Countdown to Halloween: Outfits and Activity Books

Nora here.  The human has been too busy to sew for us lately since she needed to get our candy and book stash under control.  When we asked her for new clothes, the human made some rather irritating noises about 'too many clothes' and 'not wearing perfectly good outfits you already own', so Cauth and I braved the depths of the storage closet for some festive clothing.

These were made in...Fall 2015, if memory serves.  The same time as the rest of the attack of the novelty Halloween fabrics.  The human has learned better since then, so we're not subject to such blinding combinations as much anymore.  (The shirts look just fine with jeans.  Novelty print capris, not so much...)

To go with the rest of our goodies, we also got some festive activity books.  At this point, we have quite a collection.  Space, Christmas, and now Halloween.  Maybe next year we'll add Valentine's Day, Easter, and the 4th of July to the list of holidays that we have activity books for.  These books contain free printables from Dover Samplers.  They're super quick and easy to make, 5 min or less for something cute to play with or give to a trick-or-treater.

Get your Halloween activity books here.

Instructions

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

The cookie and cake party spread

Lily frosting cakes with some unwanted help

Samantha and Nellie with books and cookies

A holiday cookie platter with milk

Cauth and Anora in a heated game of Set

Z and Shep at the dessert buffet

Kana and Lily enjoying the roll cake

and someone trying to steal a cookie or two

Advent Papercrafting: Gift Boxes

We're back!  Are you excited for more cute Christmas crafts?  We've been crafting for weeks now getting ready for the holidays (and there's still more cute things coming up).

(We also have some sad news.  The human has a very sick cat who's been hospitalized and running up a $2000+ bill.  If you've been wanting to purchase patterns for doll books to make your own library, now's a great time to buy some from the human's etsy store.  Or ask about any of doll book patterns featured here so far.)

This time, we made a bunch of different gift boxes, some simple, some exceptionally elaborate.  The gift box patterns are all from Canon Creative Park, resized for us.  It's one of the human's favorite free papercrafting sites.

Assembling gift boxes

To resize the patterns, when you're printing them, go to the 'layout' options, and select '2 pages per sheet'.

We had a lot of fun with these, but some of the boxes were definitely more difficult to make than others.  We'll let you know ahead of time which ones are really finicky and time consuming.  The results are worth it, though.

A Christmas tree box for Christmas

1.  Floral box 

(difficulty:  easy)

2.  Christmas tree box 

(difficulty: moderate at human scale, difficult at doll scale)

The red box actually comes in three different colors

3.  Hexagonal gift box

(difficulty:  easy, with one tricky fold closing the box)

We just love the fancy paper bow on the star box

4.  Christmas Star box

(difficulty:  moderate in human scale, difficult in doll scale)

5.  Dainty gift box (Perfect for Valentine's Day in our mind)

(difficulty:  easy)

Coming up next:  Vintage/antique paper dolls and some space themed things to welcome Luciana.

If you're just joining us, the previous weeks are here:

1.  Christmas decorations and Christmas cards

2.  Christmas coloring books

Advent Papercrafting: Coloring Books

Are you amazed that the human has actually managed to post on schedule?  We certainly are.

It's time for the next five days of crafting:  some holiday themed coloring books!  You can either print out and fold these as coloring books, or cut the pages apart to make a giant stack of pages.  We, obviously, prefer the books.  These are super fast to make up (think under 5 min) and are great for stocking stuffers or decorations or props for a bookstore.  

Coloring Bonanza.  Guess which crayons/pencils actually work.

We keep asking the human for a bookstore or a library, but she claims we don't have enough books to properly equip one.  She may be lying, but if she's not, it means we'll be getting even more books next year.  (Current book tally, for those of you who are interested, is somewhere over 300, probably closer to 400, which you'd think would be plenty...)

Coloring and activity books

Download the coloring books

Instructions

Interior pages of the coloring books

The originals came from Dover samplers, and the human resized them to doll scale.  Each book has six interior pages to color (and yes, if your pencil/crayon is small enough, you can color it.  The human tried and succeeded.)

If these aren't enough and you need more coloring/activity books (or bonus Christmas themed books):

Christmas books (including a book of carols)

American Girl themed activity books

See you in five days for the next batch of crafts!

Advent Papercrafting: Decorations and Christmas Cards

Nora here.  It has been a while, hasn't it?  We finally made the human sit down and organize her photos of us, and it turns out she's got about two months worth of backlog adventures to go through.  You can expect regular updates through February, at which point we're going to have to hound the human again.

