More Stuff We Made

  Yesterday I told you about how my family always made stuff'. I forgot to mention that the kids and I also tried our hands at making corn husk dolls,(You may have seen a corn husk doll I posted HERE.) We had varying degrees of success! Here's Fuzzy's.

This corn husk guy seems to be overwhelmed.

  When the kids were little I made a lot of stuff for them. I suppose it started with birthday cakes. All the kids first birthday cakes were (almost) normal cakes. Emma was my first, so her first birthday cake was a very traditional cake,with a huge single candle and Winnie the Pooh figures around it. I did make some icing balloons and slide them onto the sides of the cake. Fuzzy's first cake was a snowy mountain with Thomas the Tank Engine trains running around it. His second was almost just a cake. I made a sheet cake into Andy's bed,from Toy Story,and put Toy Story figures on it. Ivy's first cake was a book.

  But at some point the kids got the idea that every birthday cake had to be someone's head. I made cakes that were at least supposed to resemble Harry Potter, Yoda and Qui-Gon Jinn from Star Wars,Dora the Explorer,Boo from Monsters Inc.,Anastasia,(from the movie, not the royal family.),Beast from Beauty and the...,Rupert Bear,and others. I made a few that weren't heads,like Ivy's rainbow cake,Fuzzy's Ghostbusters cake,which I showed you yesterday, that was the 'no ghosts' logo,Emma's Aladdin cake,which somehow missed being Aladdin's head,and Fuzzy's treasure chest cake for his 'pirate birthday'. That cake was pretty awesome if I do say so myself. It was a treasure chest with the lid open a bit. Spilling out were jewels,(ring pops and candy necklaces),and gold coins,(those foil covered chocolates). I think the kids liked the candy more than the cake!
 

I don't have a picture of the cake handy, but here's another thing that worked pretty well. I found these plastic treasure chests clearanced after Valentine's Day. They came with candy in them,and they were originally clear. They were so cheap I bought the whole lot of them and saved them for Fuzzy's birthday party, in April. We probably ate the candy. I painted the insides of the chests with brown paint,making it kind of streaky so it looked like wood grain.(That's hard to see here.) Then I filled them with treats and handed them out at Fuzzy's party. The kids used them with their dolls. I came across this one while working in Ivy's room.

  But then, kids seldom like cake.I noticed this after raising three kids who had birthday parties and parties at school,where I also took cake in. Fuzz liked the treasure chest cake so much that he had me make one for the cast party when he was in the middle school production of  The Pirates of Penzance.
  I didn't sew when I had Emma, but she wanted Halloween costumes and doll clothes, so I started. I made most of the kids' costumes. I didn't make Emma's Pink Power Ranger,Fuzzy's Ghostbuster coveralls,Emma's Harry Potter shirt and jeans,(She was the book Harry),and her Hermione robes,Emma and Ivy's Wizard of Oz Dorothy dresses,(But Ivy's had a homemade wig and a homemade Toto,and I customized a pair of Emma's old tennis shoes with some sparkly red hot glue and metallic ribbon bows I made for her ruby slippers.),and the year Fuzz was 'Nate the Great,from the kids' book series all he needed was a Sherlock Holmes hat and a trench coat,so we were set. I also didn't have to make Fuzz's Doctor Who costume. He wore a vintage pin stripe suit and a wool over coat from the thrift store.
 

But over the years I made,amongst other things, an "Anastasia" dress,(and a matching one for Emma the Doll),a "Sound of Music" skirt and 'bib',a Tin Man costume,(with a cardboard top half.)...

Me as the Wicked Witch and Emma as the Tin Man. Her ax was a cardboard blade taped to a piece of PVC pipe, and spray painted silver.

Ken as The Wizard, with Tin Man Emma. Her hat was a regular plastic funnel, painted silver, and glued to a piece of one of my old pant legs, spray painted sliver!

...a Mrs. Beasley costume, a Toy Story Woody shirt from some amazingly perfect giant checked fabric I found, and Woody's vest,(complete with pullstring and ring on the back),a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shell and shoe covers,a copy of Joy's outfit from the 1960's series 'The Bugaloos",which Emma loved,a pirate vest and boot covers to turn Fuzzy's Star Wars boots into pirate ones,two different Glinda the Good Witch costumes...

Ivy playing dress up in her Glinda costume,minus crown, much later,when it was just about too small for her. (Sorry. I'm working with pictures that are already on my computer.) It's pretty disheveled here,from being stuffed in a dress up trunk for ages, but this dress was way better than Emma's, because my sewing had improved by then! Her crown was more detailed, but probably not as good as Emma's. They were both made out of clear heavy vinyl from the fabric store,rolled a few layers thick so it was stiff enough to stand up,and decorated with glitter stars and rhinestone trim.Ivy's costume was made of yards of tulle I bought at a yard sale,from a lady who had it because she used to decorate weddings.

...and all of Ivy's 'pretty dresses'. All Ivy ever wanted in a costume when she got past 4 or 5 years old, was 'a pretty dress'. I made a wood fairy,a snow princess...
 

