Fun things that I would LOVE for my kid to LOVE!

So this post is as much for me to remember what toys I am loving so that I can think about what to get Lydia, as it is to help me answer the questions of family members who want to know what she is interested in, as it will be to show Lydia some day what toys she used to play with. Lydia is getting into pretend play with dolls, but isn't quite up for dressing and undressing them. A friend had a set of magnetic paper dolls and I really like the idea, especially these thicker wooden ones from Melissa and Doug. I feel like they need a storage pouch or something though because you know that box will get destroyed quickly!

I LOVE this do-it-yourself option. Apparently Betsy McCall was a character that goes back to the 50's and would have different outfits shown in a magazine, I think so that girls could make their own paper dolls. Well someone decided to print them onto magnetic backed paper, or glue them to magnets, and then they stored it all in a tin so the dolls stick to the tin too! So cleaver. I really want to try it but might run out of time.

How perfect are these (new) vintage style Wizard of Oz Barbie dolls! I love the tea length dresses and the fact that they all have eyeliner on! Fab-u-lous! OK, I can't guarantee I wouldn't also enjoy playing with these, but it would be a neat way of getting a red headed Barbie for Lydia. Besides how fun would it be to create the Barbie pretend sub-plots involving a green skinned brunette?

Every time I take Lydia to Toys R Us, she freaks out over the toy guitars. Her PopPop has a real guitar and she enjoys playing with it. I haven't really looked at the specifications of toy guitars, but every time we are in Toys R Us, Lydia finds this specific heart shaped guitar made by Moxie Girls and plays with it.

Of course I really think this lap harp is more interesting and probably more durable than some plastic toy guitar. I imagine it requires similar skills in strumming, but this seems easier for little fingers to deal with, besides the fact that I am a sucker for wooden toys!

The other day when we were leaving the house for daycare and work. Lydia suddenly announces that she needs her "pillow pet" and she grabs this little white square neck pillow, hugs it, and takes it to the car. All day at daycare people would ask her what animal her pillow pet was and she would say "white." This is the first I heard her say anything about pillow pets, but apparently her friend at daycare has a ladybug one. She didn't mention it to me anymore so the white pretend pillow pet was left at home the last few days. Apparently she has been throwing fits at nap time asking for her pillow pet, so today the daycare lady asked me to send the white pillow to daycare next week just to keep the peace. Because Aunti Jen is into Ladybugs and that is what her daycare friend has, I think a ladybug pillow pet would be nice, but I can't resist how cute the panda or the frog are either. Really anything is better than the white cube she is currently lugging around!

How much do I LOVE anything by Melissa and Doug? They make such great stuff and usually it is wooden and last for a long time. Who knew that they made a car hauler?

It holds a few wooden cars, but also converts to roll the cars on and off. Considering PJ has a car hauler I think this would be a really fun toy in our house. If only it was red, like our B-Rod or Custom car hauler is!

More M+D goodness. Lydia is really into legos and puzzles ( has someone invented a way to store puzzles and their pieces so they aren't scattered all over the house?). I think this toy is a great combination of puzzles and building. You could probably make something with a few tools and lots of fun latches. No keys required and no pieces to lose!

Lydia at the Fair

Jennifer and I took Lydia to the TN Valley Fair a few weeks ago. I didn't get to post these pictures because I got sick shortly after. Maybe I pet one too many farm animals!

Lydia was finally big enough to ride a few of the kiddie rides. She REALLY wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel, but was a few inches too small to ride even with us. She had to settle for the kiddie swings. She was the only kid on them, so I felt like we could ask the operator to stop the ride if she freaked out.

She got to ride the pony again this year. Last year it was the only ride they let her on. Strictly a coincidence, but she is wearing the exact same outfit as last year. PJ dressed her and had no idea, but I had to chuckle when I realized it. I think a lot of her 18-24 month fall clothing will still fit this year, especially the skirts, because so much of it was big on her last year. Here is a picture from last year on what might even be the exact same horse. I can't believe how much she has grown!

Halloween Transformations

I found this ugly, old, Styrofoam skull at the thrift store for $2 and knew it had potential for our Day of the Dead 50th birthday celebration, but also for a fun addition to my Halloween decor.

