A Mice Truffle Assortment

Kana here.  We (mostly me and Shep and Elsa because Sam and Nellie are too polite to pester the human) finally got tired of watching the human eat her chocolate truffles that we demanded she make some for us too.

Instructions for doll sized chocolates here.

These are the human's favorite truffless

This is what the human made us.  Aren't they adorable?
Not edible though.

A box of chocolate mice.  In three flavors, even.

The human made more truffles for us, enough that we could open our very own chocolate store.

So we did.

A complete truffle collection

We even had a customer
Not shown: when said customer jumped onto
the counter and knocked over the display.

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

1940s Valentine's Day Jumpers

The snow days are letting me finish a few more sewing projects before Valentine's Day.  I think this in fact may be the first time I finished all the holiday themed dresses before the actual holiday.  Samantha and Nellie are wearing jumpers made from a Dollies Dressmaker 1940s pattern by Simplicity.

Nellie's outfit consists of a blouse made from a gold glitter fabric and a jumper of mixed pink hearts and gold glitter.  The straps of the jumper have pink braid trim applied.  The blouse is plain except for a tiny satin rose at the throat.

Samantha is wearing a blouse of white glitter fabric and a jumper of red hearts on a black background with lace ruffles at the shoulders and at the hem.  The blouse has a bit of decorative ribbon trim and several rows of pintucks (unfortunately hidden by the jumper).

The only complaint I had with this pattern was the final finishing step.  At some point, I was trying to sew through 6 or 8 layers of fabric, and my sewing machine was complaining about it.  I'll have to see how to do up the back in such a way that doesn't cause that to happen.  Also, the interfacing is totally optional.  The waistbands look just fine without it.

Queen Elsa declares that Mondays are cancelled

After three weeks in a row of blizzards on Mondays, there's not much more to say.

That fence is 4' tall.

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