I don’t know about you, but everytime I see a beautiful  wood play kitchen for kids I think: “Wow! That’s incredible!” And right after that: “But where will I put one of those?”

So, if you’re like me and have already told all your friends and relatives you have run out of room for toys and only bring gifts if they are two dimensional please, this tutorial is for you: A play kitchen in a box. The fabric covered box is the stove and oven, and all the accessories are kept inside. Cook, play and put it away! And – when it gets a bit dusty and musty, take the fabric cover off and wash it! What could be better…

It’s that time of the year and everywhere I look there are Valentine’s Day hearts. Pink and red and all the romantic colors of the rainbow. I must confess that I’m not excited about Valentine’s Day, but I do love pink. Yes, I have grown up from a black-wearing-rock-music-loving teenager to a pink wearing Alicia Keys enthusiast. Not that I don’t still wear an awful lot of black or stopped rocking, but I certainly have opened up to other colors and musical options.

So while all these hearts are popping up all over, “Listen to Your Heart” by Alicia Keys kept playing in my head. I decided to listen and be true to myself: Pink – OK. Heart – let’s go for it. But I gotta keep my street cred (ha! what street cred?) so I chose black and neon green for complementary colors.

I added the heart to a simple ear warmer, placing hearts over my ears (because, listen…), but the pattern can be added onto any crochet piece. In fact, after making the ear warmer, I decided to give in and make a softer toned coaster. I wouldn’t mind being served a nice cup of coffee on one of those. Especially if someone else made it for me.

It’s been over 6 months since we’ve moved, and it’s about time to get our act together and start decorating. We had a big “push” right after the move, obviously, but we’ve been stuck since.

The first room I decided to tackle is the family room. This is the room we hang out it – it has the Wii, a TV, a craft table for the kids and a computer desk, and it also doubles as a guest room. Eventually it will become a room for a child – so I didn’t want to put a lot of money in to it only to change it in a few years.

So: low budget, comfy for everyone, durable and washable are in order.

I started out with a more sophisticated vision in mind – grey with pops of yellow, which is definitely one of the trendier design schemes around right now. I filled my pinterest board with grey & yellow inspiration. But then I saw this rainbow bright living room and this “Confetti Pop” room and yellow went out the plain-no-curtains window and strong base colors came in.

My daughter is quite a girly-girl. And while I will raise her to be strong and independent, I’m thoroughly enjoying her girly-ness. A couple of days ago she came home from day care upset because her plastic headband had broke. In an effort to cheer her up I asked if she would like me to make her a new one.

That didn’t work.

So I asked her if she’d like to help me choose the fabric.

She chose three.

Then she was happy.

Then she went somewhere else to play, and I sat down to sew.

Every year I make everyone winter hats. This year I made a giant load of hats for charity. But no hat for me… This year’s been exceptionally cold, and my ears are freezing off! My hair is finally long enough to wear up, but that’s not really convenient for a hat. So instead, I decided to make an ear warmer.

I wanted it to be fast (as always) and warm, which I would normally do with bulky yarn, but my stash is severly depleted (yey! an excuse to go buy more yarn!) and I did not want to go out in the pouring cold rain to buy more. Instead, I decided to make it with 2 strands of worsted weight yarn crocheted together, and get a nice wintery ombre effect while I was at it.

So lets get our hooks crocheting and our ears warm!

Storage. Storage. Storage. Storage.

I think that if you’re a crafter, you can never have enough of it. There’s always more yarn to buy, a bag of fiberfill you can’t find room for, or scrap fabrics you know you will need some day.

I was almost done organizing my craft space (it’s always a WIP, but almost done this stage), I was only missing a few boxes to store said fabric and yarn in. What I really wanted were folding boxes, the type they have at Target – but there is no Target here, and IKEA didn’t have the right shape and color for what I wanted. I did not want to make them, and I put in a lot of effort trying to find ready made ones but couldn’t. So, I was left with no choice but to make them myself.

I wanted quick and easy, no lining, no interfacing, no hemming and ironing (saving that kind of work for the “good” stuff), so I decided to make them out of some nice, thick felt. You would think that would at least be easy, but apparently – for those of us who live in the land of over priced milk and honey, it was not so easy and I ended up ordering the felt all the way from China.

