Nursery In Progress

Kipling and Cairo, just so you know, really object to their room being called "the nursery" anymore.  LOL  Claire has cleared out their room, and they have all moved into Emily's room while she works on theirs.

Sebastian was able to get a friend of his to make some bunk beds, and Claire is painting up an old crib for Samara.  But the part they were most excited about was the news that they were getting a wardrobe!

The second it arrived and they got the okay to check it out, all three ran into the room:



But Kipling had some bad news to break to the others:



There is no doorway to Narnia in there.



Cairo had to double-check, just in case Kipling missed it.

No Narnia.

Just a closet.

Claire is going to have some serious explaining to do!  (And suddenly their previous excitement about the new closet will make SO much more sense to her.... LOL)

Little Drummer Boy...err...Girls!

Sometimes you just have to make your own fun!  Gathering up anything that can be used as a drum (or a shaker, for Flake), and marching around singing and drumming to "The Little Drummer Boy" seemed like a good idea to Emily and the rest!



With enthusiastic clanging!!



And Shaking!



And Banging!



And some waving around of a star!



 Claire wants to know what exactly they are up to.



Kipling thinks that is a bit of a silly question....  ;)

I'll be home for Christmas...if only in my dreams....

 For the first time in her life, Claire's brother Sebastian will be away at Christmas time. He had tickets to come home, but there is a missing baby dragon, and he was needed for the search. Claire understands, and even agrees with the decision. She's really glad for Skype, though!

The little ones find the whole Skype thing a little intimidating at first, but they quickly get used to it once they see Sebastian on the screen. The Pukifee have made him a picture for Christmas.

Emily made him something out of Lego. It has a diving board and a desk and chair in the same room, which she seems to feel he'd appreciate. :)

Sebastian can even continue the tradition of reading a chapter of "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus" to everyone each night. They love it, though Samara never makes it through the whole chapter, and they get a little worried when the Awgwas come into the picture!

