Christmassy Update

If you haven't noticed, it's s nearly Christmas! We're hard at work doing Christmassy stuff. I've arranged for Santa Claus to bring our kids a play kitchen this year. They already have one made of old moving boxes but 1. It's enormous, so we can't have it out all the time, 2. The Giant Husband made the fridge/pantry and it's awful, but he's proud of it so I can't replace it, and 3. The Giant Baby constantly freaks out that Tiny is going to break it. So I figured, if we get a proper one, I know they're going to use it. I want to make some felt pasta to go with it, but I don't really know if I'm going to get around to it.

Our current play kitchen

The Giant Baby is changing his mind constantly about what he wants. First it was Lego, then Grossery Gang toys, Enchantimals, Shopkins, cars, Ghostbusters toys etc. The first time he changed his mind, I'd just bought Lego for his present, and I panicked. But now he's changed his mind so many times that I'm pretty sure he'll be happy with whatever he gets.

Tiny, meanwhile, has her first dance concert next week. Yeah, you read that right, and yes, it is bizarre but I don't really have a choice. I did not enrol her in dance classes. There are, on the other hand, dance classes in our back room on Mondays. And Tiny has decided she's taking tiny ballet. Nobody else has a say. (Actually she wants to join in the big kids ballet and hip hop too but usually gets kicked out of those.)

My doll collection has had a massive cull. Anything that I don't care about or have no plans of getting out of storage, has gone.

I've also removed Zihu and Paige's face ups. They'll have new identities soon. I want to try doing their face ups with water colours. I don't know how well that will work but I'm better at water colours than pastels, so it's worth a try.

Once the Christmas crazies are over, I will probably take you on a tour of my remaining doll collection. Or at least I plan to. We're on the countdown to the Giant Baby starting kindergarten (Australian kindergarten is the equivalent of US preschool) so I should have more free time to post stuff and do stuff next year. (FORTY-ONE DAYS TO GO! YAY!)

An update on my post office story. They gave me the run around but then agreed to a partial refund. It's not enough to get enough ink to reprint the dolls myself but it IS enough to get them professionally reprinted. Which is ridiculous and proves what I've always said, home printers are a waste of money. (But convenient, if they work, and have ink in them . . . Ugh, ok, they're awful but these days they're pretty much the only way to buy a scanner.)

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, or whatever they feel like celebrating.

What the actual fluff!

 So, I think my last post was the paper dolls I made. They took a YEAR! Between researching, sketching, painting, scanning, editing, layout, printing and collating, that's an actual year!

As I had planned from the beginning, once they were ready I bought all new ink cartridges for my printer, and as anyone that's ever had a printer knows, that stuff is expensive.

Then I printed. And printed. I got eight complete copies before I started getting out of ink warnings. Then I bought card to paste the actual dolls to. I ended up getting more ink and reprinting the dolls, straight onto the card.

I spent two days collating them into individual sets, and cutting the doll sheets so each doll was on it's own little piece of card.

I bought two packages of blu-tack to make stands for the dolls. Packaged the whole thing up, with a letter of explanation of course, and mailed it to the children's hospital.

AND AUSTRALIA POST LOST THEM!

I have never been so angry in my entire life!

Special Paper Dolls

 About a year ago I posted some old paper dolls that I made. Over the next few weeks, completely by coincidence, I was part of about five different conversations that touched on the topic of how difficult it is to keep younger kids entertained while they're in hospital. One lady, actually mentioned that her daughters had had paper dolls thirty years ago, and that she'd wanted some for her granddaughter while she was in hospital, but hadn't been able to find any.

 And so followed a year long project. It didn't actually take a year, there were long breaks, and I forgot about it for months after we moved. Researching, drawing, painting, tidying it all up in Photoshop, and now I have a whole book of paper dolls. Not a real book. A PDF book that only exists on my computer but whatever. I also accidentally discovered that you can make multi page PDFs in Photoshop Elements, which is something I've always wanted to be able to do and will come in pretty handy!

 Anyway, I've printed out a bunch this week and I'm going to send them to the Royal Children's Hospital. I just need to buy some white card to glue the dolls themselves to. I thought our regular shops would sell white card somewhere but the closest I could find  were blank greeting cards in "Make your own card" kits. I nearly bought them but I wasn't sure if they'd be big enough, so it will have to wait until we can get to Officeworks. Hopefully this afternoon.

There is way too much content to upload all the individual files here. But if you're interested, you can see the whole lot here.

