Month: April 2012

The State of the Dollhouse

Playing with her Dollhouse
Dollhouse furniture mess
Dollhouse pile of people mess

There’s no doubt about it: ours is a lived in dollhouse.

After several months of inactivity (recovering from my three day marathon painting session to get it ready for Christmas morning!), we’re back to working on the dollhouse.

When your dollhouse family insists that they need a pink sofa, you happily oblige:

Painting dollhouse furniture

What house is complete without books strewn throughout the house and tucked safely away in cupboards?!

Dollhouse bookshelves in the living room

Cleaning and laundry is so much more fun when there are small sized mops and laundry facilities available:

Dollhouse laundry room
Dollhouse kitchen
Dollhouse bedroom

Next up: hang wallpaper in the living and sew curtains for the house. We also have plans to sew a black and white rug to go under the sofa.

We’re loving the process as much as the play. Isn’t that what it’s all about anyway?!

Easter Crafting

Last minute crafting for Easter
Last minute crafting for Easter
Last minute crafting for Easter
Last minute crafting for Easter
Last minute crafting for Easter
Last minute crafting for Easter
Last minute crafting for Easter

I know that buried under all that craft mess there’s a kitchen table somewhere. We haven’t seen it in a few days, but it’s there waiting for us to finish our Easter crafting. I don’t actually miss it all that much. We’re having too much fun sewing, cutting, dying, filling… and we’re in the homestretch!

May you all have a wonderful weekend!

Passover Matzah Treats

While our family may avoid unleavened bread and thereby celebrate Passover essentially every day of the year (being gluten-free and all), I do appreciate the deliciousness of matzah during Passover and miss eating it.

(Yes, I know that you can now buy gluten-free matzah! Unfortunately it contains potato starch, a big no-no for this family thanks to my husband and daughter’s pesky nightshade allergies.)

If I could eat matzah, here’s what I would be making for our family this week:

Featured above:
1. Apple-Matzah Kugel (pin/source)
2. Matzah S’mores (pin/source)
3. Matzah Almond Brittle (pin/source)
4. Chocolate-Covered Matzah Two Ways: with Candied Kumquats and Toasted Coconut (pin/source)
5. Chocolate-Covered Caramelized Matzah Crunch (as David Lebovitz says, “Whatever holiday you celebrate, you need to make this recipe – it’s amazing.”) (pin/source)
6. Chocolate, Nut, and Dried Fruit Covered Matzah (pin/source)

Please indulge in at least one of these treats for me, okay?

View these and more Passover recipes on my Spring Holiday Inspiration and Sweet Treats Recipes to Try Pinterest boards.

(images obtained via Pinterest)

More Ways to Decorate Easter Eggs

There are so many creative ways to decorate eggs for Spring. First I want to show you some Easter projects from our house, then I’ll share some of my favorite egg decorating ideas from Pinterest.

This year we’ve dyed eggs with natural ingredients:

Dying eggs naturally with ingredients from the kitchen pantry

(Above, the deep red eggs on the left were dyed with red onion skins and cabbage; the egg on the right is immersed in a saffron dye bath.)

We’ve also decoupaged small tissue paper circles to our eggs for a fun color-mixing lesson:

Tissue paper circles decoupage Easter eggs

(Using skewers laid across shallow slits made in a toddler-sized shoe box worked perfectly for securing the eggs and allowing us to decorate the entire egg at once without get our fingers dirty or having to wait for the egg to dry while we worked!)

Last year we decorated oversized paper mache eggs with brightly colored tissue paper:

Here are some other fun ideas from my Spring Holiday Inspiration board on Pinterest:

Featured above:
1. Eggs decorated with edible ink pens (pin/source)
2. No dye Easter eggs (pin/source)
3. Decoupage flowered Easter eggs (pin/source)
4. Dip dyed eggs (pin/source)
5. Silhouette Easter Eggs (pin/source)
6. Washi tape Easter eggs (pin/source)
7. Melted crayon Easter eggs (pin/source)

I am blown away by the creativity out there on the web!

View these and many more Spring holiday crafts and activities on my Spring Holiday Inspiration Pinterest board.

(images obtained via Pinterest)

Getting the BPA Out of the Kitchen

We’ve tossed the BPA-laced canning lids and only buy BPA-free canned goods, yet we still have BPA lurking throughout the kitchen. Here’s my plan of attack.

Replace our old salad spinner with a metal or BPA-free-plastic salad spinner:

Plan of attack for getting BPA out of our kitchen

Toss out our old plastic cutting boards in favor of bamboo ones and say goodbye to our Cuisinart food processor:

Plan of attack for getting BPA out of our kitchen

Many countertop appliances like food processors or blenders contain BPA in the food bowls. (Yet another reason to switch to the BPA-free Vitamix blenders — we LOVE ours!)

I just contacted KitchenAid and evidently the bowls for their brand new 7, 9, and 13 cup food processors are now BPA free! (The 7 cup is model KFP0711, the 9 cup is model KFP0922, and the 13 cup model is KFP1333.) Since Cuisinart has yet to jump on the BPA-free band wagon for their full-sized food processors, it looks like I’m going to be asking for a BPA-free KitchenAid food processor for the Christmas this year!

Updated November 2012:
Great news! There are now MANY more food processors that contain BPA-free bowls: Breville BFP800XL Sous Chef Food Processor, Cuisinart DLC-2011CHB Prep 11-Cup Food Processor and Cuisinart FP-12DC Elite Collection 12-Cup Food Processor, among others (see Cuisinart’s site for more information about each of their models).

Donate our plastic cooking tools (like spatulas and ladles) and keep our bamboo, wood, silicone, and stainless steel ones:

Plan of attack for getting BPA out of our kitchen

But it’s not quite so simple.

There are so many other places BPA may be lurking:
– plastic strainers
– plastic mixing bowls
– plastic measuring spoons and cups
– plastic tupperware (instead we use sets of these Pyrex glass and BPA-free lids and Snapware Glasslock Glass Storage Containers!)
– plastic water pitchers (Brita pitcher are BPA-free)
– any type of canned product that doesn’t specifically say BPA-free; including soda pop cans, not just that can of soup! (I recently stopped buying cans of coconut water and now buy terta pak containers instead.)

While I believe that making the above changes are important for our health, it’s difficult to justify the expense of replacing kitchen items that remain functional! I need to remind myself that while it may seem like an extraneous expense, we feel it’s an important one. I guess we had better budget for those new kitchen items. Check back in to see how we do.