Even though he'll call again tomorrow, it is still a little sad to say goodbye....

~~~~

...I now feel guilty for selling Sebastian (MNF Ruth)...LOL  Poor Claire!!  And everyone!

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas....

Yesterday was my last day of work till January 2nd.  That is a truly awesome thing.  I try to take at least a week off at Christmas every year, because I think the best Christmas present you can get is time to do the things you love!  Whether that is baking with my sister's kids, or setting up some doll pictures. :)  You can see that Flake wasn't being much help though, she was just trying to get into the presents I think!  Pixies!  Can't keep them out of anything!

The residents of Forest Hills are once again getting ready for Christmas, as you can see!  Emily has organized Samara and Kipling to help her make a new garland for the tree.

Edith is very helpful, as always! I hope Kipling has a good grip on that string!

Where's Cairo in all this?

Decorating the tree Properly, of course!  She knows just the right spot for the big yellow star ornament.

Aft Gang Agley

It's a beautiful day out there, so I thought I'd take my chance to get a picture I've wanted to take for ages.  I dressed Claire up , picked up the empty picture frame I've been saving for just this occasion, and headed outside.

This is the picture:



It came out okay, I think, but not that exciting, in the end.  It didn't help that the grass was too deep to get the bottom of the picture frame.  I might try again another day, in a different location. :)

The picture I like best from today? The one that I thought of just before I headed out the door:

 

LOL  Isn't that just the way!  But come on, who doesn't want to discover a random garden gnome with a suitcase at the park? I don't remember where the gnome came from, but he normally sits on one of the bookcases in my living room.

Emily went along too:



She seems pretty enthusiastic about the sun, after the long winter we had! :D

All Your Chairs Are Belong To Us

Not dead.  One of my beloved nephews passed on some sort of virus, and it's been circulating through the family.  Oy vey.  We really have to reconsider teaching kids to share, you know?  LOL  Three weeks later and a course of antibiotics, and I'm still coughing!

I got my order from Brennil (Her Delicate Strength) last night, and I'm so thrilled with the items.  It took me a long time to pare down my wish list for Claire to match my budget, but now she has a blouse, dress pants, a Spring/Fall Coat, and a winter coat!

You can see her modeling her new Business Casual look here (very useful for meeting with Donors, you know!):



But what's going on in the background there?

To the river!

I had the day off yesterday.  Since it was sunny, and even warm (spring coat, yay!), I headed out with Claire and Samara to the doll river.

It's a drainage ditch, technically, and quite full with the run-off of all the melted snow, but I really like it for doll pictures.

See the bits of green showing here and there? It's pretty great. :)

There was a bit of a breeze, but not enough that I needed to worry the dolls would fall over.

The tangle of branches by the shore makes for a good place to pose the dolls, I think.

I was tempted to bring Emily as well, but I figured two dolls and my camera were enough when I was climbing on rocks in the middle of the "river."

Signs that winter may be coming to an end...

I can see patches of ground in between the stretches of ice and snow!



It's still pretty cold out there, but the sun is out today for the first time in days, and that is a lovely thing.  I risked life and limb inching along the ice covered path to get down to this area of the yard.   I had grand ambitions of getting some good pictures of Claire and Emily "sliding" on the ice.  It's much too rough for skates, so the kids take a few running steps, then slide across, balancing on their boots.  (In theory.  In practice it's more sliding sitting down.  Thank goodness for snow pants!)



It turned out is was actually pretty hard to keep the dolls and myself balanced, with a camera in one hand! LOL So I only got a few pictures that turned out, and none of them together.



Oops! And down goes Emily!

That's her new sweater that I just finished yesterday.  I have to make yet another adjustment to the pattern!  LOL  Someday I will get it just the way I want it;  I've already started knitting the adjusted version. In pink, this time, because why not?

Passing the time on December 23rd...

They have come up with a plan, and are looking for a specific record, with one particular song:



Emily carefully starts the record:



The cheerful tune of "Rocking Around The Christmas Tree" is heard. Just what they were waiting for!









LOL Few things are more amusing than Little Kid Dancing!

 I wanted to add two more pictures onto the end of this, but sadly Claire's body is still not here. It might arrive tonight though! :D

Plans, Plans, and More Plans

It's not long till the last weekend of November now. That's when I get to put up my Christmas decorations and delight in Christmas as much as I like.  I try to limit it to just the one month, in order to not annoy my family members into rising up and killing me.  ;)

It is my favourite holiday! 

My Christmas shopping is done, but I still have cookie baking, present exchange with a friend, small people to take to see Frozen in the theatre, and if the snow stays on the ground, we've got plans for tobogganing!  Various familial visits to make.  And of course there is the actual Christmas Day - few things are more fun than watching small children opening their presents.

I've got the dolls's tree all ready to go again this year, and I want do do lots of doll pictures like I did last year, as it was so much fun. The challenge will be not repeating things! Now if my BJD cat should arrive, I am totally set...Cats and Christmas are a hilarious combination to begin with.



I want to make all sorts of little things to be presents to open, rather than last year where I just wrapped up existing props.  I want to do a milk and cookies for Santa picture, most definitely!  If the weather cooperates, I'd love to do some outdoor shots in the snow.

...I wonder if I could do gingerbread houses out of craft foam?  I think I have more plans than I have time! :D

Remembrance Day

Today is Remembrance Day, in these parts.    I'll be heading out to the local ceremony in a couple minutes, but wanted to post this before I went.



Emily, like one of my small relatives, is attending her first Remembrance Day ceremony today, and is taking that responsibility very seriously.

Marriage or Cookies?

The Pukifee were playing "Wedding" when Emily brought in some peanutbutter cookies to share.



The "Reverend" has already bailed on the wedding with her cookie, and the bride has clearly lost all direction. At least the little train handler is still on the job!

Of course, that could be because she's not convinced these are real cookies.

"Behind The Scenes" Flickr Group

I love seeing "how" people create such fascinating doll pictures, and there is a group on Flickr that is about precisely that:

