Opening the Christmas Trunk

It's Nora this time.  It's still Christmas, at least until January 5th, which means we'll continue to post all about our holiday adventures for the next week.  Or until the human gets sick of it.  Which ever comes first.  We didn't get wrapped presents, but we did get this wonderful holiday trunk.

As for what's inside...

Lots and lots of wonderful things.

On the very top is a little vintage book on the wonderful and brilliant Lady Ada Lovelace, her of the computer programming and analytical engine and Fibonacci sequence fame (also a steampunk inventor, but that's a different story).  The human picked up the book from an antique book fair.  As it happens, collecting miniature books is a thing humans do, but the books are frequently rather pricey.  We won't tell you how much this one cost, but it was one of the cheaper ones, or so the human says.

The books was immediately claimed by Kana.

The trunk unpacked.

The rest of the holiday haul included a pair of lace fans and nosegays (claimed by Sam and Nellie), a vintage picture book of an old English garden (ditto), a music box and nutcracker (decorations for the house), various science models (Lily), a spice grinder (for the kitchen), drafting tools (Shep, though her real present is something much more entertaining), a vintage camera (Cauth), and a fancy holiday apron and cookie cutters (mine).

Smiling for the camera!

Young Ladies of Leisure

It's not very often we have a leisurely day around here.  But today Nellie and I spent a lovely morning in the parlor.  There was a breakfast buffet laid out on the sideboard, and new books in the window seat.  As is traditional for a proper breakfast, there was bread, pastries, fruit, sausages, bacon, and eggs.  None of that cold instant cereal.  We started breakfast off with a yogurt parfait, croissants, and cups of tea.

After breakfast, I worked on finishing some letters that I'd been putting off for too long.  Nellie, lucky duck, got to start reading novels.  (So Lord of the Rings didn't exist in 1906.  We took some liberties with time travel or whatnot.)

Card games are definitely ladylike.

And then we played Set.  If you've never played before, there's a deck of 81 cards.  Each card has four attributes: color, shape, shading, and number.  A 'set' is three cards where every attribute is the same or every attribute is different.  You deal out 12 cards, and cards get replaced as sets are found.  So in the first layout, the set (and I was the one called it) is '3 blank red diamonds, 3 shaded green squiggles, and 3 solid purple ovals'.  And you call a 'set' by yelling 'SET!' and grabbing for the cards as fast as you can before someone gets them.

Nellie: SET again!
Sam:  Scourge

Sam:  SET!
Nellie:  Scourge.

Sam:  Do you see a set?
Nellie:  No.  Do we need more cards?
Sam:  Wait, no.  SET!

Games get heated sometimes.  But we're technically young ladies, so we're civil.  Sort of.  It's way more fun when there's six or seven players.  It is also traditional to call the other players a scourge if they get any sets at all.

Interjection from Nellie:  'The human doesn't want to referee that...'

Sam:  OK, who won this time?
Nellie:  Scourge.

Nellie:  Yay!  I have more sets!
Sam:  Scourge.

If you want to play the game at home, here's the printables for a doll-sized SET deck of your very own.  It comes with box too so you don't have cards everywhere.  Just print it out double sided on cardstock.

SET deck

Our furry footman

And he didn't even knock anything over.

1960s Dresses and other projects

Wren*Feathers has been offering free 1960s dress patterns for AG dolls based on old Chatty Cathy outfits for the last few weeks, and if you make one or more outfits from those patterns before January 1, you can get two more free patterns.  So of course the human had to do this.  And so Sam and I are suffering through the latest bout of sewing.  Because you see, when the human tries out new patterns, she uses random remnants from the stash instead of the nice fabric that we know she has.

I'm wearing the Chatty Cathy smock dress (free pattern here) made in a lightweight turquoise corduroy.  The pattern came together really easily.  For the sleeve cuff, the human used the sleeve cuff from Samantha's Pleasant Company patterns.

 And Sam is wearing a pink cotton blouse (vintage Japanese cottons) and a floral stripe corduroy jumper (free pattern here).   think I got the better deal, honestly.

The human was busy doing other things instead of throwing us a Christmas party, but we got our fair share of loot.  Those are all the new books we got in the last week. 

From left to right:

• Jane Eyre
• Pride and Prejudice
• Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, Return of the King, The Hobbit
• A Little Princess, The Secret Garden
• A Girl of the Limberlost
• The Wizard of Oz, The Marvelous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, The Road to Oz, the Emerald City of Oz
• Peter and Wendy
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
• Robin Hood
• The Boxcar Children
• Little Women
• The Baby's Opera, The Baby's Own Aesop, The Baby's Bouquet (we got them for the wonderful illustrations by Walter Crane)
• A Floral Fantasy (another volume of Walter Crane illustrations that doubles as an herbal)

At this point I can safely say that we have every book that Pleasant Company/Mattel ever made for us historical girls.  And then some.  A good number of these books will show up on Etsy come the new year.

And R2-D2 is holding onto my new lunchbox for me.  I think he'll give it back.  Maybe.  Droids don't need food.

