Exchanging Plastic Food for Felt Food, etc.

The time always comes when you have to sort through childhood toys. We had a lot of toys. Elizabeth and I have always loved playing and imagining, and that was aided by things like Playmobil, board games, dolls, figures and the like. One of our all-time favorite things to play with, though, was play food. Little plastic pieces made to look like everything from hamburgers to ice cream. We've saved most of our toys in a big closet upstairs for use by our children one day, but . . .



Several years ago, as a family, we began really working at eliminating plastic from our house. We've successfully removed zip-locks, plasstic wrap, plastic water bottles and containers, plastic Christmas decorations --- and plastic toys. This was a reaction to the BPAs that are found in everyday plastic, not to mention the other chemicals that are in there, too. We kept the Playmobil, because it is a BPA-free plastic and would be impossible to replace. But Elizabeth and I decided that we would only keep a few plastic toys and work on replacing or substituting the rest. Play food was one of the things that we did keep, as it makes for fabulous imagination. Besides, what could replace it?

Well, we found out about felt food and that seems the perfect answer. A couple of months ago, Elizabeth and I bought some patterns on Etsy for various meals. This gave E. an idea of how to cut things out and construct them, so she started working on them a few weeks ago. Of course, being Elizabeth, she isn't making the food that's on the pattern! ;) It's coming along so well (and looks so cute) that we've decided to sell all of the plastic food that we played with as children. Not to mention the fact that this way we can make the kinds of food that we actually eat, where lots of the plastic food is not food that we would eat.


Elizabeth brought the bin down from the closet a couple of days ago and sorted everything into groups and counted it. There were 493 pieces!! Mom was having a bit of an emotional morning, as she has lots of memories attached to those toys, but after seeing the felt food versus the plastic --- there wasn't really any competition.

So, that's one of the things that we've been up to lately. I've also had to mow the lawn twice already, and Dad has worked on painting the fence around the gnome garden. Pictures of all that to come, but I see that this post is plenty long enough. Buddy and Kay came up for a visit yesterday, so that was a fun evening. More later.