I’ve been thinking about trying to overhaul the girls’ play kitchen. At the moment it contains some small metal pots and pans, many of which were picked up at the thrift store. They also have some oven mitts that were acquired through swaps, and entirely too much painted wood play food and accessories, most of which is of the made in China variety. Now, I know that the manufacturers of these items claim that the paint used is safe and does not contain lead. Moreover, they say that the facilities are visited and the toys are tested. That’s all well and good, but I still see Bea sticking them in her mouth, and I see a lot of chipped paint, and whatnot. Even though I keep trying to pretend that I’m not bothered by all this and that I shouldn’t be an alarmist, it’s still bothering me.

The other side of the story is that I received some really sweet knit food recently, and it has inspired me to get my crafty food wheels turning; nudging me to look through my stash of craft stuff and see what I can create. I have much more on the “to do” list than on the “done” list, but the latter list is slowly growing. I figured that while I’m keeping myself motivated to work on these sweet little projects, you all might want to create your own all-natural play foods as well. I’m striving to stick with only natural materials. That means that anything cotton, wool, soy, bamboo, etc. is ok, but poly fill, acrylic yarn and such is out. Ok, so if you wanna get cooking with me, so to speak, keep reading. Oh yea, I should also add the disclaimer that unless noted, I have not used these patterns or purchased from these sellers myself, so please use appropriate discretion when making your own buying decisions. Alright, moving on....

The first thing that I started working on was this knit sushi.

To read the complete post, please click here