About Us

Our business began in 2012 when Andie Nelson, mother of 6 month old daughter Maggie and 2.5 year old son Miles found herself stuck at home all day, with children on opposite nap schedules. Prior to the birth of Baby Sister, Andie and Miles had spent their days at museums, taking music classes, and playing in the woods with friends.  The adjustment to having two kids hit hard, and in order to maintain sanity, Andie formed a cooking playgroup for her friends so that the parents and toddlers could learn and socialize while baby sister napped.

As it turns out, the idea of a toddler cooking class where the kids made actual recipes--start to finish--with actual vegetables and fresh ingredients--was pretty attractive to other local parents. Word of Andie's toddler cooking playgroups spread. Before long Creative Kids Kitchen had become a full-fledged business, offering not just parent/child toddler classes, but camps, weekday classes, parties and on-site instruction at schools. Creative Kids Kitchen was featured in "Best of Arlington," Washingtonian Magazine, and various other newspapers and local parenting resources. 

Then Andie's third child Maisie was born. Shockingly, 3 kids are even more time-consuming than 2, and apparently Maisie didn't get the memo that 3rd babies are supposed to be easy-going. In order to juggle the demands of a larger family (and a global pandemic) Andie cut back on her weekly cooking class schedule. Now that all 3 children are school-aged, Andie looks forward to relaunching a full array of kids' cooking classes so that she can share her love of food, making a bit of a mess in the kitchen, and welcoming other kids and parents of young children into her home.