It has been a while! I didn’t even bother looking at the date of my last post, as I am pretty sure it was a long month after the undersized urbanite contest. Instead, I’d rather just jump back into things!!

Things that have changed since my last post:

Our family is expanding by two feet!!

Two more feet have been added to the family!! Although they are still in-uetero, before we know it there will be more feet pitter pattering around here!! I am currently 18 weeks, and I would LOVE to say I am feeling GREAT! but it seems that I can’t find a balance, when I am not throwing up, (which I have been doing most mornings for the past 14 weeks), I am tired, lacking motivation, and just blahhh…Hopefully as my second trimester (!!!!) picks up, so will my energy, but I’m not holding my breath, (nor am I complaining! It will be over before I know it and I will be on to wanting another!!! )

Th above news, prompted us to kick up the gears for selling our condo. It was always in the 5 year plan, but now, we would like to move it within the next year. We would have liked to have already been packed and gone, but, as per usual, life got in the way. (The main downside being that Gord’s transmission had to be partially rebuilt). We have a lot to attend to as we kind of stopped renovations for a while after being so bogged down with so much clutter. After the floors were done, we switched the kids room with ours (seems to make more sense to let them have the bigger room, that way we can somewhat contain the toy mess to one area). Next on the list, we are updating our baseboard heating, finishing the floors (because about 1′ remains left to be done, because the flooring wouldn’t fit under the radiators, so we decided to replace them since they had to be removed anyways – oh the circles renovations can bring you in!!), and after we do all that, we have to complete the baseboards of the whole house, and of course, the trim we already purchased a few feet of when we bought our floors….seems to be discontinued….*sigh*

While Gord handles all of that, lol, I have been focusing on decluttering. I have been moving around the house from room to room, pretending I am moving tomorrow and tossing/selling/donating anything I wouldn’t bring with me. This way, when the time comes, it should be relatively easy to shove our remaining possessions into boxes to be able to show the house.  Some days, I think it might not be until next summer we realistically get out of here, as my best friend pointed out, packing and moving while pregnant is not the easiest….which is SO TRUE, but I think I would gather all the help possible and push forward if it were possible to move ASAP. I’m longing to rid myself of having to travel down 7 stories via elevator to launder my clothes, (and pay $1.75/load at that!), I also look forward to having a backyard, and not having to travel 3 minutes just to get to the car, or having to carry groceries and children on said 3 minute walk….and windows in my kitchen would be a nice change. And what do condo fees really cover anyways?…feels like nothing… *end rant*

All in due time! I trust the universe and it’s decisions, and I know that when the time is right, everything will fall into place!

In other news, I have started a new quarter scale project, and also finished a play scale project, both of which I hope to share soon! I’ll save my breath for those posts, as well as the many others I have planned for the upcoming month.

Hope you are enjoying your day wherever you are!

Rebecca

Come take a look inside;

For size referece, here is a Canadian dime!

Everything you see here was hand made by myself, with the exception of the shop shell, which was built from a dollhouse kit by Ani (same supplier as last years submission, sold on eBay).

I hope you enjoyed looking a much as I enjoyed making it!

Finally here to talk about one of my favourite things. Minis!!!

After last night’s post about NaNo,  I still felt lost about the whole book thing. So, I brought out the dollhouse. The reason why I haven’t been working on it, besides lacking time and energy, I was having a really hard time getting my head around making egg carton bricks. When I first started this house, that was the plan, but I just didn’t seem to have the stamina to cut them. I really hate measuring things, and can’t draw straight symmetrical lines. This posed a challenge for me. So I was stubborn and just did nothing,  letting my dollhouse defeat me.

Then when we started redoing our closet, (which also inspired me to.participate in NaNoWriMo. ..see what cleaning out a closet does!?),  Gord brought home some drywall compound (mud) and my creative wheels started turning.

When I watched Gord using the drywall compound, (and saw how easily it scratched from being bumped – thanks kids!) I realized drywall compound might be the  just what I need to make bricks! 

