Chistmas Papercrafting 2018: Christmas Cards

Hi!  It's your hosts, Lily and Z (yes, the human has pulled out the stash of Christmas sweaters...luckily she doesn't have enough for everyone yet...) with this year's stash of Christmas cards.

The human might have fallen behind with her card-sending this year, but we haven't.  It really is customary for us to use an old-fashioned fountain pen and real ink in a bottle to write our cards, like the human does.  It's only a matter of time before the calligraphy and manuscript illumination classes start again.

This year, we have 12 miniature Tasha Tudor cards, depicting old-fashioned Christmas in rural New England.  Having spent some time in central VT with the human, the churches-in-a-town-square-covered-with-snow cards are SPOT ON.  These cards are all miniaturized versions of vintage Caspari cards, with the same message the real card would have had inside.

Get your Christmas cards HERE.

Last year's Christmas cards are HERE.

Countdown to Halloween: Lily's Candy Stash

Lily here.  I promise promise promise I didn't do anything to the candy.  Really.  I swear.  None of the candy went anywhere near my potions lab.  The owl can vouch for me.  It's been keeping a very close eye on all the goodies, and there are an awful lot of goodies.

We've got four major groups of candy right now:  the penny candy, the chocolate, the candy boxes, and the candy bars.

First off, the penny candy.  The jars came from Joann's, and are perfect for penny candy at a store.  The candy itself is actually oblong glass beads wrapped in paper.  They're maybe 1/2" long and a 1/4" in diameter.

We've got 4 sorts of bubble gum, tootsie rolls, and 5 flavors of fruit chews.  Gorgeous candy, but not the best to find in your trick-or-treat bag.

The chocolate is a much better haul.  We've got Hershey's (with a wrapper from 1908), Nestle Crunch (the wrapper dates to the 1950s), Kit Kat bars (1960s wrapper), and a pile of Hershey's mini chocolates in 4 varieties.

These are all made from rectangles of craft foam, first wrapped in a scrap of aluminum foil and then wrapped in the paper wrapper.  The little pumpkin gift box is the freebie for the day.  It's another Canon Creative papercraft design, shrunk down to doll size.  It holds quite a bit of candy too!

Pumpkin Gift Box

Instructions from the Canon Creative site

Next up:  a very large assortment of vintage candy boxes.  There's 25 designs in all, all sized to fit in a doll's hand.  They're all stuffed with seed beads to make a lovely rattling noise when you shake them and give them a realistic weight.

Do we have enough varieties?  I think we need more than 25 types of candy, don't you?  I really want some Atomic Fireballs.  Are we missing your favorite old-fashioned candy?  Let us know so we can remedy that oversight.

And finally, the chocolate bars.  The full size ones that you really want inside your trick-or-treat bucket.  The good stuff.  These are made from craft foam with a paper wrapper.

We went all vintage with these candy bars.  All the wrappers are from the 1930s and 1940s, depending on when the candy first came into production.  The human ended up doing quite a bit of research when she was looking for the vintage wrappers.

Did you know that the 'Three Musketeers' candy bar used to actually be 3 tiny candy bars in the same wrapper?  The three flavors were strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate, but during World War 2 and rationing, they cut the strawberry and vanilla bars and just left the chocolate one we still have today.

Eventually, eventually we will convince the human to make us Reese's peanut butter cups...maybe for Christmas...

Lily at iGEM

Lily here.  I didn't go to Vermont last fall, but I got to have my own science adventure with the human.  You see, the human was a judge at the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition, better known as iGEM, and I came along as her mascot.  I did not have a biology themed dress, but no one minded.  Except the human.

Ready for judging, with all the resources and references

So what happens at iGEM?  Well, first off, schools (high schools, colleges, and universities from around the world) form teams of students.  Then each team gets a box of various bits of DNA and are told to make a critter (usually a bacteria or yeast, but sometimes algae) do something cool.  And if they don't have the right DNA in the kit for what they want to do, well, they can give a company like IDT (Integrated DNA Technologies) the sequence of DNA they want, and IDT gives them back the physical bit of DNA.

Someone had made bacteria eat crude oil.  They won best high school poster.

They have one summer to do this.  Then, in the fall, usually in late October/early November, all those teams meet up in Boston and have a Giant Jamboree.  Over 300 teams, thousands of students.
It was great fun.  Also pandemonium.  But great fun.

DIY microfluidics for bio experiments

So what counts as 'something cool'?  Well, anything really.  Biofilms that suck up nanoparticles.  Eating crude oil.  Checking antibiotic resistance.  Curing cancer.  Advancing the basic science behind genetic engineering.  It's really the best.  I can't wait to go back again this year.

