Sunday, June 28, 2009

update...wow 2 months

My days are filled with children, hubby, home and dolls! The last couple of months have been a whirlwind of activity. I have squeezed in moments...rare moments, of creativity and making things around the trips, field trips, yard work, landscaping and birthdays! This is a mishmash of some of the highlights! Please bear with me for a long recap.....

Tiny Raggedy Annie and Andy for my dolls...these were so fun to make and i definitely want to make more! a new dolly member: Tangle!..she has captured my heart and attention of late..a mere 5 1/2 inches tall...but full of personality and spunk..here she is gathering flowers in her scooter. Note..making doll clothes this tiny is very challenging!



Here she is hanging out with her bunny Brer....she does not like tomboy clothes, I found out, so she has been getting a new wardrobe of girly girl dresses..what is more girly than bright pink flowers?

One of the other things i have discovered with my latest adventures in the land of dolls, is to customize them into the boys. Here is my latest addition: Raven, vampire! Blythe dolls unfortunately, come in girl models only..so i have fixed that by creating my own...Raven is trying to make friends with Kendall to no avail..she has been reading too many vampire books and is convinced he is trying to bite her neck...
Another custom! I love images of Asian culture...an iconic Geisha girl...I am much more comfortable with making the boys some reason..but this one came out pretty nice. Not sure about her eye makeup though, I may redo that at some point...outfit was made a few months ago and was perfect for her!
The process of customizing a doll, is to completely disassemble their heads. You first unscrew two screws in the back of their head, take off their scalp and head dome, remove the eye mechanism. Then sand the shine off of their faces, carve their lips, repaint lips and make-up...change out the eye colors(there are 4 sets of eye chips...aka irises on a Blythe doll for changing eye color controlled by a string on the back of their head). After all of this is done a procedure called boggling and gaze correction can be done by shaving areas of the plastic off on the eye mechanism. Then it is all reassembled....brief description here...but it is fun and it makes your doll one of a kind~!


The beginning of June included a trip for me to Portland, Oregon to see my daughter Salina graduate from highschool out there. She has been living with my brother and family and has finished her last year there. She is taking intensive German courses this summer in hopes to be an 'Au pere' and travel to Europe this fall.
here we are at the Max station waiting for the train:

Here she is wearing my graduation dress from 1983, with my cowboy boots that I lived in back in highschool...she is so adorable and I was tickled pink that she would want to wear my old stuff!This is the longest graduation ceremony I have ever witnesses...590 students..phew!My adorable graduate! Salina from the class of Sunset Highschool, Porltand, Oregon 2009!!!
Back to the dolls for a minute, that have taken over..haha! A newer addition, Anika. She came to me unfinished with the most beautiful face...I added her white mohair wig...She is my favorite doll at the moment. Her tiny mini-me doll is from a flickr friend 'violetpie'!

One of the highlights of May was a trip to Boston in the beginning of the month..Now even though Turner looks POed in this picture; the 5 day trip was a blast! We toured the city on the WWII "ducks" including driving into and floating on the harbor, a trip to the fantastic science museum and then the Trolley tour on our last day! Boston is such a beautiful city! a must see!!

We finally finished our construction..the living room, now called the sitting room..we have since added a couple of end tables and a lamp..still looking for the right artwork for the walls:


The new living room..
Some Dolly romance...or not....Uri making his moves on a reluctant and busy Veronica...she is more interested in catching her butterflies!!

Patric is sweet on Madison and took her out for an afternoon swinging on the tire swing and reciting poetry under the tree !!

Kendall is still pining over Ash here, He has now since returned home..but is being sequestered after the knife throwing incident!! Kendall thought maybe if she had pigs, he would come home and build her a pigpen, like he did for the girls he visited out in Portland

The other thing that has kept me super busy the past two months is my yard and garden. I accidentally ordered twice as much mulch as needed. However, it has forced me to finish the back yard...I am close but not quite done. There was 25 yards of mulch initially. When we returned from Boston and looked at the seemingly untouched piles of mulch, despite Ashton's three days of weeding and mulching the front yard...I realized my mistake...yikes! here are some pictures of the backyard: this is the path that leads to the front yard and driveway:

We took the fence around the pool down..well, Ashton took the fence down and therefore all of the surrounding landscaping had to be dug up and redispersed and then mulched.


the unfinished area...eeeks!


A path and new landscaping that I created...Ashton and Shannon did the initial clearing around the deck for me..then I came in and dug up the path and laid the stone and put plants and rocks back in. Ashton and Shannon have put in many hours of help over the past couple of months, I couldn't have done all of this without their help!!!


Overlooking the pool area from the deck :

The pond area got revamped too..completely disassembled and cleaned out, new forms put in and then everything was reassembled and mulched...phew!!! just talking about it wears me out again..haha!
Jonathon celebrated his 7th birthday on May 19th, Art his 54th on May 28, Tyrus' 12th on June 7th and lastly my 44th(eeks how did that happen) on June 18th..busy two months with all of those and fathers day and mothers day thrown in...



a few more dolly pics to close...Emmie..a new girl from my friend Emmie in Wisconsin...with her raggedies:

some new outfits..here is Gabrielle with her pretty new green ensemble that i made...

Clover taking out the "cakes" (aka vintage strawberry shortcake dolls) for a ride with mr. snail..also in a newly created outfit:

Oh and i have been participating in a "Blythe runway challenge" and May's entry was to create your outift by only using material from the grocery store. I won "best use of recycled items" haha..an ensemble created with a sprite box, reusable shopping bag, two plastic shopping bags and a white "onion" bag...and flowers created from an egg carton:



So, there!! you have my past two months in a nutshell..there were also field trips and Tyrus went to football camp and a visit with mom and Russ among other things....sorry for the loooong update..but i figure better a long one than none...next on the list..Myrtle Beach this coming friday for a nice long week of sun and beach!

till next time

love and hugs!

4 comments:

Joanne Huffman said...

Angela, you certainly don't sit around and twiddle your thumbs! Congrats to Selena (who, by the way, looks just like you). You must have more (and better dressed) dolls than anyone I know. The yard work is phenomenal and your new addition looks great. The family photos look great - what a lot of celebrations all at once. Have great fun at Myrtle Beach!

Joanne

jackie said...

I am exhausted just reading your blog - you have so much energy and creativity and spunk - I admire you!! Enjoyed the update very much!

Gina M Smith said...

My god, have you been busy! Everything looks great! And you've lost weight and cut off all your hair!! Where have I been? Love the white Mohair and the green ruffled outfit and your vampire guy could be Frida Kahlo on occasion!

The Backporch Artessa said...

Oh MY goodness! I see now why we never connect on the phone! Your life is as busy as mine!!! I'm glad to see they Blythe babies weren't neglected!