And now I need to set to work, talking the Giant Baby into walking to Officeworks with me!

Happy Halloween

I'm late with this, as usual. Oh, well.

This year I got a little pack of doll sized trick or treating pails at the supermarket. I was going to make some costumes for some of my dolls and do a halloween picture but time got away from me.

We did a pumpkin again. I had planned on trying to make a Jack Skellington one but at the last second the Giant Husband volunteered to do it and then didn't listen to anything anyone said about it. It only got done last Sunday and it's already . . . disgusting! We need to throw it out but nobody wants to touch it.

We did trick or treating, and had trick or treaters for the first time! It was fun but also over 30 degrees. The Giant Baby only wore part of his costume because he was too warm. He had a dress shirt and a pair of dress pants to wear under the bits he's wearing, but he insisted on wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He also said it was too hot for me to paint his face white. He was the rosiest vampire I've ever seen.

As we were hiking twelve million miles looking for lollies, I couldn't help but think, "Surely we could just put on costumes, walk to the shops, and buy our favourite candies?! That'd make more sense!" But no, it doesn't work like that, and now I'm sunburnt. I also discovered that I do not approve of people not giving out candy but still sending their kids out. That's not fair.

I'm going to leave this here because the kids are being so noisy, I can't remember what I was going to say.

Playing With BJDs

I've been thinking a fair bit about my ball jointed dolls lately and I don't think I've ever discussed them in much detail here.

(By the way, if anyone (maybe Xanadu) feels bad because her bjds don't have shoes, take comfort in the fact that none of mine have clothes yet! And I've had at least one of them for over five years!)

I may have used this picture before.

I like it too much to feel bad about it.

My first bjd was a Dollmore Zihu. She was bought to be Claudia from Interview with a Vampire. If you don't know the book, or movie, Claudia is a child vampire who continues to age mentally but not physically, which ends up making her all kinds of crazy.

I wanted a Claudia doll because I wanted to make Claudia type clothes. In the book she has an elaborate recency wardrobe and in the movies her clothes are . . . Well, to me, her clothes are the best part of the movie. I especially wanted a doll worthy of a GOOD recreation (I've made several bad ones, for various dolls) of this dress.

Sorry, it's not a great picture but it's the best I can find right now. I am in LOVE with this dress. Frankly, I would probably kill a dozen people (more if I didn't like them) for this gown in my size.

Anyway, I chose Zihu to be Claudia. The only drawback was that she was only available in "Normal" colour.

I did her face up myself. My main concern was to make her not look like all the other Zihus I had seen. Back then (early 2014) if you google image searched "Dollmore Zihu" almost every result had very faded lips, almost no other shading or blushing on the face, especially around the eyes, freckles, and a very light coloured, maybe slightly gingerish wig. It might not have been EVERY one, but I remember it irked me. To me the point of Bjds is how customisable they are. If you're making it identical to everyone else's, you may as well buy a Barbie. So, I actively tried to make her look different. I thought the sculpt itself was beautiful and I wanted her face up to reflect that.

And here she is today. Wigless.

Her eyebrows and lower eyelashes could be better. Her upper eyelashes are frankly awful. I ruined my one set of doll eyelashes and didn't want to wait for another set to arrive by post. So her eyelashes are cheap human falsies from the chemist, cut down to size. And they are fantastically uneven.

But she has never looked vampiric enough to me. Claudia needs to be paler. So currently, I'm saving up, to hopefully buy an Iplehouse KID Celina in white skin. Although in the link, you may not see any resemblance, the sculpt when blank, is quite similar to Zihu's, so hopefully will give me the effect I was going for.

And if it starts to look like I'll be able to get Celina, I can make Zihu over to be someone else.

In the middle I have a weird doll group of kiddelfs by Luts. I thought they'd be comparable to Zihu in size but Zihu is smaller than a MSD sized doll and bigger than a tiny BJD. So no.

Why is it a "weird doll group"? Well, I bought one doll body and three heads. Ok, onesone of the heads was a free gift for spending over a certain amount. I thought I could practice face ups on them, then decide which face I liked best.

If you're wondering which faces, they're Bory, Buzzi and the Summer 2014 Event head and they look like this

Over the years I've had a few insane ideas of what to do with these. One idea that stuck around longer than most, was make the heads over to represent fire, earth and water and make an elaborate costume for each. Then switch them out when I felt like it. But I never got around to doing anything. Now I really want to do something with them. Just not sure what. They've barely been out of their box, but at least now they've had a coat of MSC.