Playing with a 3D printed hand held centrifuge

The old schoolhouse

The old schoolhouse, or where we spent our summer vacation

Samantha here.  So, astute readers of this blog will have noticed that most of the posts from this summer were actually from the second-to-last weekend in May.  And you may be wondering, what did we really do this summer?

Remember when we said the human acquired an old schoolhouse from the 1840s?

This summer, the human and her male counterpart bought a house that had once been the District No. 5 schoolhouse in some small town in Vermont.  It was in service as an actual school from the 1840s all the way through 1953, from kindergarten through 8th grade.  (The human has neighbors who went to school there.)  The main body of the house is still one giant room, and you can see the original timbers in the rafters and the basement.

This has become the doll window

 The human couldn't take all of us, so Lily, Celestine, Nellie, and I accompanied her this time.  Our usual spot in the house is in the window that used to be an exterior window of the schoolhouse proper but is now internal thanks to the added sunroom.

The main schoolhouse, now converted for the humans

Out in the garden

There's an acre and a quarter of the house and the gardens, and across the street is another 27 acres of woods for us to play in.  We mostly stuck the gardens because the human did not want to deal with a 45 degree incline hill with us.  She remembered what happened the last time she took us on a hiking adventure...

 We went in August, which meant one thing.  Blueberries.  Lots and lots and lots of blueberries.  That's a 4 quart bowl full you see there, and the human filled one of those every other day or so.  There were also early blackberries and some apples from the two apple trees in the yard.

Obligatory tree climbing 

Jam and cat

And this is what became of all those berries.  About 4 gallons of blueberry jam, and some apple jelly and apple butter for good measure.  (Further apples were turned in cider and even more apple butter.  By last month, the human was making 3 gallons of apple butter at a time...)

Halloween at Honeydukes

Happy Halloween!

Kana and Lily (and Sam hiding in the back) here.  We're having a study break/tea party at Honeydukes to celebrate.  (Yes, we're still here.  The human managed to acquire an 1840s schoolhouse up in the wilds of Vermont, and has been occupied getting it set up for other humans and us.  We will, at some point, have our very own one room schoolhouse.)

But that's not what you came here for.  You came here for what lovely food we have.  The menu for afternoon tea is cauldron cakes. chocolate covered strawberries, pasties, pumpkin tarts, and the obligatory Honeydukes candy:  a chocolate frog and a box of sugary butterfly wings.

Sam's off reading about quidditch and other fun library books (Lily's studying potions again, and I have a few chapters of history of magic to work through.  Much less fun.)  The 'afternoon snack for 1' has a cauldron cake, 2 pasties, and a chocolate frog.  There are so many chocolate frogs everywhere.

Owl la carte, anyone?

 And if you want individual cakes to go, just pay the owl on the cart.  You have your choice of tarts (pumpkin, lime, citron, or bakewell), caudron cakes, and candy.  By the box or the half dozen.
Orders, anyone?  If you place them now with the human, she can have them ready by Christmas.

Setting up a new bakery

Kana here.  I'm still not sure whose idea this was to set up a bakery.  We don't really have enough of anything, which means I'm the one baking.  Because after the last three incidents with food, potions, and the swapping of some vital ingredients, Lily has been banned from the kitchen.

Not that it stops her...

"Where do you want these cookies?"

"Wait, those aren't done yet!  They need something extra!"
"NO THEY DON'T!"

"Now they're magical snacks.  They'll turn whatever you're wearing
into a ball gown!"
"Lily, not actually helping here..."

"I am not actually involved in any of this.
This is so above my pay grade."

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

The human didn't have time to sew us all brand new Christmas outfits this year, so we went through the trunks of old clothing.  Cauthrien and Anora are wearing the blue leather, brocade, and velvet ensembles from Christmas 2015.  Lily is wearing a silk brocade gown made from Felicity's Christmas dress pattern the human made in early 2015 (details here).

Kana's dress of silver satin with rose and black lace trim was made roughly the same time from a free pattern offered by the United Federation of Doll Clubs (pattern here, older pictures here).  Shep is wearing the mix-and-match suit set from spring 2016.

Sam's red velvet dress never got properly documented before, but it was made in fall 2014, and features glass buttons and pearl trim.  Nellie gets the one new dress of this season, with a one-shoulder black and silver cherry brocade bodice and a black velvet skirt studded with rhinestones.

Guess who helped decorate?

It's meeeeow.