So, these pictures aren't from THIS weekend, but seeing as we spent most of today outside weeding and playing and raking I thought I would post them.
I think PJ and I will both be sore tomorrow, but our property is getting spruced up and Lydia is loving all the fresh air. Wishing you a weekend that is worthy of a rain boots and sundresses kind of happy!
So this fun Halloween doll was made a month ago for my friend's 50th birthday party. She was pretty simple to make, only a sharpie marker, a few hours, and a basic knowledge of human anatomy required.
Unfortunately, I got so excited about getting started that I didn't take any "before" pictures. She started life as a thrift store porcelain doll, with a cloth body. Here you can see her original, untouched, leg next to her new skeleton leg. She had on high heels, so I just drew the foot bones as if they went into the shoes.
The pictures of the hands came out terrible, but I think you can see that I drew in the bones on both sides. Well, actually, I didn't draw in ANY of the bones. I drew the negative space AROUND the bones and filled it in with the black marker.
Drawing on the porcelain was pretty easy because it was so smooth. I just had to be careful not to smear the ink before it dried. The hardest part was drawing on the fabric body. The fabric was soft and moved when you drew on It. But ALSO the torso, with all of it's ribs and vertebrae, was way too complicated to draw in as little time as I had to finish this. If I had started earlier I could have made an outfit or something and ignored the rib cage entirely. Oh well, it got finished, but the neat little accessories I wanted her to hold, like a camera in homage to my photography teaching friend, had to be scrapped.
So here is the finished skelly-dolly sitting in her spot in my friend's the birthday shrine to long gone youth. She was a gift to the birthday girl, so now I am keeping my eyes open for a similar candidate for my own skelly dolly to play with!
Oh, how nice!
Oh, how cute!
Oh, how unfortunate! Well, no actually..... I LIKE it! This broken cherub is the only reason I bought those others at the thrift store. I'm making Zombie Cherubs and this one has lost his head! But they are all way to clean and shiny for zombies.
First, they all got a nice coat of gesso to make them uniformly white and to help later coats of paint stick.
I threw on a coating of watered down black paint so that it would sink down into the crevices but wash off the surface. 
Unfortunately, the gesso wasn't sticking well to the porcelain, so it started clumping and cracking and flaking off. Did I say unfortunately? I take it back, the weird paint clumping made the perfect zombie texture.
I worked a little extra black into the eye sockets, but it still seemed to be missing something.
I don't know. Is the blood drenched cherub mouth too much? Too late. This zombie is finished and ready to sit with his angelic friends and guard my Halloween candy. Good thing zombies only eat brains! 
PJ and I are both very happy with the new bed, but very tired from a lot of moving furniture tonight.
Well first we went to church. It was warmish out and I couldn't resist snapping a few pictures of Lydia in the garden outside church.
This is one of those really cute dresses that somehow she just never got a chance to wear and now it is almost too cold to wear it. hate it when that happens. I thought this dress screamed "circus". Which Lydia actually did scream. Several times. During church.
We met up with some friends and their two kids and Lydia enjoyed playing with her new light up toy (Thanks, Carol!) She enjoyed the first act, the acrobats on their swings, but got bored with the tigers. It was her nap time and as exciting as everything was, she soon got cranky and eventually fell asleep.
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?
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!
