what's cookin'?

This is the bean jar.

These are the beans that live in the bean jar.

This is Finn sorting the beans from the bean jar.

But what fun is sorting when you have dishes and beans? Much more fun to stir, cook and serve beans for every meal!

Unfortunately, we don't have one of those fancy wooden kitchens that I often ogle as I'm reading other blogs. Nor am I handy enough to put together a beautiful one like my friend, Jenni, out of thrifted kitchen pieces. But, I have enough remedial sewing skills to sew together a few pieces of felt and make a roll-up kitchen for a few minutes of bean play. Enter this tutorial from Balancing Everything, which I took a few creative liberties with and used the wool felt I had on hand to make an, ahem, colorful kitchen.

I love that it rolls up and stores right beside the bean jar, out of the way.

I found a just-big-enough scrap of this adorable hedgehog fabric, which doesn't exact match the black background on the other side, but since hedgehogs are so popular around here, I decided to use it anyway. The cream grosgrain ribbon sewed into the seam holds the rolled mat together.

Finn, of course, just loves that he now has a little stove to cook his beans and a sink to wash his bowls when we're done eating his beany creations.

Of all the imagination required to use a 2D kitchen to cook and clean dishes, Finn was least impressed with the fact that the sink knobs won't turn. He frustratedly checked the knobs from every direction and looked under the fabric. Once I explained that he just needed to pretend to turn the knobs, he happily went back to washing dishes in his sink.

Look at those sparkly clean dishes! Clearly he's very hard at work in his new kitchen.