Ivy inn her snow princess costume at school. For Halloween I did her up with silver false eyelashes too,and an icicle collar about 2 feet tall. I had to make her a harness for it that went under her dress.

something like Carmen Miranda, and three Vera-Ellen movie costumes in a row. One of the best costumes I ever made was Ivy's Catwoman suit. She was the Julie Newmar version of Catwoman from the 1960's TV series.

I made her ears too,but the boots,she had!

  Apart from those things,I made lots of stuff for the kids and their dolls. We did A LOT of doll play when  the kids were little. They all had mail boxes for their dolls,although Ivy and Fuzz only put theirs out for holidays. Emma had one that stayed on the balcony of Emma the Doll's house all the time. (I'm not even mentioning the fact that Ken and I built Emma and Ivy's dollhouses from scratch,including the designs.) Every Christmas and Easter I made doll cards and delivered them to the mailboxes.
 

Some of Fuzzy's,from his stash of childhood stuff. Apparently I sometimes did Valentines Day too.

And some of Ivy's,from hers,along with an earless polymer clay 'chocolate' bunny I made for her doll Blue. (I made it with ears...)The cards were made from pictures of cards cut from store ads and glued to coloured paper the school used for the announcements they sent home with the kids. The cards were all filled out and signed from other dolls, and Ken and me.

  Every Christmas I opened 'The Doll Christmas Shop'. It was full of doll sized stuff I had collected all year,and the kids brought their dolls to shop it. What did they 'pay' for the stuff with? You know those ads you get in your junk mail that are trying to sell you checks with interesting designs on them?
 

Some of Fuzzy's 'checks'. They are pretty much 1/6 scale,maybe slightly bigger.

  I saved the best stuff for the doll Christmas presents I put under their doll Christmas trees,but there were some things at the 'doll Christmas shop' that were specifically for each kid. They could tell when something was for someone else, and they never 'bought' it. They were really good about that.
  And they did all have a doll Christmas tree. They were the kind of mini Christmas tree you get everywhere,except for one year when Emma and Fuzz got live rosemary bushes. They looked like mini Christmas trees. That was great,but that was when I found that too much rosemary scent makes me sick. The next year we went back to the fake trees.
  I wrapped the tiny doll sized presents and snuck them in after the kids went to bed. I made stockings for all the dolls and put tiny treats in them.  The treats were all kinds of things that fit in the tiny stockings. I usually bought the tiny ornaments for mini trees you can buy at Hobby Lobby or Michael's. They sell little candy cane and sucker ornaments. I always broke off the loop that the string for hanging is tied through. A couple of times I got mini gingerbread men ornaments,and once I made mini peppermint chews .

These are Fuzzy's. The larger suckers are WAY out of scale.They may have been for one of his bigger dolls.

One year I gave the dolls real mini jaw breakers just like the giant ones Ivy always got in her stocking.
  Emma had a lot of doll events. One year our foyer was tied up for a couple of weeks for 'the doll fair'. The kids enjoyed it for at least a week,and then Emma invited a few friends, one at a time,to bring their dolls to the fair. I made bags of 'pop corn' and 'candy apples' for the treat stands. 

I found some really good wrapping paper that made the perfect tiny bags for popcorn. I made each little bag, and the 'popcorn' was crumbled styrofoam. It really looked like 1/6 scale popcorn. You have to use the kind of styrofoam that crumbles into tiny balls when you break it. Our foyer was covered in styrofoam bits for months.

The 'candy apples' were made from the holly berries from some Christmas foliage decorations. They were perfect because they were red and glassy just like real candy apples,and had ready made sticks: the wires they came on! I cut the wires to size. They were displayed at the fair by sticking them in a piece of styrofoam on the treats counter. The bag and the candy apple were in Ivy's things.

There were rides,including what was Emma's favourite real life ride, the giant slide,which was a board set up on the stairs that lead down to the foyer.(Don't worry, there's another set to go upstairs.) There was a pony ride too. We rounded up every plastic horse in the house. There was a merry-go-round type chair ride,which I made out of an old revolving sunglasses rack from where Ken worked,and metal Dollar Tree candle holders made like chairs. There was a petting zoo area using everyone's toy animals, and a fortune telling booth,which was the Esmeralda tent playset from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". Emma also had the Heart Family Dumbo Ride,which may have been what inspired her to want to do a fair in the first place.
  Emma also made us have a 'Doll Music Concert' every year. (It was an opportunity for Emma to use her songwriting skills,which she was working on.) I say 'made us', but everybody had a really good time. We laughed so much at those things.We always videotaped them and the kids watched them over and over like they were a favourite movie. I got mini trophies and awarded one to the winning song every year. When we started the concerts,everybody could perform a song they knew. One of my favourite moments is tiny Fuzzy singing the theme to his favourite show at the time, "Zorro", misheard lyrics and all. ("The fox so cunning and free" became,"The gots so kinden and freeze.") Eventually Emma made us all write our own songs. One year Emma apparently made autograph books and the performers signed them. I found this one in Fuzzy's stuff.

The autograph book,with Fuzzy the Doll's New Year's hat, made from an old Christmas cracker.

  That's it for today. Tomorrow we'll look at some minis made for another of Emma's ideas, The Doll Mall, and more,.