My newest BJD is Paige. A KID sized doll by Iplehouse. She's a similar size to Zihu. Their torsos are nearly identical in size but Paige has longer, slimmer arms and legs. Her hands are smaller too. I did not think to compare their feet.

My Paige has a factory face up. It's very pretty. But very generic. This face should be filled with intelligence and curiosity and cheekiness. Instead, it's pretty. I think it's the lips. She should have a thin lipped, mischevious smile but they've put too much colour on. I want to repaint her but she's so pretty (Which is also WHY I want to repaint her!) and I like pretty things. My brain is a weird place.

Anyway, here's Paige's unnecessarily convoluted story. When I made my dollhouse (Wow! That's some tangent!) I discovered there was a ridiculous amount of dollhouse stuff available. In order to reign in my "I want"s and my spending, I decided I needed to know when my dollhouse was and who lived there. I chose May of 1885 for the date. Specific, I know. I like the 1880s and I happened to have a Bloomingdales (I think) catalogue for May 1885. Since one of my interests is family history, I chose some of my ancestors to live there. . . Actually, I killed off most of their kids (including my great great grandfather) because I couldn't afford that many dolls and didn't think there'd be room for them. So my Great-great-great grandparents and their oldest daughter live in my dollhouse. (Except it's 1885 in the dollhouse and they're the ages they would have been in more like 1865.)

What's this got to do with Paige? My original plan was to also get another dollhouse to represent my nana's family in the early 1930s. This was obviously when I lived alone and had two spare bedrooms. But then the dollhouse I wanted was discontinued, my brother moved in, then the Giant Husband, then the Giant Baby and I realised I would never have room for another dollhouse. But I felt bad. Like I had somehow let Nana down.

I had been eyeing Iplehouse's dolls for a while when they released Paige. And she caught my attention. My Dad used to have a picture of Nana when she was about ten and she looked a LOT like Paige. So, I decided, if I couldn't have a Nana dollhouse, I would have Nana doll.

 My Paige is named Lily. Nana's sisters called her Lily or Tigerlily, because she had yellowish-hazel eyes like a cat. When she finally gets clothes, she will be dressed in late 1920s and early 1930s styles. I'm trying to decide whether to make Zihu one of her sisters, or some other ancestor. Maybe Nana's mum or nana's nana. Not sure yet. I think another ancestor would be more fun as it would give me more time periods to choose clothes from, instead of always the 20s and 30s.

                 

I played around with different wigs on them today, and so I've included some more photos. Neither of them have clothes. For these pictures they shared a Simba dolls blouse that didn't fit either of them well and at one point Zihu was wrapped in the tucked fabric that Tiny bled all over the other week. Being a vampire she didn't mind. I took these in a hurry and it was my first time using my actual camera in over a year so they aren't great. I also cannot work out how to get the pictures to show up side by side. It would be cooler if they did.

This first wig had no hope of fitting either doll. It was bought for a totally different doll and was way too big. I still like how it looks on Zihu though.

                                   
Next is a Dollmore wig with pigtails. I hate these pigtails wigs because I can never make them look even. The two pigtails are always different heights, or one sticks out at a stupid angle. I think they're cute but they make me swear.

The next one is another Dollmore wig. I like how it looks on both girls but I also think it looks a little bland and it belongs to one of my Kish dolls any way, so these girls can't have it.

           

This is a Leekeworld wig. Another one I stole off one of my Kish dolls for today. For some reason it makes me think every doll that wears it looks "French". I don't even know what I mean by that.

Next is another Dollmore wig. This is the one I originally bought for Zihu to wear as Claudia but I don't like her in it. I was disappointed that it didn't make Paige look more like Bernadette Peters.

I hate this next wig so much. The hair fibre is too thick (The individual fibres not the stitching), the styling looks clumsy, the fringe is only ok if it was cut in the dark with a lawnmower, and the "wispy tendrils" are huge hanks of hair!

Next is the default wig that came with Zihu. It confuses me. All the hair comes out kind of sideways like it wants to be tied in pigtails but it's not meant to. I never know what I'm supposed to do with this one. I think it make Zihu look like the little girl from the Beethoven movies.

This next wig is my favourite wig ever. It's by Dollmore and the fit is amazing. It pops straight on these girl's heads like a hat, without any turning inside out or stretching or anything. And then it stays on! And stays in place beautifully!

I love the colour of this wig, which may be why I bought it. But it's the same style as the chocolate coloured pigtails wig and has the same problem.

And finally a Luts wig that I love the colour of.