Paper Puppet Stages

We've been lax about showing off mostly because the human has been insanely busy trying to graduate on time.  She should be done any day now (certainly before Christmas), so we'll have more time to do stuff.  She still owes us a gingerbread house and a holiday party.

But first, some of the new toys we got this fall:  paper puppet boxes!

Each little puppet stage has a handful of characters (they have different expressions and costumes on the back) and a handful of background scenes that you can swap out to tell the whole story.  The human sized versions were found here but the human shrinked these for us.  These were printed out on cardstock and glued with plain white glue and glue sticks.

We have 'Little Red Riding Hood', 'Cinderella', and 'Hansel and Gretel' boxes.  The real fun will come the week between Christmas and New Year's.

Get these boxes here:  (be warned, you'll want a pair of super sharp and super tiny scissors for some of the cuts)

Instructions

Cinderella

Hansel and Gretel

Little Red Riding Hood

If you liked these, please visit our etsy shop at JinjiaMixedGoods for more printable books for dolls.

Also, we're holding a book pattern giveaway until 12/31/2015.  Leave a comment here with what book published before 1923 (aka 'in the public domain') you'd like to see made in doll size to enter.  The winner will get a full 18 patterns for a complete Hogwarts textbook collection.

Books for Maryellen (Free book and paper doll printables)

You didn't think I was going to leave the newest BeForever girl out when I was making books, did you?  Books from the 1950s are slightly harder to come by, but Maryellen will have a Betty Crocker cookbook for kids, and a Betsy McCall book and paper dolls to go with the book (thanks to Jeanna W. for her scans).  The cookbook comes with 32 pages of real recipes that might come in handy at the diner.

And here's a freebie for your Maryellen or other 1950s girl:

Betsy McCall Paper Doll Storybook

Betsy McCall Paper Dolls

Book Instructions

Snow Day Arts and Crafts (Free Valentine's Day printables)

Hi, this is Samantha speaking.  Or rather, writing.  Nellie and I took over a table at the local generic restaurant (in a place that looks an awful like Tyson's but serves more than just ice cream) to escape from the snow today.

We brought some Valentine's Day activity books and coloring books with us.  Each little book has 6 pages of puzzles and coloring pages, and the front and back have prints of vintage valentines.  We also brought extra coloring pages in case we finished everything else.  They're of really cute cakes and chocolates and desserts.  Our human found the images from the Dover samplers and scaled them down for us.

We also brought our new scrapbook and filled it with vintage Valentines that we found.  The scrap book was made by cutting two sheets of card stock into 8 pieces each, punching holes in them, and tying them together with a piece of ribbon.  The front and back covers have metal eyelets for a bit of decoration.

And finally, because there's nothing like hot food on a cold day, Nellie and I had bowls of ramen with pork.  (And cakes, because our restaurant serves whatever we want.)

Tomorrow's supposed to be another snow day in the Northeast, so we'd like to share our valentines with you.  

Coloring books and vintage valentines: here.

Instructions for folding the books:  here

Kana's Toy Box: Wooden Farms and Paper Dolls

Kana here.  I'm hijacking the human's blog because she clearly does not do enough with it.  Also, I have more opinions.

Kimono models and origami salesdolls

Last weekend, the human dragged Shepard and me to the Marketplace at Birka, this giant SCA shopping event.  The human had a booth selling kimono and other things, and Shep and I were pressed into service as models for her.  We got to stand there for 12 whole hours smiling at everyone.  Before you ask, yes, those are tiny crane earrings, and yes, the jar is full of tiny origami cranes, and no, we don't know how many are in there, but the human thinks somewhere around 2700.  We haven't bothered to count yet, you see.

To make up for all that work we did, the human bought us some cute new toys.

A tiny wooden town

There was this vendor selling little wooden toy sets, so the human bought both the town set and the village set.  (I mean, we'd all rather have Felicity's ark or Josefina's toy farm, but there's a limit to the human's budget.)

The little town comes with a tiny church and 4 houses, 2 horses (one broke, but the human glued it back together), 4 trees, and 4 little people.  The village set comes with 4 houses, 8 people and more trees.  I think I like the town set much better.  Sadly, the human forgot the name of the vendor she got this from...

Who says paper dolls are out of style?

And then last week it snowed.  And snowed.  And snowed.  Now, back in the old Pleasant Company days, I heard that dolls got these little 'winter amusement' sets with paper dolls in them.  So the lot of us pestered the human until she made us our own paper dolls.

 Two are old fashioned French dolls and two are 1830s style fashion dolls.  Each doll came with a few different outfits and sometimes a ton of accessories.  (The paper dolls are almost more spoiled than we are...)

This one is my favorite because it came with five whole dresses and things like books and teapots and plates and a little set of paper dolls for the paper doll.  That reminds me.  I should start pestering the human for more dolls for us...

If you want to make these for your dolls, you can download the patterns here.  The human got the originals from the United Federation of Doll Clubs site (http://ufdc.org/doll-news/) and scaled some of them down for us.  To get that cardstock feel for the dolls, just glue the doll to an index card before cutting it out.

French Bisque Doll 1
French Bisque Doll 2
1830s Fashion Doll