RIP Cailynn 4/23/2003-12/15/2017

We lost her yesterday.  She was a good cat.  She was a very good cat.  She was 14 years and 7 months old, and lived with us for 12 years and 6 months.  She only had one working kidney for 9 years and 7 months out of that 14+ years.  She lasted longer than anyone thought she would when she was in kidney failure in 2008.

She's chased mice (and left dead mice for me multiple times.  Once I thought it was a toy and thought didn't think we had toy mice that size, only it wasn't a toy.), watched birds outside windows, batted at fish in a tank, slept in cabinets and bookshelves and cardboard boxes and on top of every tall place in the house.  She's lounged in sunbeams on a summer's day and curled up in front a fireplace and a wood stove on a winter's night.
She slept on my pillow every night, even when I tried to chase her off.  She also snuggled under my blanket, even though that meant waking me up 3 or 4 times a night.
She had the sweetest (and sometimes most annoying) meow.
She purred.  A lot.  A little rumbling motor.
She also had 5 medical crisis, one every 12-36 months since May of 2008, and we stopped counting the vet bills she racked up.  I think it's in the low 5 digits at this point.  And it was worth it, every penny.
She was everything a cat should be, and we love her very very much.
She was very sick at the end.  It was a fast decline, in the span of a week.  It was clear it was the end, so we took her to the vet yesterday to give her an easy trip out.
I miss her a whole lot right now.  There's a Cailynn-shaped hole in my life and my daily routine.  We haven't stopped crying yet, and I don't think we will for a little while.
Bye Caily-cat.  See you next life.

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.

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.

Provincetown Vacation: Along the breakwater

We actually ended up hiking all the way to the very end of PTown to the very tip.  There were some gorgeous houses along the way, with lots of blooming lilacs.

And then we hit the breakwater, all 1.25 miles of giant granite boulders to scramble across if you want to reach the beach at the other end.

So of course we had to.  There was lighthouse on the other side that we wanted pictures of.  In retrospect, this was not the best idea, as the human had to carry us in a tote bag over her shoulder, and then had to scramble over the rocks.  Which required both hands at times.

Oops.

At least we got some good pictures...

Looking back over the water at PTown

On the dunes with brambles

More dunes.

You can just barely see the Pilgrims Monument in the background.

The little lighthouse that was our goal

And back just before the tide came in.