Yarn Pirate Shop →

I thought it might be fun to buy H some felt play food for Christmas, so I went on Etsy and searched “play food”. There were some cute things to buy, but then I found Buggabugs patterns and fell in love.

The first thing I did was email a link to my mom. She wanted to make some toys for H and I thought these were perfect. She bought a lot of patterns. I wasn’t planning on making anything, but then I read about a bunch of Melissa & Doug toys being recalled due to toxic paint. Well, crap. We had some of the recalled toys, which were promptly thrown away. We also had some of their play food. Since the paint was chipping off of all of it I threw those out as well. So we were in need of some new play food.

I bought 4 Buggabugs patterns- Fruits, Vegetables, Pancake Breakfast and Homemade Bread. She emailed the patterns to me right away. They’re PDF downloads, and all of the pattern pieces fit on a sheet of regular paper, so no need to tape a bunch of peices together to make the pattern.

The patterns are pretty easy to sew, depending on your sewing skills. If you’ve never sewn anything in your life they might be a little frustrating. And it definitely helps to have a sewing machine. But the directions are so well written even a beginner sewer can follow them. Oh, and I bought all of the supplies I needed for all 4 patterns for $30. And there’s a lot of stuff in each set. I didn’t even make all of the pieces.

Some of the pieces go together quickly. Most of the things I made from the Pancake Breakfast set were really simple (I skipped some of the more complicated ones because I didn’t think H would play with them). It took me an hour or two to finish the panckaes, bacon and eggs.

Some were more time consuming. This pineapple took 3 hours. The grapes took about 3 hours too. It was fun though. I promise there was minimal swearing involved. Oh, and in case you’re wondering how I managed to sew all of this stuff with a very active toddler- I did all of the sewing while he was asleep or playing with grandma.

Here’s the stuff my mom made. The Grocery set. We have lots of fun playing store with this one!

This one is tons of fun too! Three Little Pigs. H loves the story and will happily play with this set for a long time. He loves to huff and puff and blow the houses down.

There are lots more that she still needs to sew and I keep finding new patterns that I want to try, like the Waffle set.

I love that these toys encourage creative play too. We are getting ready to plant our garden and have been looking through seed catalogs and talking about what we want to plant this year. The other night H got out his felt food and planted a little garden of his own on the rug. Corn, potatoes, a pineapple and pancakes.

It really made me smile to see him playing garden on his own. I can’t even tell you how happy it makes me that our little boy knows that food comes from the earth. He still talks about picking tomatoes with me last summer. I’m kind of going off on a tangent here, but I’m glad that we’re raising our children to value knowing where their food comes from.