Tomato Dragons

Kate got another polymer clay commission--three little dragons for three girls who call themselves the Tomato Dragons. I love the blue one. They are made with Sculpey III and glazed.

Dragons at the Nativity

Kate made a nativity set to display at this year's Festival of the Nativity. It was definitely her own unique creation--Kate's set is made up of Sculpey dragons.  She worked on it for probably a couple of weeks, off and on.  Everything turned out so cute.



She's really been developing her Sculpey skills lately. She comes up with some great detail.



I love the eggshell pieces.



You can tell this is the angel because it has a halo, and is holding a star.



Kate's set was displayed in the whimsical section, which features nativity sets of teddy bears or rubber ducks or other things, and this year a couple of very cute Lego creations. They just happened to have the perfect spot for her dragons.



Displays from another section. (No dragons.)



We took Tavah along, and she and Kate had fun checking out all the exhibits. The backdrop that Anne Marie and I painted was the centerpiece on the stage. Once they got it up there I realized that we had missed the edges. Whoops! When we were putting on the blue base coast we discussed doing the edges, decided that they should be black, and then promptly forgot about it. Ah well. If anyone noticed, they didn't say anything to me!

Kate's shelves (and some art)

Kate's room is full of little things that she's made or collected--things like Shopkins and Littlest Pet Shop figures, and her various Sculpey creations, which are myriad and tiny.  Her bookcase headboard has gotten very full.  I've had the idea for a while to make some narrow shelves above her bed where she can display all these things more comfortably.   It took some time but we finally got it done.  We made a Saturday excursion to McLendon and picked out some wood and some brackets, and when we got home I started sanding and painting.  Kate was running in and out playing with her friend Tavah all afternoon, and every time she came in she would ask, "Are my shelves up yet?"  They took a little longer than that.

We discussed colors and thought these sounded good, and I was able to mix them up with my cheap craft paints.  I got a little roller which I think worked much better than brushing.  As I was working I realized they're the same colors that Lorne Elliot mentions in his song "The League of Lawn Art Lovers" (a favorite of ours since we were in Newfoundland).  Here's the relevant bit:

Thirty Javex bottle windmills, 
Colored some fluorescent hue.
And if they're not to your liking,
Maybe our house will look more striking
If we paint it in three colors,
Pink and green, and electric blue.

(Kate is a big fan of electric blue.)



Each shelf got two coats of paint and then a coat of polyurethane (which I ended up regretting--should have just left it off).  Mounting them on the wall was a bit of a pain, too. The whole process took a couple of days. 



They look good!  We should have realized, though, that any sort of storage solution we come up with for Kate does not get used for storage, it gets used for playing.  She immediately invented a complicated game with different biomes and levels, and started making more little Sculpey creations to enhance her game. 

(She says she wants more shelves.  I indicated that this was unlikely to happen very soon.)



Here's a recent Sculpey creation--Kate made this Marcel the Shell for me.  He sits on my plant shelf over the kitchen sink.  Isn't he cute?



Kate wanted to share this drawing, too. She calls it "Fox of the Forest."She's really been developing her drawing skills lately.

Thanksgiving and the Sculpey Sweet Shoppe

Kate spent a large part of the day making Sculpey creations for her Littlest Pet Shop figures.  (Those are milkshakes with pink straws.)

We made Indian food this year.  Doug wanted to try making our own naan.  It was pretty good but not quite right.  We'll have to try again sometime. 

I've developed low expectations about Thanksgiving.  Years ago people used to invite us over, but that hasn't happened for a while.  I suppose one of these years we'll have to invite someone over ourselves.  Someone else with low expectations. 

In which Doug takes up millinery.