I didn’t figure out the technique overnight, it actually took a week or two of layering and fiddling,  but then last night I finally got down to business and  started making serious progress!!

This is the earliest “before” picture I took;

And here it is before I finally retreated to bed at 3:30 a.m.;

I still have a lot more work to do! But so far I am liking the effect. The best part is that the drywall compound dries fast,  and its easy to cover up mistakes (sand and re-apply!) I find it easy to carve when its partially wet still. I think I’ll post a short video tomorrow so you can understand more how I do it. I find it hard to take pictures and explain them, so maybe I’ll try a video. Especially because I find this to be a great (and pretty fast! ) technique!

Anyhoo. All for now! I’m off to (hopefully) get some more work done!

I’ll be back to ramble soon! (And post that video I promised – I hope I don’t forget!! – on the note of procrastination, I finally added my link to the undersized urbanite dollhouse contest blog I still need to grab one of the new fancy buttons for my sidebar though! Thanks Christina! They look awesome!)

As promised, here are some more pictures of my decorations. I was very happy with the way everything turned out! The only thing I would have changed, is finishing the haunted house in the centrepiece.  But I can finish that next year, (..again with the procrastination, lol).

The whole display;

I would say the easiest, least expensive, and most effective Halloween decoration is the strechy spiderwebs, which you could just stretch over your regular decor (as I did with this fall flower arrangement), to give it a spooky effect;

I had a lot of fun stretching the webs all over! 

The bats were (patiently) cut out by myself from black cardstock; 

I attached the bats together with black wire, which I first wrapped around a pencil to make curly;

The banner is made from The series of Unfortunate Events book, The Carnivorous Carnival (a children’s book, what a title!!). I like recycling books this way, they make unique bunting. In this case I accidentally had purchased two of these books thrifting, so one ended up in the crafting pile and was perfect for Halloween! 

I started with the first page, beginning of chapter one;

And coincidentally ended on the first page of chapter two! Which had a creepy(ish) monster drawing that helped tie the whole banner together; 

In the centre (on a cake stand), sat two haunted houses, one which still needs doors and windows, both hand made by myself from recycled products(oatmeal box, paper towel roll and other cardboard); 

Then of course,  every holiday display is not complete without a framed printable subway art (which I downloaded free here);

The clear skull is an empty Crystal Skull Vodka bottle that I have been using as is, as a vase. Grabbed it from its current hom because it fit in perfectly for Halloween! 

Another view from the opposite side;

The black netting was purchased at the dollarstore. The ribbon I had on stash. I  tacked it to the wall and fiddled until it looked right leaving the ends of everything to hang in a scary mess;

Kind of reminds me of a whiches hair

I never noticed until I looked at the pictures that the banner wasn’t really centered;

But we still enjoyed it none the less!!

Halloween night was less to rave about, as it had rained all day and into the night! (And I somehow didn’t bring out our umbrellas,  because I’m a prepared Mom like that, lol), but I was able to.get a few pictures of everyone in costume; 

Nia was a pumpkin by day, and a lamb by night;

Kaio was a dragon (and thanks to my last minute shopping, I picked his costume up at Salvation Army the afternoon of Halloween for 50% and a total of $2.50 – win!);

I even scribbled some whiskers on my face to surprise Nia;

I would have taken more pictures if my camers battery wasn’t too low to use flash!

How was your Halloween? ! Did you decorate your house? Inside or out? Were you a trick or treat guide? Or passing out candy?

Too much is going on this year! so much I didn’teven realize that Thanksgiving was coming until last monday So we didn’t have any special Turkey dinner. That’s ok with me, because it’s my first holiday as a vegetarian and I would be worried all the yummy food would tempt me!!!!

To curb my enthusiasm, and get my “Turkey” fix, I decided to sculpt a few mini items of the Thanksgiving nature. The Turkey was the only thing I took a WIP picture for;

I’ve been avoiding those types of pictures because I find it slows me down especially when the lighting is bad, of my phone is dead, I just don’t even do anything lol so especially with the Undersized Urbanite contest, I’m going to just worry about taking progress pictures, rather than step by step.

