Rose asks me to play barbies with her nearly every time she draws breath. We play with barbies a lot. Mostly that involves lots of kneeling and sitting on the floor, sorting through clothes, and doing frizzy doll hair. Rose also likes to boss me till I can't do a single thing on my own without her permission. Needless to say, I have been very interested in finding new ways to indulge Rose's need to "play barbies" together, without the impossible bossing and knee-popping floor sitting. Basically I am happy do to Barbie-ish things with Rose, but on more neutral ground. Enter the Barbie Box Castle and Operation Make Modest Barbie Clothes. I feel so sly for figuring out Barbie-related activities that are just as fun for me as they are for Rose. She can watch and help me create rooms and clothes for the Barbies and she also plays with the Barbies HER way while she watches and waits for the latest project to be finished. We spend quality mother-daughter-barbie time together, I am free to create without being bossed, and Rose is free to express herself and play at the same time. It's a win-win situation!
The Barbie Box Castle
A few months ago online I saw some cool ideas for making a doll house out of cardboard boxes. I started saving a bunch of old apple boxes and we stacked them up in a large castle-like formation. We have been slowly adding details to each room over the past few weeks. We only work on it every now and then, but it's a fun project! We decided to keep it modular--the boxes are not connected in any way, so Rose can rearrange them any way she wants. And best of all, the castle is not pink or plastic. Take that, Mattel! The castle is not finished yet, but we have lots of plans and ideas for it and it's fun to talk about them together.
Our first room was the bedroom. I crafted a cardboard bed and Rose picked out snowflake scrapbook paper for the walls, with glittery tissue paper carpeting. Of course Aurora and Phillip are modeling this room.
The ballroom was the trickiest--my cereal box cardboard wainscoting was rather rudimentary and it warped once I painted it white. But I was proud of my cute little paper candle sconces taped to the walls. Much more of this and I'll become a full-fledged hobbyist! Working solely with paper and cardboard, of course.
My favorite so far is the library--it took hours to draw in all of those books, but Rose helped with one wall and I love how it turned out. We haven't put in any carpet yet.
The throne room, complete with two cardboard thrones. Can you tell it's Rose's favorite room? She keeps all of her favorite Barbies there and they have quite the parties in their limited space. I find it amusing that Rose's two favorite barbies ended up being not Anna and Elsa from Frozen, but two 99 cent thrift store barbies that she named Beauty and Belinda. She tried naming both of them Beauty, but we also have a Belle and a Sleeping Beauty and that was just too many Beauties for me to deal with when she was telling me about them so I named one of them Belinda since it means more or less the same thing and it starts with a "B" too.
Here's what the barbie corner and castle looks like right now. We found about half of our barbies at Goodwill and Value Village and on ebay. Most are Disney princes and princesses. Good thing the castle is so large! Apple boxes are nice and sturdy and just the right proportions for barbies.
Operation Make Modest Barbie Clothes
I found a box of someone's used barbie clothes on ebay for Rose's birthday gift this year and it is full of interesting articles of clothing. Most of them are belly shirts and mini skirts, though! That's not such a big deal because they're just barbies, but Rose knows about modesty and she always comments on how strange it is that the barbie shirts are so short. I don't expect all barbie clothes to cover the shoulder and come to the knee, but it would be nice to have some more options for coverage. So I did a little online research and discovered a few blog posts on how to sew simple barbie clothes. After a preliminary round to test the pattern I found, this week I got out some fabric scraps and really started experimenting.
Tiana, modeling my first home sewn barbie outfit in about 20 years.
Everything went fine until I was about 3 short seams away from finishing the second dress. It is not easy to sew such tiny little bits of fabric, and I was surprised how smoothly the first dress came together. Then as I was carefully feeding the fabric through my sewing machine, I got my finger just a little too close to that sharp pumping needle, and I SEWED MY FINGER! The needle went straight through the side of my left pointer finger and then broke (the needle broke, not my finger). YOWCH! It was only on the soft padded part of the fingertip, not through the nail or the bone or anything really awful, but it was my first body piercing and I did not care for it one bit! I don't even have my ears pierced, but now I have a finger piercing. Luckily it has already closed up and is healing quickly. Whew! Rose was rather worried about me but after I covered the wound with a bandaid, she felt a little better. My puncture burned for a while, but I somehow finished up that last confounded dress, lopsided though it was. My fingers were cringing away from the needle every time I pushed the fabric towards it though!