When Kate went to the Tracys' house when Andy was born, Catharine (who was her Sunbeam teacher at the time but has since gone on to BYU Idaho) gave her a few things that she'd gotten from her job at the zoo. One of them was this Mama Mirabelle DVD. Mama Mirabelle is an elephant with a video camera, who takes home movies all about animals (it's a National Geographic thing). I remember Doug and Kate brought the movie to the hospital when they came to visit me and Andy, and we watched it there. Anything to do with animals is pretty sure to be a hit with Kate.

Mama's son Max (also an elephant, obviously) has two friends named Bo (a cheetah) and Karla (a zebra--apparently British because she pronounces it "zeb-ra"). Kate has a little baby zebra in her Playmobil toys, and it didn't take her long to decide that the zebra was Karla. So then we had to go online and see what Playmobil made in the way of elephants and cheetahs. We haven't found a cheetah yet, but yes, they do have elephants--a mama and baby set! Perfect!

Last Thursday Doug took Kate out for the afternoon. They went downtown and rode the Link (always fun) and went to the Learning Sprout, which is quite probably the coolest store in town. They came home with the elephants. Kate was very excited. We admired the mama elephant's heft and articulation (jointed ankles!) and the way the ends of their trunks are shaped like Playmobil people's hands, so they can hold things (clever!) but Kate informed us that the set was not complete because Mama needed a hat.

Mama Mirabelle wears a pith helmet with blue flowers on it. Obviously this elephant cannot be Mama without a hat. Doug tried making a pattern for a paper hat, but decided that would not fit the purpose, so he made one out of Sculpey.




(He's so resourceful!) Kate is very pleased with her elephants. You can see Mama and her friends here.

Sculpeygator

Doug made this for Kate. Isn't it cute?

Felt Butterfly

(Me to Doug):

"I'm making a multi-media butterfly."

"Multi-media?"

"Errr... I mean mixed media!"

Inspired a little by this book and a little by Princess Lasertron, made with felt, embroidery floss, beads, Sculpey, and wire. Kate was quite intrigued by the process. I told her she could have it to play with after I finished it and got a picture. She said, "Oh, it's so beautiful!"

We went to The Bead Factory after our Korean lunch on Monday, to get some pink beads (they didn't have what I wanted at Artco). Shortly after we got there, a teenage boy knocked over a tray of beads. While they were picking everything up, one of the employees said, "You can hear all the moms gasp and look around, and say, 'Whew! It wasn't my kid!'" Well, sure enough, not long after that, Kate also knocked over a tray of beads. (It was low down, and a bit longer than the shelf it was on. She put her hand on it and it just tipped right over.) She was traumatized. It was kind of funny--I've been in there several times and never saw anyone knock anything over, and then it happens twice in about fifteen minutes. They said it's quite a common occurrence. They have a little bead-vacuum thing to pick them up with. (Perhaps a re-design of the displays might be in order.) We were properly mortified and got out of there as quickly as possible.

(Butterfly is now part of this set!)

Watching Paint Dry

We've been getting a lot of use out of the kids' craft book that Barb sent us. Kate loves looking through it and telling us what she'd like to make. The brad-jointed paper animals especially are a big hit. Lately she's been wanting to paint them herself. This requires a bit of supervision, of course, but she does pretty well. The hard part is waiting for the paint to dry before she can play with them. Mostly we've been going outside to play "kickety-kick ball." (That's from Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! Thank you Wubbzy for giving us kickety-kick ball and hippity-hopscotch.) Sometimes she lays the paint on rather thickly, and then we have to wait longer. Waiting is hard when you're three.



(Excuse the messy hair!)

I've been managing to get a rest most days, after lunch. Here's a cute little Sculpey dragon that Doug made for Kate while I was napping. Its tail got singed in the oven. (It looks deliberate, no? Like Siamese points. Shhhh!)



We had a couple of miserably hot days this last week, but things seem to be back to normal now (rather gray and rainy). We took Kate to the splash park on Friday, which she did not like. Well, she enjoyed watching the fountains, but didn't want to get in the water. We did get her to step on a couple of the fountains. (Baby steps, baby steps.) I got a little sunburned.