Product Review: Ikea play fruits and veggies

Even before River was born, I had very strong intentions to surround her with hand-made fabric and wooden toys instead of the typical mass-produced plastic toys. I have not been able to stick to this as much as I would have liked, having received a lot of plastic toys and being unable to afford hand-made products.

One of the toys I intended to buy for River was a good set of play fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, sets on Etsy run about $30, and are pretty limited. During one of my random visits to Ikea though, I found THESE:

Veggies

Fruits

Each set is $7.99 and come with a good selection. Plus, the lettuce leaves velcro on and off, and the banana can be peeled! The sets are standing up really well to River's chewing and don't have any loose fibers that she can eat.

My little hobbit loves the mushrooms!

In the same product line, Ikea also has a breakfast set and a dessert set, both of which I was not incredibly impressed by and didn't buy. Specifically, we didn't purchase the breakfast set because I plan on raising River vegetarian, so play meats aren't really encouraged, and I didn't really feel the need to encourage a love of sweets...

Then again, if you can afford buying handmade, this products looks great: Handmade Eco Friendly Felt Play Food by MsMagpieGirl on Etsy.com

Book Review: Elusive Moose

River and I are avid library goers (ALA | Campaign for America's Libraries). We're there AT LEAST twice a week, sometimes as often as every-other-day! River is a big fan of preschool story time and I love playing Scrabble with the older folks.

Part of our library habit includes checking out a certain number of things once per week: 2 child-friendly CD's, (at least) 1 adult nonfiction book, 1 adult fiction book, and 3 board books.

This week I was particularly impressed by Elusive Moose, by Joan Gannij and Clare Beaton.

Front Cover

The book features pictures of mixed media (mostly felt and embroidery) art. It identifies multiple woodland animals with a hidden moose on every page. There are no pronouns or any other identification of sex/gender other than the fact that the main moose has antlers.

Random page

I think that the part of me that wants to live in a cabin or yurt in the woods is what really draws me to this book. I also love all the pictured textures and the creativity that must have gone into making the original art.

My only wish is that this book came as a felt or soft book. While it would definitely need to be simplified (no buttons or sequins), it would be fantastic to be able to feel all the pictured textures. A soft book would also be great to guard against my child's voracious apatite for eating board books when I'm not looking >.<

In conclusion, Five Stars! Two Thumbs Up! Bravo! Buy this book or borrow it from your library!

Featured Seller Tuesday! (Late Edition)

I tend to wear many hats (haha, punny!). Aside from being a hippy-feminist-mother, i'm also a rennie, a costume designer, a makeup artist, a dancer, etc... etc... Today's featured seller is a fellow rennie who is also a wearer (and maker!) of many many hats! Seamstress of Avalon is an Etsy seller whose shop features her amazing, might I say fantastikal, hat creations. I have never had the occassion (or spare funds) to purchase one of her products, but I would strongly encourage anyone with a special event coming up, or just a desire to get an awesome hair clip or  hat, to check out her products. Here are a few of my favorites:

This is her Clarisse hair fastener which includes peacock and ostrich feathers.

This is her Veronica Flirty Peacock Feather 40's Fastener

This is her Shelby - Velvet Gardenia Bridal Fascinator

  And last but not least, this is her Elizabeta - Vintage-Inspired Ostrich and Velvet Headband Fascinator 


She's a local Chicago seamstress who is FANTASTIC and super talented. And, as you can probably tell from This wedding picture:

I have a certain love for oversized-flower hair clips instead of traditional veils for weddings :-D


Happy Shopping!

Featured Seller Tuesday!

I promised in my last post to put up some pictures of the new pants that I got from Etsy seller  The Seventh Rabbit, so why not do a whole featured seller post?!?

Seeing as I dislike buying clothes (nothing usually fits, and it just doesn't seem like the best use of money), especially now that whatever I buy will only be wearable for a couple months, I've been on the lookout for clothing that is highly adjustable or is draped well enough that it can be worn outside of pregnancy. This includes drawstring pants, awesome cotton dresses, and open front sweaters. My newest find: Thai Fisherman Pants!