But more on that another day! Back to Turkey time! I made a pie, cake and some dishes (to later be filled with food), all from air dry clay. Which i enjoyed a lot more than working qith polymer clay. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it hardened as I was sculpting and just a finger tip of water helped bring it back to life just enough that I could tweak little parts here and there. Polymer clay warms up with your hands and turns mushy, so you need to take breaks from making things (or I do at least) so they aren’t as….mushy, (lol, I’m not to familiar with the technical terms here, feel free to correct me). I do need to work on my skills for making dishes and etc, because as you will notice, most are pretty crooked!! Here are.all the items before I painted them;

Miniature thanksgiving WIP.

Paint drying. The colours remind me ao much of fall and the cooler crisp weather to come

Miniature thanksgiving WIP

Here are the peices I feel turned out best;

Mini thanksgiving dinner.

The Turkey looks a lot darker in the picture than it actually is in real life. Not the best paint job, but not the worst.

Here is everything all together. The bowl and serving dish I thought I would carve a bit and straighten out, but then I was worried I would break it so I left them as is;

Mini thanksgiving dinner. It's all a part of the learning process

Feel free to laugh with me at the severity of crooked-ness. The bowl has mashed potatoes and the serving dish has green beans and corn (or at least, that’s what I was trying to make if look like, lol).

I would have loved to have made more things like a gravy boat, and it would have bern nice to be able to put some more effort into it all…but I will have to wait until next year, (I don’t want to spend too much time on this mini project!. That’s probably the best part of this Turkey dinner! Next thanksgiving I won’t have to worry about making another meal (in miniature at least….). I just have to add onto this one, since mini food never expires

The exterior;

And interior;

As you can (maybe) see, it still needs a lot of work. I made these little diagrams to show you (vaguely) my plans for the next 7-8 months;

Did you catch all that? LOL. Still a lot of work!

One thing that has been holding me back is the brickwork. I had originally thought I would cut egg carton bricks, but I now think that would be too time consuming… as I have only managed to get this many cut;

And one of those bricks, covers this much space;

so I keep avoiding the project, because it overwhelms me before I even get started. Then last night, when I rememered there are other ways to do brickwork, like using clay? And I’m sure other things! I’m going to do some test work with some air dry clay, drywall compound and leveling concrete (the latter two materials we have around from renovations), I’ll see what one will be “easiest” and go from there.

As you may have noticed, I did finish the front door before I proceeded with anything else.

Now that the door is in, the trim can go around on exterior and then the brick work can start. The interior was being held up waiting for this part to be installed (so trim and wallpaper can go on smoothly), so it was logical first step to complete. The knocker and handle are handmade from clay.

I also stumbed upon appropriate sized inhabitants;

They are fisher price sweet streets people. I’m not sure what scale they are but they fit nicely in the house unlike Polly. I don’t intend to use them in my final photographs, but they will help me build furniture to my unknown scale, and keep me company along the way

Now that I have this up I can finally enter my “before” picture on the contest website.

The next morning, while eating breakfast,  I drew up some cards for a matching game to be used with wooden blocks;

The kids love it! And it was made using stuff I already have around the house. I hope to add more of these to our toy room when renovations are finished (right now it is full of boxed laminate flooring :/)

Be sure to check out the busy bag round up  at My Small Potatoes and add these to your “to-make” list.

So, when Makaio went down for a nap, I brought out the supplies and a snack, and Nia and I set out to finish my goal.

We started by making trees with old grape stems we’d been saving for a while. I can’t remember where I read the suggestion to use these, but it stuck with me, and is especially effective in quarter scale. Here is the beginning of the big tree;

And the skeleton for the small one, as you can see, the grape stem makes a very realistic tree bark/trunk;

In the first pictures you can see we were using white glue, instead of suggested adhesive spray, as usually suggested. After the first layer dried I moved onto the spray adhesive as the white glue was too heavy and was taking foliage off, rather than keeping it on, (reason #1 to follow instructions, lol).

