Ikea hacker and play kitchens

My cardboard play kitchen has been featured on ikea hacker!!

(click on the link for the tutorial)

http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/2009/07/recycled-play-kitchen.html

I think this play kitchen lasted us about a couple of months until my little toddler had the grand idea of using it as a chair. It was a lot of fun making it though and it was a lot of fun while it lasted.... until we decided that a wooden kitchen would survive all that toddler abuse!

Mr. Monkey

That's Mr. Monkey and Adrienne's felt crown.

I remember finding a pair of brown socks in sock monkey colors from the $2 store. I bought it right away with the intention of making a sock monkey but then I got really lazy and the socks had been sitting in my craft box for almost a year until my husband found them and thought they were for him but called them "too hideous" to be worn to work. LOL. So I told him I was supposed to make a monkey out of it and he gave me this funny look and then stuffed the socks back in my craft box.

Anyway, shortly after that, I just had that rush of creative juices flowing and whipped out my sewing machine and started stitching away. The toughest part about making the sock monkey was trying to turn the tail, arms and legs inside out. No wait. Make that right side out (because you sew it after you turn it inside out. CONFUSED MUCH?






Well anyway you get the picture. I just followed the online tutorials and turned the hideous brown socks into a friend! Halfway through stitching up the monkey, my sewing machine went kaput! I had to finish it's arm and tail by hand. It wasn't hard at all but it took a little bit longer once the sewing machine was out of the picture.






A friend's son saw the sock monkey we made and asked if he could bring "Moo-Moo" home. (He named it right away-- that's how attached he was to our Mr. Monkey! So I ended up making him one (a slightly smaller version) because I was incapacitated by my sewing machine mishap. And I even made his monkey some felt food lunch so it wouldn't go hungry... fried shrimp noodles!





Since then Ive been collecting socks that I feel would make great sock animals but I haven't found time to make them. I also haven't gotten my sewing machine fixed so maybe once I get that done, I might actually get around to making more sock animals!. I even got the book "Sock and Glove" for inspiration. There are lots of sock animal ideas that I still haven't gotten around to do. But man, if you just do a "sock animal" search on etsy you'll find dozens and dozens of the cutest sock animals. Ever. They use colourful socks with stripes or polka dots or little hearts on them and they look so professionally done. My sewing skills don't come close at all!

Mod Podge

I found some mod podge today at spotlight. They had different kinds -shimmery, matte, glossy... I settled for the glossy one because i couldn't at that point remember which projects i wanted to use it for but i figured "glossy" might be the most useful.

Im excited! Can't wait to try it out. I remember always wanting to make things that required some Mod Podge and since I didnt have any, I even searched for a recipe to make my own. I could never mix up my own Mod Podge though because I was always lacking one ingredient -- clear varnish! I figured, if I had to run to the store to pick up varnish-- then why not pick up some Mod Podge and save myself the hassle of trying to concoct it myself!

There are lots of sites dedicated solely to Mod Podge projects and Mod Podge crafts. Now I just need to figure out what the first one would be... and then of course remember to document it, in case it's a raging success!

Rainbow cupcakes

After a trip to the emergency room on Monday night (thanks to my 2-year old sticking things up her nose), she asked me to make these rainbow cupcakes that we saw online.

I spent the next day hopping from one supermarket to another trying to get right food colouring we needed (I couldnt find the McCormick 4-pack food coloring that we always had stocked up in our pantry when I was a kid) and I also needed a pack of white cake mix for the cupcakes.

They were very easy to make. I just followed the instructions on the back of the box, split the batter into 6 bowls and mixed in the food colouring (one color per bowl). We had pink, orange, yellow, sky blue, apple green and violet.

Then using a spoon, I layered each color into the cupcake liners and baked them! I should have taken pictures of the whole process but i totally forgot to!

The end result??

RAINBOW CUPCAKES!

When you peel off the cupcake liners, you can see how i didnt do such a good job of layering the batter evenly. LOL. oops.

But they were yummy! And it was a nice surprise for a little 2 year old for when she woke up from her nap :)