Do you like our living room?  We (that being Cauth and I) have taken it over to our own papercrafting, and we'd like to share our new projects with you this December. 

We're still looking for a theme for the last 5 days of crafts, so please leave a comment with your suggestion.

Christmas cards and decorations

It's December, so that means Advent, and we're going to have 25 (maybe with a few bonus crafts) small projects in all.  Some projects are harder than others, and we'll point those out hopefully before anyone gets frustrated.

Projects 1-5: Decorations and Christmas Cards

Our craft table is only marginally messier than the human's

The decorations (on pages 1 and 2) should be printed on lightweight cardstock for best effect. 

Tiny and cute, and currently on top of the bookcases in the parlor.

The original designs came from this book, which was part of a Dover sampler pack.  The human gets a good number of her designs from Dover samplers, if you were wondering.

Next up, the annual batch of Christmas cards.  The human hasn't started hers yet, so we're ahead of the game.  The Christmas cards are on pages 3 and 4, and should be printed on normal paper.  Fold each card in half, glue, and fold in half again.

We always use calligraphy pens for Christmas cards.

The designs are a mix of American Girl catalog pictures (from 2015, which was when the human designed these and then forgot about them for 2 years), and vintage/antique Christmas cards from the NYPL's digital collection (here).

Christmas cards, modern and vintage

Enjoy, and come back on 12/6 for more crafts.

Summer Sewing 5/5 (Nautical Dresses)

More from the 'fabric scraps from garage sales' collection:  it started with me finding that scrap of light blue fabric with little navy blue polka dots and tiny white anchors and going 'that's perfect for a doll dress'.  Never mind that there was maybe a little over a fat quarter of fabric in about 4 different pieces, some of which were 2" wide at best.  I can work with it.

A search through the pattern collection and the rest of my fabric stash, and I've found the coordinating fabric of navy with white dots, and two patterns, the Heritage sundress, and MatildaJo's 'Inspired by Zooey' dress.  Now, I definitely did not have enough fabric for the sundress as the pattern was written, so I used the skirt from the LJC Aspen dress with the bodice from the sundress, and cut those from the light blue fabric.  There was just enough of the light blue left after that to make the contrast underskirt and pockets for the other pattern.

All in all, a win.

Emergency Pizza

Cauthrien here.  I've kicked everyone else out of the kitchen for the moment to actually make some food.  Aren't these pizzas gorgeous?

One is a pepperoni, bell pepper, and onion pizza.  The other a bacon, bell pepper, and onion.  They're both small pizzas, the equivalent of a 10" pizza for humans.  They also fit on my baking sheets (which is why they're not bigger).  The other girls haven't had a chance to try them yet, so I'll have to keep the furry bandit away.

More classic girls' novels

Cauthrien here.  Anora and I are still working through the backlog of books to document for the library.  (Yes, we are still behind.  There's at least another 30 completed books we haven't documented, and I see the stacks of papers for even more.  We will still be behind for a few months...)

The human has always been partial to classic girls' novels, including some slightly more obscure ones, perhaps because we already own the most popular ones?  The latest batch of novels includes "Daddy-long-legs" and "Dear Enemy" (Jean Webster), "Pollyanna" and "Pollyanna Grows Up" (Eleanor Porter), "Heidi", "Understood Betsy" (Dorothy Canfield), "The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew", and finally, "Alice In Wonderland" (Lewis Caroll).

Of these, I think the favorites among us are "Understood Betsy", "Daddy-long-legs", and "Dear Enemy".  As always, everything has real text and images inside.  Why have blank books?

Magical potions and other drinks

Cauthrien here.  My only explanation for this is that Anora convinced me I should do this.  I do not have any idea why she thinks this is a good idea other than she's spent far too much time with Shep and Lily recently.  I am, usually, the last person you want attempting to hold polite conversation.  Yet here I am, attempting to man the drinks counter.

You can tell, by the number of things that only vaguely resemble drinks, that Lily's been rather busy.  I do not know or care to know what her potions do.  I only want them to be not my problem.  Which, at the moment, they are.

Refreshing Nuka Cola.  In six flavors.

Somewhere, I know we have actual drinks.  But for now, we have some rather exotic (and radioactive) Nuka Cola, in original, cherry, victory, quantum, and quartz.  This can't actually be blamed on Lily.  It's entirely the human's fault.