While the trees dried we put down some stepping stones for a front path and put down the “grass”.

I also managed to get so far as gluing the plastic roof sheets on. I still need to paint those, add trim, and finish the windows thenit will be “complete” on the exterior.

I still hadn’t brushed off the excess foliage from the ground at this point, so the grass looks extra “fluffy”;

I’m really happy with the way the trees turned out;

I’m not convinced changing the paint colour was the right idea, but as I already said, its too late now! I think another coat of paint would make it too “paint chunky” –if you know what I mean (and sanding at this point risks damaging landscape so, white house it is);

Still need to add window frames;

And the roof needs some trim and paint;

And then there is the interior;

It’s in rough shape! I tried to uninstall the lights for my undersized urbanite house. I apparently secured them in too good though and now need to feed them back into ceiling. I will likely wait to so anything more, I want to focus my energy into the Undersized Urbanite contest!

Just wanted to update you on my index.card a day challenge(s).

For my “memory” cards I changed the idea a bit. Instead of writing what we did that day (which at times can be mundane, like today, where we did laundry and general tidying), I decided to write 3 things which I am grateful for having in my life. Simple. Sweet. I also bought a palm sized (SUPER CUTE) owl notebook to track it in…

The best part is my index cards fit nicely so I can put it all together in one book. Here is Day 1;

I had index cards on my list for the dollar store today, but I naturally forgot my list, lol. Thankfully I had a few stragglers around the house. My first card it isn’t impressive. I rushed it on Saturday morning. The previous night I wasted too much time doodling ideas in my sketchbook, lol.

The second card;

I’m enjoying myself thus far, even though I already feel like I’m running out of ideas…however new ideas and inspiration come with each new day! I’m still waiting for today’s….

I wanted to share with you my pictures of the items that I sent along to Michelle of Little Rabbit Miniatures.  I am not sure if she has received the items yet or not, she has not updated her blog in a while! I hope that they reached her o.k.! I sent them by airmail and it cost me a lot more than I was expecting. (Note to self in future: no swaps, lol). Anyways, here is what I sent;

Miniature dress, vase with plant, handbag and flip flops.

My swap items for le minis de cockerina holiday 2013 swap

I was not impressed with how the flip flops turned out, which is probably it took me so long to send it, I guess I hoped I would find the time to make something more, but I didn’t, and as I explained not too long ago (and in a note I included to Michelle), Makaio managed to get his hands on them and broke them. Which is probably a good thing, since they were ugly anyways! To make up for the lost item (even though we only had to include one), I sent along some more plants in different coloured vases, (which I never took pictures of! because I was so late in sending it out!). Here is a closer look at everything, starting with the flowers in vase, (which are made from real flowers I picked and dried out, which you can read about here);

Miniature dollhouse plant.

I hand sewed this mini purse from a shirt that was given to Nia as a hand-me-down, but never fit her, and I liked the pattern. You can find lots of mini fabrics in your closet this way! I accidentally made it too big the first time, so I have a Barbie sized bag that is identical to this one! (I guess that will be my item I retain as memory of this swap!);

Miniature handbag

I placed a small piece of cardboard in the bottom to help it stand up;

Miniature handbag

The dress was also made from old clothes. This was from a shirt I used to wear when I was pregnant with Nia. It holds great memories and I could never get rid of it! It served a good purpose finally! (besides covering my baby belly while pregnant!);

Miniature dress

And of course, the ugly flip flops….I had the right idea, just not the right amount of time or effort

miniature flip flops….fail!

That’s all! I secretly hope that my swap item will still arrive, but I don’t want to get my hopes up. I’m probably going to steer away from this type of thing in the future, because of the fact that it took so much effort and I’m not sure if my partner recieved the item or not, and I definitely haven’t, so kind of a waste of time and money? Not to sound like a debbie downer, but honestly, how would you feel!??

I’ll be back soon with some more updates, hope you are all enjoying your afternoon!