A Sad Day...

I just posted my beloved truck for sale on craigslist.  And, to add even more to my depression, I loaned my back pack to my husband to take on a trip, and forgot to take my Swiss Army "Champ" knife, that I saved money for and purchased when I was twelve, out of one of the pockets.  It got thrown away by the evil TSA.  Do I have to grow up now? 

Here is the posting:
For sale is my truck "Betsy".  2 wheel drive, manual transmission, 2 door, 4 cylinder 2.5 l engine, long bed with liner, 216,000 miles.  I am the original owner (got her when I was 16), and am sad to see her go, as I wanted my kids to drive her when they turned 16...  But we are moving over seas, and can't take her with us.  My husband was in charge of internal workings, and did a good job.  She runs great, gets 24 mpg in town, 30-31 on the highway.  Drove from Missouri to Virginia to here loaded down with no problems and better mpg than the "new" car.  He rebuilt the engine and transmission since we were married, and really, she is a dependable, good-running truck.  Appearance wise- not so much.  The outside was my job, and I failed.  Our friends call her the "War Pony", due to her pinto-like peeled paint look.  There is some serious rust also...  Other issues- no ac.  If you want a fairly reliable commuter truck that can be used to haul furniture, soil, wood, whatever- this is a good choice.  Feel free to email with questions!  Thanks.

Princess Dolls

When I saw peg dolls on pinterest, I was in love...  Miss M's birthday was coming up, and since she loves anything glittery, girly, and princessy, I thought it would be a good excuse to try making some.  Except for the issue that I really cannot draw.  At all.  My five-year-old's pictures are light years better than anything I could do.  So really, this is a very approachable project.  And fun.  If I can do it, seriously, anyone can...  It took me about seven or eight nights, working after the girls were in bed.  I tried to paint several dolls at one time, if they had a common color, so that they could dry by the time I was ready to paint the next color.  Does that make sense?  I used normal acrylic paints, and three different brushes, a "spotter" brush, very tiny, a roundish brush a little bigger, and a flat, wedge shaped brush about a quarter inch wide.  First I drew the clothes and stuff with a mechanical pencil.

This is one I drew for Miss A to paint.  (She wanted a Jasmine.)  She never quite finished it, but it shows how, uh, primitive my drawing is.  Oh, and erasers work just fine on pencil on wood.  I just looked at pictures of the princesses from our many princess books and puzzles, and from the internet to figure out what was on them.  The arms were tricky to decide about.  Some on pinterest didn't have arms, but I decided to put them because how do you do sleeves, like Snow White's, if there aren't arms to hold them?  Except I did forget to do arms on Ariel.  On Tiana I ended up putting straps on her dress, because other wise I didn't know how to end her arms at the shoulder.  And on Jasmine I just left the pencil lines to show the arm shape, since she has a bare belly.  Anyway, here are some pictures.

  

For Cinderella and Belle, my husband drilled a hole into their heads and attached wooden beads by using a skewer (like for shish-ka-babs) and elmer's glue to make their buns.  You see Sleeping Beauty's eyes, how they pretty much look like zombie eyes?  She was the first one I eyed.  One of the other tutorials said to use a pin head to dot the eyes.  I found that to be a bit big...  So I just used that little spotter brush after that.  On Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty I painted over the dresses with some glitter paint.  Silver for Cinderella and rose for SB.  I really like that stuff.  It's by FolkArt, called Extreme Glitter.  I mixed yellow with white for parts of Belle, because I didn't want to have to buy a billion shades of yellow paint.  I had some metallic gold that I used for SB's crown.  

I realized after I had them sprayed and all done that Jasmine has a headband with a jewel...  Oops.  You can see her arms are just pencil lines?  And I used the metallic gold paint for her earrings and necklace, and silver for Mulan's sword and Tiana's necklace.  I didn't paint their skin- I wanted the wood grain to show through- so that was a problem for Tiana.  So I mixed a tiny bit of brown paint with a tiny bit bigger bit of water and sort of stained it.  I did that last, which I think was good, because the paint everywhere else kept the stain out.  It looked all mottled at first, but it dried a nice even brown color, and you can still see the wood grain.  My husband did Tiana's bun like Cinderella's and Belle's.

Mulan is my favorite.  Because she's tough, and, you know, dimensional and doesn't just wait around for a guy to marry her.  And I like how her sword ended up...

Snow White I think ended up the cutest.  And she was probably the easiest.  Simple.  I used turquoise glitter paint on Ariel's lower half.  I'm not too fond of Rapunzel.  Her dress looked boring, so I added all that stuff, but I don't like it too well...

These are the two extra pegs that I didn't have princesses for, so I just made them up.  I did what was easiest from painting all the others.  Like scallops.  Turns out I can paint scallops a lot nicer than straight lines...  Miss M has named them Odette, and Lisa (I think after her church nursery leader where we used to live).  Lisa is usually the mother of all the other princesses in the little girl play world.  I used glitter paint on them because, you know, we like glitter here.  Turquoise on Odette and rose on Lisa. 

So then I came to spraying them.  I stood them on a cardboard box to do the tops and sides, but how to do the bottom?  They just rolled around when I tried laying them down and spraying.  So I had an idea:

Earlier in the winter I had got the idea (from pinterest, cough (Husband)), to do an indoor sandbox slash sensory whatever with some old beans I had (previous food storage attempt).  So I just stuck the princess's heads in, and sprayed away.  It was easier to do their sides too.  So I got them nice and glossy with spray.  The beans stuck a bit, but were very easy to knock off.  So there you go!

Uncle Ben's Christmas Present (in March)

Yes, there were some, er, delays, in making this gift...  Hopefully he won't mind!  Once we got around to it, it was quite quick and fun.

Uncle Ben likes horses, and lives in the beautiful state of Montana, so the girls and I thought we would make him a mountain scene.  We used Miss A (5) and Miss M (3) hands for the trees, and Miss R (6 months) hands for the sun.

I left Miss A in charge of the river, and turned my back for a minute and it was a lake.  But I like it much better this way!  Miss M's thumbs made the fishes.

We added some pinkie cardinals.

And a hump-backed horse thing.  Turns out I maybe should have not let Miss A get her whole palm in the brown paint?

I went back with a tiny brush and added little bits.  We put paper grocery sacks inside the shirt to keep the paint from soaking through (after we started without, and I noticed the paint soaking through...) and used regular acrylic paint.  I dried it on high for a long time to set it when we were done.  I hope it works!  We had fun making it, and I hope he likes it- and I told him he is under no obligation to ever wear it out of the house!