And finally a picture of the girls together in the wigs that are theirs for the moment. Looking at this I can't help but think Paige desperately needs a new face up. Next to Zihu, even though Paige's face is more professional, it has no personality.

Taking these photos, I discovered that one of the magnets in Paige's headcap was loose. It kept popping out and her headcap kept popping off. So, if Paige looks a bit weird here and there, it's because in about a quarter of the pictures, she doesn't have her headcap on. Not that it's not attached properly. More, I got fed up with fighting with it and took it off and she modelled wigs without it.

Oh look! Shiny things!

 I've been a little overwhelmed lately. I have what was called a Hyperactivity disorder when I was a kid. There's about a thousand percent chance that nowadays I'd be diagnosed with ADHD.

 I've actually gotten pretty good at bullying myself into doing the things I'm supposed to do and being organised. Which is tragic, considering how many things I leave undone or half done and how disorganised I am.

 My beautiful craft room, that I was going to keep so neat and tidy, is absolute chaos at the minute. I'm too embarrassed to post a picture. I can't do anything in there without hyperventilating at the thought of cleaning the mess up. Or I have good intentions of tidying up but the Giant Baby follows me in (and even though nobody will diagnose him at his age because if his history of hearing problems, I'm pretty sure he has ADHD too) and he turns into a tiny tornado of grabbing fingers and "What's this? Can I have this?" and the mess gets worse.

 On top of that, the sheer number of dolls I have put away "To do something with someday" is giving me anxiety. There is no way I am ever going to focus long enough to get them all done. I'm making myself cull them, mostly so I don't have a complete and utter breakdown from the weight of all these poor dolls. I even threw out my terminally ill, vinyl diseased Skipper. And I'm considering selling my Luts doll, since she's never actually been taken out of her box in the five years I've had her. I'm agonising over my My Scene and Barbie dolls. They have so much potential. There's so much I could do with them. But will I ever actually do it? And everything I consider getting rid of makes me worry that it will be the one thing I want back later.

 Some things are safe. Mostly the child dolls. Maybe that's ultimately what I'll do. Keep the children and get rid of the adults. To be honest between the Dolly Surprise, Wee Three Friends and 4 Ever Best Friends dolls I've hoarded, there's enough to keep me going for years. And to continue giving me anxiety.

 We also discovered that I had an entire suitcase filled with ribbon, lace, embroidery thread, beads and buttons, which meant reconfiguring all my storage to fit them in. I still haven't finished.

 And in all honesty I'm sulking a little bit. No new dolls until Christmas. I would never have made that deal if I had known about the Creatable World dolls. I want one. I want them all. Even though, Mattel style, before I've even seen them in person, I'm equal parts excited and disappointed by them. None of the outfit sets particularly excite me, the wigs look pretty awful, the two darkest skin tones apparently don't exist in Australia, and real life pictures make the "redhead" look like she has light brown hair. But I want to compare them to my big Stacies and I love the concept. They're exactly the kind of doll I would have laid down my life for as a kid.

 I kind of want to do a design course. But I don't know what kind of design, they're all so expensive, and by the time the kids are in school, I'll be too old to start a new career. Cue freak out.

 I haven't just been freaking out. I've been sewing for Tiny, which is fun. Until Wednesday when I spent hours tucking a piece of fabric for a dress bodice and then she flipped her rocking horse, cut her lip and bled on it. I don't want to do all that tucking again but there's one crooked tuck on the piece I did, which makes me not want to bother trying to get the blood out of that bit either. Ugh! (I have no idea why this bit is indented and it won't let me change it.)

I don't have a proper ending for this post, it's really just one long typed panic attack more than anything. Oh well.

ARGH!

Not a real post, just a question for anyone that might know.

Sticktwist embroidery thread. Is there a trick to separating it into seperate strands without it turning into a tangled mess? Am I an idiot for not being able to do this? Or is this just something you have to put up with if you use it?

Surely this is a sign of the apocalypse!

So things have been happening lately that I'm pretty sure signal the end of the world! First of all I actually said "There are too many toys in this house!" Even as I said it, I was wondering who this crazy person is!
This wasn't about my toys. The Giant Baby kept getting more and more of his toys out, without packing any up. Then when it was time to pack up, he'd freak out because there was just so much! I wouldn't even have minded if it was all in his room. But he'd make a mess in his room, then drag toys out to the dancing room, then when that got messy he'd move into the dining room, the loungeroom, then his sister's room. On top of which, not only would he refuse to pack up, if we tried to pack up at any point, he'd melt down because "I was just about to start playing with that!"
I got rid of some of his toys (stuff he didn't play with anyway), some got moved to the communal toy area in the loungeroom, and a lot of them got divided into boxes and are being stored in my wardrobe. He has to ask for the toys he wants and if he wants another box, he has to pack up the one that's already out. As I did this, it seemed really mean, but it's working really well. He seems like he's under less pressure and he's actually playing with a wider variety of his toys more often. But I do think this is the first sign of the apocalypse!

