collection has only just begun.

Felt Farfelle (Bow-Tie Pasta)

I made some felt pasta for the food collection.  Here are a few websites that I used to make our felt pasta:

Felt Farfalle (Bow-tie)
Felt Ravioli
Felt Tortellini

Felt Ravioli Pasta

 

Felt Tortellini

 They turned out pretty cute.  I purchased pre-cut felt squares from Joann Fabrics.  I also had to buy pinking scissors to make the cute zig-zag edges on the ravioli & bow-tie pasta.  They were more expensive than I imagined, but I used a coupon so that helped with cost a bit.  A very inexpensive craft to make for fun play food.  I found that the ravioli were the easiest to make, since I could use the sewing machine.  I had to hand sew the farfelle and machine & hand sew the tortellini.  I initially rolled the tortellini incorrectly, but I was able to flip them inside out and roll the correctly without a hassle.  Lady genevieve is going to know her different pastas with the help of our little felt foodies!

Happy playing!

Watching the Birds

Not too long ago, lady genevieve & I woke up a little early one weekend morning.  As we were playing in our great room, I noticed some cardinals outside our windows.  We went closer to look out, and that's when I noticed there were tons of them- maybe 20+.  And then there were 2 blue jay.  When we looked up we saw a red headed woodpecker in the sycamore tree right next to the house, overlooking the ground that all the birds were eating seed from- it was amazing!

Interestingly, the Laird had hung up a skinny red bird feeder in order to attract the birds, but we hadn't seen any up to that point.  Last year we had lots of cardinals, but for some reason they had yet to find the bird feeder.  Without luck in the back, the Laird decided to move the feeder to a tree in the front of the yard.  For some reason they don't like the feeder.  The morning we found the amazing gathering of birds, they were gathered eating food off the ground.

The Laird built a little bird feeder out of many pieces of scrap pine, left over from my barn door building projects.  He also had a few thin pieces of cedar he used as well. Though he doesn't think it's anything special and minimizes how well it turned out (says he didn't really design it), I think it looks great and can't wait for him to hang it up and test it out.  We tea stained the wood and applied 1 coat of Satin Polyurethane to protect it from the weather and help it to last longer.

Watching the different birds frequenting Redwoodshire is fascinating.  They are so beautiful against the white snow.  Hopefully, this little bird feeder will bring more and more for us to watch.  We still have to figure out how to hang it or attach it to a post.

More news fit to print at Redwoodshire- We had a resident great horned owl living in the woods here at Redwoodshire up until it died this past Fall.  We were quite sat to discover it had passed, as we loved hearing it hoot hoot in the night.  The Laird and lady genevieve loved exploring the woods and making occasional sightings as well. We were sad that he had passed, as you can't just invite owls to come take residence on your land.  Last week, the Laird spotted a new great horned owl and found that it had taken up residence in the same tree as our late owl (he found fresh owl poop collecting at the base of the tree.)  We are excited and hope that he lives here for many years.

A small water stain grew to a full on project

Have you ever tried to fix something small, and end up making a bigger mess than you started with?

Well, this week I have firsthand experience doing just that.  Remember that beautiful light stained pine dry sink that I found on craigslist?; well it's not so beautiful at the moment.  It came with some slight areas of water staining on the front of the door.  I wanted to see if I could manage to fix them.  I googled how to remove water stains from wood and found some cool tricks.  So I tried a few of them out.  And created myself a mess.  I lightly sanded the area down and then applied a little petroleum jelly to the area.  The wood soaked it up and turned a much darker shade than the rest of the wood.  So then I tried using some toothpaste as an abrasive.  And then baking soda...etc.  Then I called it quits, and cleaned my mess up for the moment.  When the Laird came home, I showed him and tried to convince myself "it wasn't that bad."  I asked him what he thought.  His response was that it didn't look good. We both agreed I should try to fix it.  Then I decided maybe I could lightly sand down the finish off of the edges and corners of the cabinet & doors and then apply wax to darken those areas.  My thought was that this would give it a weathered and worn look.  That didn't really work well because my initial water stained area was too large.  I then used a chemical finish stripper thinking that would be easier than sanding the finish off.  It turned out terrible, and uneven.  It was more difficult than I imagined.  So when all else fails, you get out the power sander and sand it down completely.  Start over- blank slate.

I sanded down the exterior and top of this dry sink using a 50 grit sandpaper, to remove the polyurethane.  Then I used 220 to smooth out the roughness I had created.    Though I was dreading it because of the detail and corners, it went quicker than I anticipated.  I did not sand down the left side of the cabinet because it will be against the wall, nor did I do the interior of the cabinet or door.  I had to hand sand the hard to reach cracks and corners.

Once everything was sanded, it was time to bring the cabinet into the house (it's below freezing here) to tea stain.  Check out this tea staining post for more detail on how to tea stain.

Tea Staining the top of the dry sink

Test wood on top of tea stained dry

Tea stain applied to mirror

Mirror sanded

This cabinet was previously a typical yellowish pine shade, with some sort of "frosting" coat/finish to tone down the color.  Though I sanded all the finish off, it is obvious that I didn't sand through the original stain penetration.  As soon as I applied my tea stain (4 tea bags, in 4 cups boiling water- soaked for 1 hour), that original yellowish-shade popped back through.  

After the tea had dried, I applied a coat of my steel-wool vinegar mixture.  The cabinet turned a very light grey color- which was not quite what I was hoping for.  I then applied another coat of tea, and once dry I applied another coat of vinegar.  This time it turned out a little darker grey shade, and I like it .  

We ordered the white ceramic vessel sink (15 in. round) from Overstock.com for a decent price.  Unfortunately it seems a little large for the size of this cabinet, so we found another 12 in. vessel sink on etsy.com and returned the original.  

All we have to do now is apply a few coats of polyurethane and then this part will be ready for the bathroom upgrade.  Though I created a mess out of trying to fix a small water stain, I LOVE the new look of our soon-to-be bathroom vanity!