So, while this post is titled “10 Minute Felt Boxes”, the correct title would be: “Weeks and Weeks of Trying to Avoid Making These Myself and One Month Waiting for the Felt To Arrive and Then Only 10 Minutes to Make Each Box”. And here’s how:

Every year around September I realize that it’s almost winter and my kids’ winter hats will not make themselves. I rush ahead and make hats, and then winter doesn’t actually come. It’s December and we’re still having sandstorms and hardly any rain.

Before this year I would ask my son which hat he wanted, and choose what I ever I felt like for my daughter. This year, she suddenly developed a strong 3 year old opinion and wouldn’t listen to any of my suggestions. He chose a spiderman hat, so she must have a spiderman hat.

I used a variation from Little Things Blogged on Spiderweb Beanie Pattern by It’s Just Jennifer.

While I was waiting for winter to arrive and put the hats I made to use, I came across a charitable project to crochet hats for cancer patients. I had recently seen a campaign requesting hair donations to make wigs. My hair is not long enough to be useful, but crocheting hats would be perfect. It’s nice doing something I like for a good cause.

The hats needed to be done by the end of November, so I decided to make them all with bulky yet soft yarn, so I could get as many done as quickly as possible. These would work well if you need to make some last minute gifts as well.

Last week* was my 32nd birthday. I really wanted to do something nice, with decorations and party favors and a theme! Oh boy, did I want a theme. I really wanted something that would mean something to me personally.

I decided to go with a “Girl Power” theme, with some of my favorite strong female figures, like: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Powerpuff Girls, Elle Woods (from Legally Blonde) and also Alicia Keys, Beyoncé and maybe a few others.

Unfortunately, I’ve been having quite a busy month, and didn’t have enough time to get everything ready. So instead, I was left with some very pink and girly decorations and party favors, but I don’t think the guests minded too much.

Menu

• Vegetable sticks with tehina(sesame paste).
• A basic vegetable salad with cucumbers & tomatos with some radish for added interest (and taste) and a lemon-olive oil dressing.
• Tomato & mozzarella salad with a basil-olive oil dressing.
• Grilled peppers (yellow & red).
• “Surprise” salad: green leaves, pairs and sugar coated pecan with a honey-mustard dressing. This salad was an absolute hit – everyone loved it (don’t tell them it’s the easiest salad to make).
• Some (store bought) whole wheat bread and home made garlic bread.
• Vanilla sponge cake with chocolate frosting (yum!)

I was looking for a place to put my iron inside my sewing space, in a convenient way: It shouldn’t take up any room on the desktop, and keep the leg space interruption to a minimum. It would have to have easy access to electricity, but not be plugged in all the time (safety first!). I wanted something cheap, so I wasn’t going to get something custom made, and even though it’s on my long term wish list, I don’t do much any carpentry, so making it myself was not an option.

When in doubt: IKEA.

I looked through all of their office and living room and kids furniture and found nothing which was narrow enough, short enough, tall enough etc. Eventually, I stumbled upon the OLTEDAL nightstand. I looked over the measurements and instructions very carefully, and the very next day stopped by the IKEA near me and bought it.

I assembled it without inserting the back because (1) I wanted easy access to be able to plug in the iron and (2) I wanted to use the back as a pressing board for small items. It obviously won’t be enough for making large items, but for small blocks which need pressing – it would save me a lot of fuss getting the ironing board out.

I got the idea here, and here’s how it’s done (it’s really quite simple):

I am way to pleased with myself for naming the pattern Buckinghamigurumi (try saying that 10 times fast). Aaaaaaaand, I’m over it. Let’s get on with the post.

My friend Racheli is celebrating 10 years of blogging (10 years! wow!), and in honor of this occasion, she asked 10 bloggers to write a post inspired by her (or her blog).

I met Racheli online, I’m sure it was through facebook somehow, but my memory is terrible, I’m not exactly sure of the details. She was nice enough to invite me to a celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Although we live in Israel, Racheli loves everything and anything British, and the party was incredible. If you follow this link, you’ll see the amazing decorations and excellent food (the text is in Hebrew, but the pictures speak for themselves).

When she asked me to contribute to her “10 years of blogging, 10 days of inspiration” project, I started in another direction (I was thinking a Hagrid costume, because of the geeky aspect of her blog), but when this idea hit me – I just knew it was the right thing!

By the way, all the pictures of London in this post were taken in 2004, before I even had a digital camera. The quality is so-so, but I figured since I have the pictures it would be a crime not to use them. Right?

So, let’s get started.