First, I painted it white. Then I filled in the eye and nose cavities with black paint. The teeth still had dark paint in the crevices, so I left them alone.

Last, I had a really fun time adding designs with sharpie markers. These started out with some of the traditional designs you would find on Mexican Day of the Dead skulls, but after a while I just filled space with random patterns and dots. Easy, fun, cheap!

Recycling Halloween

Most years I make our Halloween costumes. By "ours" I pretty much mean anyone who is in earshot. Stand around me long enough and I will probably put you in a coordinating outfit too! With an entire cast of characters to costume, I can't make everything from scratch. Lots of outfits are recycled, either from thrift stores or from previous costumes. Here are a few examples. This was my Halloween costume in 2007, they year I made all my friends into carnival freaks. Most of it came from the thrift store with some minor adjustments. PJ's jacket started out as a red blazer that got the front cut a an angle and the extra sewn on as tails. I added a felt color and a lot of gold fabric paint. I lucked out finding my jacket which matched a skirt I already had in my costume bin. I bought some old shower curtain valance for $1 just to have that long black ruffle to add to the skirt. I gathered the skirt vertically in a few places to show some leg, glued on some facial hair, and we were a carny couple.

Pj's jacket reappeared in 2010 as part of his Mad Hatter costume for Lydia's Alice in Wonderland birthday party.

In 2008 I was on maternity leave prior to Halloween and PJ was out of town for the holiday, so I turned three thrift store dresses into mermaid costumes for Jennifer, Lydia, and myself. They were a challenge that I enjoyed making and then promptly gave mine back to Goodwill after Halloween. I kind of wished I had kept it, but I was overwhelmed with baby stuff and my body was a weird post baby shape and I don't repeat my costumes and couldn't see a way to turn this one into anything else, but still I kind of wonder who loved it after me.

OK, remember my skirt from 2007?

It became Jennifer's witch skirt in 2009. It was supposed to be her Flower Fairy skirt, but that idea never really panned out so the day before Halloween, I scrapped it and made us all witch costumes out of our failed fairy skirts.

Remember that jacket from 2007? It became part of my Wicked Witch of the West costume for 2010. I had a black skirt and a black shirt from the thrift store, but the outfit needed a little something. I wasn't sure about adding the jacket at first because it wasn't solid black, but in the end I loved the extra shape it gave my outfit and even the pop of the red, blue and purple that stemmed from the jacket. I still need to figure out a Flying Monkey costume for PJ. I think the circus jacket may make an appearance in that one too. Hmm, I wonder what it will turn into next year!

Sick and Stalking Nellie

I have apparently caught my first illness of the school year. Just a nasty sore throat sort of a thing, but I have seen a few co-workers fight it for a week or more, so I am taking their advice to take it easy. The timing is bad, we had Andrea and Alyssa in town and Lydia and I were scheduled for a few adventured with them that got cancelled. Alyssa turns three on Monday and I am hoping we didn't give her our germs as a gift.

While I have been resting, I have been stalking a little orphaned Irish girl named Nellie O'Malley! This is Nellie. She is an American Girl Doll that was introduced several years ago. Long enough ago, that some little girls who bought her are now older and their parents are now selling her on ebay. That's the good news. The bad news is that Nellie was apparently retired or discontinued, or took a purity promise or whatever it is that happens to American Girl dolls that makes them rare and unusual and expensive. Anyway, a new American Girl doll is around $100. A mint condition Nellie in the box with her purity in tact is going for $325 and up on ebay.

I don't really care all that much that Nellie is an American Girl Doll or that she is rare or whatever it is that makes her crazy expensive. I like the idea of getting Lydia an 18 inch doll and making them a few matching outfits. As long as they are going to match, I thought it would be neat if they looked similar. From what I have researched it seems like you can buy new American girl dolls from the "Like You" line for around $100. The historical American Girl dolls cost about the same and are also ethnically diverse so they might look like you kid as well, but they also have story books about their little orphaned lives and that is a neat bonus. You can pay a little more and get a My Twinn doll that is custom made to match, but they are bigger and more fragile and their aren't as many patterns for matching outfits. There are several cheaper brands of 18 inch dolls and several of them have a token readhead, but the hair is always really long and really red. I have been searching and researching for a week or so and then I saw this strawberry blonde doll. And I couldn't help compare it to my strawberry blonde doll.

