Xmas Gifts 7: Felt Pizza

Ahhhh... pizza. Our family loves homemade pizza. Monkey One loves playing "imaginary pizza party" where we send out invitations to our imaginary friends, make pizza together, play games while the pizza is baking, then eat the pizza. I thought I'd make my kids a felt food pizza set to make these pizza parties even better. I actually had been planning on it for quite some time, but I had a difficult time deciding exactly how to do it until this Christmas. I didn't want a ready-made pizza for play eating only. Most of the fun is in putting on the toppings! But if the pizza is whole — better for the making aspect of the pizza — then I sacrifice some of the eating aspect of the pizza, which would be better with slices. I finally decided to compromise on whole mini pan pizzas. They're small enough to just eat, or they can be pretend sliced. I think of it as encouraging imaginative play.



The play pizza is a huge hit pizza! But which is real and which is pretend? Both can be rolled...



Both have sauce, sliced fresh mozzarella and a variety of yummy toppings...



Both are so much fun to make that even a kid can do it...



Well... maybe this kid should only make the play pizza...



And now both are ready for the oven, decked out in our favorite toppings!


(Why is Monkey Two sad? I stopped giving him olives and pineapples to snack on. I almost cut him out of the picture entirely, but he was too cute, even when he was crying.)

One thing is for sure. Your real pizza doesn't keep well. The pretend pizza keeps very well in this handy drawstring bag with individual pockets for every topping you could want and more.



Future additions to our play pizza set:

• Whole green olives (they are cut out, just not sewn)
• A 1"-ish wood dowel rolling pin and a pizza slicer made from the dowel and a wood 2-3" disk
• Canadian bacon with some felt I purchased after Christmas
• Maybe new pineapple pieces from the lighter yellow felt I also found after Christmas
• Perhaps some felt pizza party invitations?

Everything was made from wool-blend felt (all except the black olives, for which I only had acrylic craft felt and the white bag, which I didn't want to spend that much money on). I realized a few weeks later when slicing real bell peppers for dinner that the red ones have three sections, but the green ones have four. Shhhhh, don't tell my kids!

P.S. This finishes off my 2009 Christmas Gift posts.