I made the white shirt and blue Belle dress out of an old t-shirt (pretty sure it was an old girls camp t-shirt from 2003--viva Chickasaw State Park, TN!) In the name of streamlining, I kept the original t-shirt hem at the bottom of the dress. Also: it is way harder than it seems to match up and center the hems on the backs of dresses, hahaha.
Speaking of self-inflicted wounds, last night at dinner I was eating some spinach salad when I suddenly chomped down hard on the back of my tongue. I must've bitten a nerve or something because my whole body went weak and it was all I could do not to gag out the rest of that bite of spinach. Today the back right side of my tongue is slightly swollen and super tender. Ouch! What is up with the unintentional self flagellation?
I stole the title of this post from classic kids book "Holes" by Louis Sachar. The epilogue has the same title: "Filling in the holes." Yes, I'm that punny--making modest barbie clothes to fill in the holes left by the belly shirts, my needle-pricked finger filling in the hole whilst it heals, filling the hole in the barbie collection with a castle, you get the idea. I have one more set of holes to fill in: the photographic holes from February--this is February's epilogue.
Barbies in a truck
Jay cobbled together a desk of sorts for himself in his room. He finished his homework in record time in the peaceful solitude of his room without the little sisters to distract him. We need to find this boy a real desk!
Eventually the sisters found him.
Starting the day right--with shots of orange juice. Jeff and I won these funny gorilla shot glasses from a trail race last year.
One afternoon last week I experienced a sudden surge of motivation and on a whim cleaned out my craft/sewing closet for the first time since we moved to this house almost 5 years ago. I threw away at least 40 pounds of JUNK that had been crammed in there over the years. Has it been 5 years already?
The trash from the craft closet cleanup. Heavy!
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| Hiding under my bed |
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| One morning while I was doing my exercises, Amber fell into the plastic bin that I keep my miniature hand weights in. I was laughing so hard at her panicked reaction! |
I think they do my exercises more often than I do!
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| Bath time sister tea party |
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| Rapunzelsa the pony. |
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| Morning tickle-snuggle time |
That bare round belly! Tarzamber!
Breakfast
Morning reading time for Amber
A morning puzzle for Rose. One morning after we dropped Jay off at school, I was sitting at the computer when I paused and noticed that both girls were playing happily right next to me. Their cute little voices were both going softly in the background while they played. Amber was removing books from the shelf and looking through them on one side, and Rose was playing with this three bears puzzle on my other side. It was one of those happy little everyday moments that warm my heart.
Cousin BFFs: Crazy hair and big messes is how these two girls roll.
Jay's reading level advanced so quickly in such a short time period that he didn't finish reading all 54+ of the Magic Treehouse series before he was WAY beyond that level. He is still trucking along in the series, however, because he loves them. He can read an entire Magic Treehouse book during breakfast!
Sisters. They spend a lot of time together while Jay is at school. Oh, and after Christmas we got an actual headboard for our bed for the first time in our entire 9 years of marriage. We feel so grown up. But we will probably never paint our bedroom--let's not go too crazy. There has to be an adulting sticker for that.
Sunday night beauty salon with my girls. I adore Amber's crooked toes and her baby cankles.
Taking out cute hairstyles is way more traumatic than putting them in.
We scored a miraculously close parking spot at Winco once.
Our Costco rewards check came in the mail last week. Restock! Food storage! And pizza.
We walked to school 3 or 4 times in February. Rose loves to accessorize so much.
At the back gate after a morning ramble through the soccer field.
Big news: On Sunday, Rose lost her first tooth! She was eating an apple and swallowed her tooth when it came out in a bite of apple. She was pretty upset about not having a tooth to put under her pillow, but the tooth fairy still came.
Amber got the rest of THAT apple, little munchkin.
I was feeling adventurous on Sunday so I gave Amber a fancy hairstyle. Her cheeks looked extra chubby with her tiny whisps of hair pulled back so tight. It was darling. But she wouldn't stand still long enough for a good face shot.
Some toothy nostalgia. Rose looks nothing like her baby picture.
Two kids and their passions. Rose spent nearly an hour detailing a picture of herself in her Easter dress with blossoms on the tree and flowers at her feet and even a bee buzzing near the blossoms. I love her artwork so much. Jay and I we went on a library date to check out the next 10 Magic Treehouse books this week. He said "I like the library because it is quiet and you can read books there." That's my boy!
February holes: filled.
Ok, March, do your thing.