Same hair length, same coloring, same side part, and she almost always has a bow in her hair. So I am searching ebay trying to find the rarest of all auctions. The auction where the seller doesn't know what they are selling. I thought I hit the jackpot when I found a Nellie that was labeled with the wrong name. So people searching for that doll wouldn't want to bid and people searching for Nellie wouldn't find it. Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for the seller, someone told them their mistake and the doll sold for almost $100. So I am back to searching for vague descriptions, like "American doll", and wading through thousands of auctions, looking for a doll that isn't named as Nellie, is hopefully missing her originally outfit, and may even have some minor damage, preferably in a non-visible location. I have my moments, when the cold medicine haze wears off and I wonder if I shouldn't admit defeat and buy the knock off red headed Madame Alexander doll that looks sort of like Lydia. And then I found 3 auctions buried in the recesses of ebay; 2 auctions for slightly abused strawberry blond American Girl dolls who (hopefully) shall remain nameless until I can be the high bidder on one of them, and one auction for Nelly's doll. Did you know some of the American Girl Doll's have their own baby dolls to hold? Neither did I until I was searching for Nellie and this doll popped up instead of Nellie.

Why did Nellie's doll catch my eye and restore my energy to search on? Nellie's doll is named Lydia! Weird or just the cold medicine talking?

Halloween Sewing Finished (photos to prove it!)

I feel slightly inappropriate posting so much about Halloween SO early. I have a great excuse. My sister, who has been my Halloween side kick for years, is going to Hawaii for a month. Luck girl! She leaves in a few weeks and gets back right before Halloween. We started coordinating our calenders and realized that we are both busy every weekend between now and when she leaves. If we wanted pictures taken together, we had to do them last weekend. Even worse, we went to the Fair Friday night and Lydia went to a car show Saturday so it had to be Saturday evening. Worse still, it rained all day and Lydia had an upset stomach. Needless to say, I was not optimistic about the pictures! Boy was I WRONG!!!

Lydia as Dorothy, with her trusty dog Toto (played by a stuffed animal version of our dog Buckley). We took pictures at a local park and this picture was her realizing that there was a playground and then running away from our carefully planned photo shoot location to get to the playground. There are several more shots of her throwing a tantrum as we try to keep her away from the playground and closer to any area that would look good for pictures.

Mommy and Auntie playing Good Witch and Bad Witch. By this point we both gave up being bad witches and let Lydia play on the playground. Suddenly we both becane good witches!

I LOVE this picture!!! Two of my favorite people in the world, draped in yards of tulle!

Could she be less interested in kissing me? OK.... It kind of works with the whole wicked witch theme. To be fair, I was covered in green stuff. I am lucky she didn't run screaming from me. Actually, that would have worked well too!

This TOTALLY works! I think this was the end of the day and we were walking Little Miss away from the playground and back to the car. We walked the long way around hoping that the green background might lend itself to a good shot. Somewhere in here we noticed that the community center at the park was full of kids having a birthday party. They got such a laugh out of seeing us walk by and we laughed right back. Mmmmm, maybe I cackled back!

If you want to see the costumes being made, click here.

Celebrating Anna's Birthday

One of my co-workers is celebrating a MAJOR birthday this weekend. The other two, still young and energetic, art teachers decided a little desk decorating was in order. We quickly moved on from the all too overdone, "over the hill", to a celebration of the birthday girl's long gone youth. We decided to decorate in the spirit of the Mexican "Day of the Dead". We turned her desk into a mini shrine, complete with a photo of the birthday girl at a much younger age, several Mexican inspired decorated skeletons and skulls. candles, and some creepy feeling statues I had laying around.

Everything got draped in black fabric. We even asked her students to wear black!

I wanted the look of "Papel Picado", Mexican tissue paper flags, but did not have the time. So I found some pictures and patterns of the real thing. I made them black and white in photo shop and printed them on colored paper. Good enough!

I found a wreath and added a ribbon banner reading "RIP - Youth" since that was the thing we were saying goodbye to!

I wrote on the sombrero with a sharpie marker, through a blanket over her chair and added a funny head sculpture that was laying around the art department. Hopefully she enjoyed the tribute to her long gone youth as much as we did!