Then I made a deal with the Giant Husband. I wouldn't bring home any more new dolls unless I already had proper plans for them for a while.
This wasn't him being mean or bossy but because I freaked out a tiny bit over the sheer number of dolls I have that I vaguely plan on doing "something" with. The deal we made was no new dolls until Christmas. Hopefully this will give me a chance to prioritise the ones I have put away. Maybe even get rid of some? Ugh! I'm pretty sure me agreeing to this and actually considering it, is another sign of the apocalypse!

And then I got back $300 I had leant someone. It was money I had never expected to see again, so I had no plans for it. The Giant Husband said that I could spend it on dolls if I wanted. I thought about it for over a week. I considered a million different things. $300 would go a long way to saving up for another Iplehouse doll. Or it would buy quite a lot of other dolls. So what did I buy?

Bookshelves. To replace our old ones that were wobbly and rickety to a dangerous extent. I'm concerned that I may be turning into a proper grown up! I'm even more worried that while a little voice in my head keeps saying "You could have gotten . . .", I don't actually regret it, or even mind. It probably helps that they look so much better than the old shelves did. But I'm fairly certain this is yet another sign of the apocalypse.

I've also finally started watching the anime (Oreimo) that these girls (I call them Tristessa and Butterscotch but their real names are Kuroneko and Kirino Kousaka) are from. By the way if anyone likes anime there's a website called AnimeLab run by a company (Madman) that sell anime DVDs. You can watch heaps of anime for free and they have a massive selection. I've never watched the show before but I love these characters because they look like characters I would have made up. (I'm pretty sure Xanadu has a Figma of Ayase Aragaki from the same show.)

I was a bit apprehensive going into the show. Everything I read online said the show was about Kirino trying to hide her interest in anime and falling in love with her brother. Ummm . . . Ok. A bit icky. But I finished the first season last night and there hasn't been much that I'd consider incestuous. Actually if I hadn't read that before watching, I would probably have assumed it was a story of teenage siblings reconnecting and I would have assumed Kirino was a lesbian.

The part I'm having trouble with, which is making me abandon the show for days at a time, is that Kirino's main interest isn't anime. But little sister eroges. What's that? An eroge is a type of video game where the purpose is to seduce someone, maybe make them fall in love with you. An erotic video game. And the ones Kirino is into? Involve seducing the player character's little sister. Eroges were generally mentioned in the reviews I read. The bit where they're child porn eroges was not. And while nothing is shown, I'm still not really ok with that. Or I'm really not ok with that.

I still like the dolls. I even like the characters in the show (although Kirino is an ultra moody, batshit crazy, bratty kid). And I am going to finish watching it, but it's a tough slog.

Hopefully I'll be able to post more on Donatina in a day or two. At the moment she's on hold because the kids are sick again and being a lot of fun.

It seams perfect!

Barb's post about the amazingly awesome Barbie sewing machine set, reminded me that I never showed you the Our Generation sewing machine set, that I got for my birthday earlier this year.

This wasn't easy to find either. In Australia, it's Kmart that sells Our Generation stuff and I have never seen this set there. But some toy shops also get OG stuff in and I found this online at a shop called Kid Stuff.

And here it is! A table and chair, a sewing machine, a dress form, a tin of sewing accessories, a pattern, and a bolt of cloth.

The table feels a little spindly to me. Those drawers don't open. But there's a magic button on the side that flips out a little tab . . .

That acts as a support for a table extension. And once the extension is flipped out, there's a cavity underneath that the sewing machine fits into.

The machine is pretty cool. The little, silver, stitch selection dial actually turns. But doesn't really do anything. I can't remember the name for it right now, but the green wheel on the end, not only turns but actually moves the needle up and down. And there is a little lever behind the needle that actually raises and lowers the presser foot. All these things made me make high pitched noises of happy!

The tin for the accessories looks fittingly outdated, but I wish it had pictures of Danish Butter Cookies on top! And here's the stuff . . .

