We adore gadgets in my house. My husband always gets me the best gifts. One year I got a minidisc player. Another year I got a Sony Clie and of course last year I got a Canon T1i.

We are getting Little peanut started early with the obsession. Check it out…

The Little Peanut loves to cook. Especially to make soup for her daddy. We got her cooking pots and pans for Christmas and I figured she needed her own kitchen to go along with it.

Living in a condo leaves little room for big toy items such as a real kitchen (which I would LOVE to get if money and space were no issue!) I went for second best: Making one!

She's saying, "Let me cook in peace mom!"

The top has 4 stove-tops along with 4 knobs. There is also a oven panel with faux buttons and the time.

One side has a pocket for holding additional kitchen tools (You can see it in the very first pic). The opposite of that (in the picture below) has slots to hang spoons, spatulas and a cloth. For the oven I made the “window” out of felt because I have grand plans of cutting out felt food shapes so she can “stick” them on and pretend to cook. It’s been three months and I still have no felt food cutout….. someday!!

This was inspired by one made from Froken Skicklig’s blog. She’s taken down her blog but you can see a picture of her version on the tutorials page.

I used an ottoman as the base and opted to put the knobs on top since the height was right for the Little Peanut. I love that we can easily take off the cover and throw it in a drawer when we have guests.

She loves to put in play food and use the salt/pepper shakers from her cooking set (Educo Gourmet Chef Cookware) to season. A note about the set: the pot and pan were a bit smaller then I thought they would be.

It took me a whole day of intense work (I’m not the fastest sewer!) and was so proud to show it off to the hubby when he came home from work that day. It bummed me out to have to put it into “hiding” until Christmas!

As Mommies (and Daddies) not only did we gain an additional member of our family but we gained bragging rights! What? You didn’t read that part in What to Expect When You’re Expecting?! Ok, so maybe it wasn’t in there… but everyone knows parents love to brag about their kids.

And well, since this is my blog….

We were in the midst of a little photo shoot of one of our up and coming items and she was giving me the “ugly” smile (which I’ll share someday!) so I broke out into song and when I was reviewing the pictures I noticed I got all her moves and knew I had to make a scrapblog for it.

A few weeks ago I posted about some party theme ideas I found. In the end I decided to go with a color theme of pink and green and to save the more specific themes until our little one was older.

The color theme came about when I was making the invitations. I turned to scrapblog.com to create it because I knew it would give me the stickers I needed and the freedom to create the invitation I envisioned. Scrapblog offers printing but I had some cardstock already and decided to print the invitations at home.

After that it all came together….

From top to bottom:

The “happy 1st birthday” banner was  home-made using scrapbook paper, cardstock, and paper string. Look for a tutorial in our craft tip of the week soon!

The scrapbook pages were displayed on a wall and featured a lot of our baby’s firsts and milestones.

I wanted to share with our guests the monthly photos I took so that they could see how much she had changed. Each month had two photos tied together with ribbon and pinned up with a clothespin decorated with flower punch-outs.

No party is complete without a birthday hat! There will also be a tutorial for this in the craft tip of the week soon as well.

We started the party in the birthday shirt and tutu, which were a huge hit. The front is our little one’s first initial with a little crown – for being the little princess! The back of the shirt says, “I’m one!” with a large one underneath. The onesie was made using photoshop and iron-on sheets. The tutu was bought from Trinity’s Tutus on Etsy.

It was a lot of fun making many of the decorations and celebrating our little one’s first birthday with family and friends. I think she really enjoyed it too!

When my son Isaac was around 9-10 months, he started offering his food to me. Whether it was a cracker or some cereal he was snacking on, he’d stick out his chubby hands and gave me a look as if to ask “Mommy, would you like some?”. Most of the time I’d politely say “Oh no Isaac, you eat it…Mommy’s full but thank you!”.

The infamous apple

Well, one day he was munching on some apple and again, he offered me a piece. This time I accepted his offer and decided to take a bite. Not only did I take a bite of the apple, but I also accidentally bit his little finger! It took him a few seconds to register what his mommy just did, and his eyes began to swell with tears, his mouth began pouting and then the floodgates opened! I felt horrible for hurting him, but the thought of what had just happened was so funny that I couldn’t stop laughing! It didn’t take long to console him, and I took his offering me another piece as his accepting my apology.

Later on that day, I was sitting on the stool in the kitchen surfing the Internet. Isaac was playing and cruising around the furniture. Normally he makes enough noise for me to know where he is at all times, but on this particular day, he made his presence known to me when he snuck up beside me and bit me in the thigh…OUCH! I let out a yell (I managed to contain it so that I wouldn’t scare him) and saw two little bite marks!

Now, I know kids that age are too young to know what payback is, but I couldn’t help but think how fitting it was!