Behind the Plastic

There's everything from very simple, "I found a perfect spot in my garden" shots, to the most elaborate and amazing of sets, with lighting that would rival a professional portrait photographer's!  You have to look a bit, but there are also some neat ideas for making props in there as well, which I love.  It's not specific to ball jointed dolls, but dolls and toys in general.

(And honestly, it just amuses me to know I'm not the only one lying flat on the ground in strange contortions trying to get a picture to look the way I want... LOL)

This is an older picture, but it gives a general idea of my "inside" photo setups. The desk is no longer next to the table these days, but an old filing cabinet, which helps to contain the rather alarming amount of tiny "props" I've accumulated.   ;)

Movie Night

The Princess Bride is one of Claire's favourite movies.  So when a film version arrived in the latest donation box, she dug out the ancient projector, attached a sheet to the bookcase, and they all settled down for a Movie Night!



Claire thinks the movie is about Wesley and Buttercup, and the power of true love....



Everyone else thinks the movie was about Inigo.  This is the sight that Claire came back to after putting away the movie: Five in a line brandishing toy swords, and three of them yelling, in synch  "Hello!  My name is Inigo Montoya!  You kill my father!  Prepare to die!"

...this was not the sort of lesson she thought they'd get from watching the movie.  ;)

And I'd say she's got about zero chance of getting this lot to bed anytime soon!

I don't think we're halfway through the week?

Crazy, crazy busy work week so far.  Meetings, meetings, and more meetings.  Then working overtime to get the work done that you couldn't do because you were in meetings.  *sigh*

Someday I will be retired!



We're enjoying some unseasonably warm weather today and tomorrow as well. It's crazy, you step outside and it feels like you're standing in front of a giant blow dryer!

Picture's from the weekend still.  :)  This is the last of them, though.  It's not a technically good picture - in fact it was a complete accident; I accidentally set the camera to sports mode when I meant to do macro - but I like the feel of it.  Despite the unseasonable warmth, you can definitely feel that fall is already in  progress.

Swing!

One piece of balsa wood, two pieces of string, and a doll-sized tree = A swing!



Kipling was a particularly big fan.... :)



We didn't get much sun at all yesterday, but there was about an hour in there, so I went outside to take advantage of it.  You can't really tell in the picture, but there was just enough wind to actually swing Kipling a little bit!   (Of course, this also meant that she fell off several times... LOL)

Labour Day...

Today is Labour Day, so I have an extra day off work.  Three days in a row, hurrah!  The weather here has been rain, rain, and then some more rain just to be sure we got the message that summer is over, so I'm spending this day as I've spent the last two:  catching up on little jobs that have been put off.

I've replaced a hook on the bathroom door, fixed the screen in the dining room window, made a header for my blog (finally!), and re-organized the front hall closet.

Much more fun, I'm continuing to work on Claire's craft room, which includes painting some scrapbook embellishments that look like picture frames.  I've been meaning to get around to that one for years.



I pulled out my fabric scraps I've been saving, and wrapped them around bits of balsa wood and cardboard to fill one of the drawers of Claire's craft table with fabric.  A lot of the time my first idea for things like this does not work out...but this time it did! The fabric drawer looks exactly the way I wanted it to.



You have to imagine Claire going around to all the fabric shops and convincing them to donate fabric that didn't sell even on the discount table, so that is how she gets them still wrapped on the cardboard!  LOL

I started working on the first prototype pattern of what I've been calling "the Wabi-sabi dress" in my head.  The edges on all the ruffles are left to fray, thus the name. I envy those people who do the math, chart out the pattern, and have it turn out the way it should the first try, but I am definitely not one of them.  Also, muslin is not the best fabric for making doll sized double-fold bias tape.  It'll work, though!

P.S.  This may very well be the most awesome ball-jointed cat in the history of ball-jointed cats.  Seriously.  Check out her whole photostream!  <3

Making Some Progress On An Old Project...

So I have long wanted to put together a craft room for Claire.  Yesterday I rescued a desk organizer that was going to be thrown out at work.  After finding nothing I already owned that would make a good counter-top for it, I went out to Dollarama today, and found a less-than-standard width cutting board for $2.  Perfect fit!

So now Claire has a crafting table, but I need to figure out a layout for this room, to distinguish it from the other two rooms.  I want to re-use as much as possible, as usual, while giving the room a different "look."

...deciding is not so easy!  What do you think?

Emily by the River (Or, the things we do for pictures!)

When I went for a walk a week or so with a small relative, we found the perfect place for doll pictures:




The river Emily is standing next to is actually a drainage ditch. It generally has some water in it, but gets quite full if we've had a lot of rain. It was fairly low when I went out on Sunday to take some pictures.

There are numerous small rocks scattered about this area, which forms miniature rapids and tiny, tiny waterfalls.   Some of them were big enough to set Emily on securely, though I would not have risked her standing up!



The problem I had with getting these picture was that the banks were higher, so to get down to Emily's level, I needed to be crouched down on similar rocks in the midst of the water! LOL

So there was a lot of trial and error involved in getting everything positioned.

This was my favourite shot of the day:


This picture was taken in the middle of two deeper parts.  I couldn't get the shot I wanted, because the rocks were too small and unstable for Emily to stand alone, and there were no rocks to get to the spot I'd have needed to be to get the picture.  I'd have had to stand in water halfway to my knees!

However, I was able to find a different angle, and I love the way she looks like she is trying to keep her balance.   When I was a kid, I remember visiting an aunt in Toronto, who took my sister and I down to the lake and let us climb around on the rocks.  We had a great time!  That was the inspiration for these pictures.

I did get a little wet getting the above shot; splashed a bit by the water, and I was ready to lurch forward and grab Emily if she even looked unsteady, but it turned out okay.



Do any of you ever find yourselves in odd places, contorting yourself into a pretzel to get the picture you want?

I kind of think it's worth it... :)