An 18 inch long tape measure, a ruler, scissors, two spools of thread, a tailors pencil, four buttons, a buttonhole measure, and the ubiquitous tomato pin cushion.

The tape measure seems to be made of the stuff actual tape measures are made from, my brain says fibre glass but I'm exhausted, it's just as likely to suggest kittens. The scissors open and close. The slider on the button measuring thingy actually slides. And the pin cushion is on a wrist band for the doll to wear.

The pattern is an actual pattern for an a line dress which I assume fits Our Generation dolls. I also assume the bolt has enough fabric to make the dress. (It's denim coloured stuff with a grey heart pattern, if you're wondering.) I haven't unrolled it though so I can't be sure.

I don't dislike the dress form, but I wish it didn't have all those words on it. Until tonight, I assumed it was way too small for 18 inch doll clothes but then I did this.  . .

I thought it would be funny, because the dress would be way to big. It actually fits beautifully!

On the other hand, like most 18 inch doll playsets, the really funny thing, is how out of scale they are with the dolls.

To be fair this is an Our Generation doll and an Our Generation playset. And yet she looks like Andre the Giant standing with some preschool furniture!

I thought this would help. No. No it did not. Getting her to balance on that chair without her or the chair falling over, felt like necromancy by the end. And then there was no way to pose her gracefully. So now she looks like she's, if not doing necromancy, at least communing with the spirit world.
On the bright side, the pin cushion fits her wrist!

Of course, I actually bought this set, for my Helen Kish dolls and it fits them beautifully. Except the pin cushion. It refused to stay on her wrist at all.

She also has enough articulation to look like she's actually doing something with it!

I don't have a clever way to end this post. It was meant to be about three sentences, but as usual I got carried away and now I need to sleep.

Surprises!

So, I killed Donatina.
Not really, just being melodramatic. This morning I decided 36 hours should be long enough for the glue to cure. The bottle recommended 48 hours but I decided I knew better.
When it came to heating her head up, I got too impatient using the hair dryer - which is why I never use it to dry my hair; and dunked her head in hot water again.
 The first eye popped in easy. And looked awesome! I wish I had taken a picture! But there was no way I was going to be able to get her second eye in the same way. Because the rigidity of the eye, I had gotten in, was making her head less flexible and the second eye would go in about two thirds of the way and pop out again! Then the glue softened and the dome popped off the back of the eye!
So now poor Donatina looks like this

Condensation has formed in her one eye and it actually looks worse in real life because the softened glue is giving the eye a weird, cataracty sheen. I'm waiting to see if the condensation improves, then I'm going to have to cut the back of her head open and stick the eye in that way.

I'm going to wait and see how hard that is and how good it looks before I decide what to do with the other girls. I may just paint over their eyes.

As I was sulking about this, I got my grocery package from Xanadu! YAY! Perfect timing!

Alice and Tristessa volunteered to help me open it. (Tristessa was reluctant and only agreed to help on the condition that she got a chair.)

Obviously Alice was more enthusiastic but at least Tristessa agreed to hold Chessy the cat.

On top were some little knitted things. I THINK these will fit my Disney dolls. Actually they'd probably fit the Kindi Kids too. I love knitted things but I couldn't knit to save my life. (That's not true, I can knit plain squares, if I don't have to do anything more complicated than knit, purl, knit, purl and someone else casts on and off for me but that's not very useful.)

There were also two little red tops but I forgot to get a picture.

But Alice was on a mission to find treasure!

Tristessa tried to tell Alice that the shoes probably weren't for her but Alice was pretty sure they were.

Alice offered Tristessa a felt strawberry to cheer her up. But Tristessa says felt strawberries give her hives.

Some felt strawberries and biscuity sticks, and slices of kiwi fruit and mandarin - which will have to be hidden from the children or they will vanish and reappear in the toy box.

Then a big bag of groceries to make everyone happy!

Tristessa found a jar of Nutella. Alice found a bag of gingerbread men. And Chessy isn't fussy, she's happy with dog food!

The little pack of toilet paper is possibly my favourite thing ever! There's a little pack of ham, which I plan to put in my handbag. That way, in future, if I mispronounce it as "hambag" and the Giant Husband argues that I don't keep ham in it, I can pull that out and say that I do! (Yes, I am definitely childish enough to do that.)

And now if I want to save Donatina (by sawing a hole in her skull) I'm going to need to get a move on before Tiny wakes up from her nap. And then tonight, once the kids are asleep, I can play "Who fits what?" with those clothes and shoes!