The pants that I ordered are super easy to wear and have an amazing print! PLUS the seller even included a free bracelet with the purchase (I love little add-ons that really make me feel like the person appreciated the sale)

They're actually even better looking in person, not that the pictures I took really do them justice (WOW my belly is HUGE!)

The waist is huge, and then folds in the front and ties. They're all one-size, but my husband ordered a pair for himself from a different Etsy seller, Adisorn. I think he loves his even more than I love mine!

And, just to show you how easy they are to put on, here's a video from youtube!



It's a little tougher on a preggo belly, I just have to remember to tie it below the buldge, and then pull the back up over my bum.

Bloggy Intentions

    The decision to start a new blog was made after realizing that I read a TON of other people's blogs, and that I was losing touch with myself (see first post). It's meant to be a way for me to analyze my decisions and make sure that my life stays interesting! The way I figure it, a more interesting Life means a more interesting Blog, which means more Readers! It also helps keeps me from falling in the Stress/Fatigue/Mommy Routine that keeps threatening to overtake me.

    So here are some of my Intentions with this blog:

• Tuesday: highlight an online seller, usually an Etsy.com seller, and choose a favorite product of theirs. I'm going to try to limit this to promoting individuals (so no big conglomerate websites that order products from china, etc...), but an extremely exceptional website that isn't an individual producer may get featured occasionally. A particularly amazing blog might also get featured once in a while.
• Thursday: take the time to learn and write out instructions to a craft, sewing project, recipe, etc... and post it on here for whoever ends up reading this. The intention is to keep my abilities fresh and to participate in the open flow of creative ideas. 
• Sale Finds: to post pictures of the things I find in my garage/estate/rummage/thrift sale adventures. 
• Family Pics: to post pictures of myself, my family, and my home relatively often. I always enjoy seeing pictures from other individual's blogs and hope that readers will enjoy seeing my pictures too! (speaking of, my camera is out of batteries... another thing for the ToDo list)
• Along with the family pictures, I plan on writing a lot about what happens in my family, developments, hurdles found as a feminist full-time mom, etc...
• Discuss political and feminist news and articles, probably weekly. I was going to assign a day of the week to post this on, but I think it makes more sense to post whenever I find some topic of interest (which is really quite often).

    There are a few reasons that I'm posting my intentions openly; so that you know what to expect if you decide to read my blog, and so that I can be held to these expectations and use the list when I'm feeling some writers block. 

    And, in an effort to keep with my intentions, and to minimize the text-i-ness of this post, here's a pic from my (our) wedding:

I love that boy.

Rummage/Estate/Garage/Thrift Sale Finds

   Yesterday, after dropping the hubby at work for his 12 hour day, I decided to hit some rummage/estate/garage/thrift sales to find either baby things or things to resell on Etsy.com. I ended up with a few good finds, some junk, and a nice pile of baby clothes. Here are some of my finds:

Turns out the tin isn't as old as I thought, but it's actually still full of tea. Even though it's not old, I got a great deal and it's an interesting find. Oh, and my kitty decided to make a guest appearance. He was very interested in playing on the fabric I had laid on the ground. Here's a better picture of the tin:

Another tea tin that I snagged.. this one actually IS old! I can't decide if I should offer it on its own or should use it as creative packaging for a feltie...

Another tin that I found, this one I should have taken some extra time to look at.. it's a reproduction of an older tin, but the reproduction was mass-produced and sold as some kitschy thing.. still, it'll make great creative packaging for a feltie!

This is an AWESOME vintage wood purse. The art on it dates from the 50's and although the lacquer is a little cracked in places, it's still in great condition.

A small pin that I found, really unique, and seems to be the best kept example of it that I can find online (a lot of the same pins I found auctioned well even though they were tarnished and had broken clasps!). Not to mention that I think the Etsy crowd will love this!

Last but not least, this is just a small clip thing that I found.. it appears to be old, but there's no stamp or any other way to identify it. I'm planning on re-purposing it in some craft of jewelry project.

    I'm too lazy to take pictures of the pile of baby clothes right now, or the tea cup and tea pot set that I got for myself..

    My intention is to build up some stock of little stuffed felt animals (felties), other crafts, and vintage items before officially opening my Etsy.com store. Unfortunately I keep deciding that I like all the felties I've made too much to sell them, so I need to make more!