crooked house

Vivi Models

We got this fancy dress at the Giant Baby and Children's Sale last Saturday for 4 bucks and it may very well have been the best 4 bucks we have ever spent. Vivi has worn it pretty much every day since then. This is the selection of jewelry she almost always wears with it. The pony bandaid is a deliberate choice.  She asked me to take pictures of her in this outfit today. The pursed lip thing is something I'm afraid she picked up from me when I look in the mirror.

c

This is one of her more artistic shots. When she viewed this photo, she expressed displeasure about the slightly rolled sock so please keep that in mind when judging the styling here.

Anguish.

During the shoot, she inexplicably ran to get a comb, which she matter-of-factly inserted in the keyhole and proceeded to pose next to. During further discussion I gleaned it is supposed to be Alice's key.

Fiddling dramatically with the "key."

Pose with light switch.

Solitude.

A slightly Toulouse Lautrec effect.

What I Want for Mother's Day

Custom silhouette charms of the kids. One of my minor obsessions is collecting charms. I've seen the generic silhouette charms around but never really coveted one because, well, they are generic heads. But this artist will make actual silhouettes of your children's heads using photos you submit. Genius. I'm putting in my order right now. Are you reading this, D?

Vivi's Hello Kitty Kitten Heels

This pair of black patent leather kitten heels belongs to Vivi's stuffed Hello Kitty doll. She likes to wear them around the house. If she'd been one of Cinderella's stepsisters, she would've MADE that glass slipper fit.

First Day of Spring...

And baby's got a new pair of shoes. Rainbow glitter with bright pink bows.

Boobie Beanie

You can purchase these boobie beanie baby hats -- or the pattern to make one yourself -- on etsy. You know, so you can protect the delicate sensibilities of those who are offended by public breastfeeding. God forbid anyone should happen to glimpse a bit of breast as it nourishes an infant.

The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. No, Really.

Image by colleendowd on flickr.

One of my New Year's resolution-ish thingys (I never keep New Year's resolutions but maybe I'll manage to keep them if I don't actually call them that) is to avoid as many dangerous chemicals as possible in food and household products, particularly where the kids are concerned. This morning, while sitting in the dentist's office waiting for the dental hygienist (when actually I was supposed to be sitting in the optometrist''s office waiting for the optemetrist's assistant, but that's another story) I happened upon this passage in  Slow Death by Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things:

The creation of the first flammability regulations to protect consumers was brought about by a series of deadly fires caused by new ingredients in fabrics in the years following World War II. During the Christmas season of 1951, "torch sweaters" became all the rage. The sweaters were made of brushed rayon and in some circumstances would explode when a spark was dropped on them. Children were also affected. In one case young Michael Blessington was burned to death when his "Gene Autry" cowboy suit caught fire. It turns out that the chaps in the suit were made of flammable rayon. The worst and perhaps most bizarre incident involved a woman who was critically burned when the netted underskirt in her ball gown exploded. The underskirt was made from nitrocellulose (the basis of gunpowder) and ignited in a rather dramatic fashion at a New Year's Eve party.

I wonder if Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, had heard about that  woman in the exploding ball gown when she wrote her story.

They Grow Up So Fast

Vivi and I are already having disagreements about how much lipstick she should wear.

A Matter of Style

The other day after school I sprang a haircut appointment on Luke. It is an understatement to say he wasn't happy about this interruption in his Lego time. As he sat down in the hairstylist's chair, muttering complaints, I said cheerily, in an effort to change the mood, "Is there anything different you'd like Ashley to do to your hair?"

"I want a mohawk," he said.

"Uh," I said.

Ashley looked at me and smiled. And then, hiding her mouth with her hand, she whispered, "FAUX-hawk."

He spent that evening asking every five minutes, "Is my mohawk still standing up?"

And the next morning, he expressed concern that if he wore his hoodie during recess it might mess up his hair. "Don't worry if it does," I said. "It's more important to be warm and comfortable so you can play and have fun."

"But it's more fun for me to have this mohawk than to play," he said.

However, yesterday afternoon, after we got back from seeing Santa at the mall, he slicked his hair down flat before running across the street to ask his friend to come out to play.

"Why are you doing that?" I asked.

"I don't want Emily's father to see my mohawk," he said.

"Why not?" I asked. "Are you worried he might tease you?"

"No," he said. "It's just that he won't know who I am."

Sylvie and The Wizard of Oz

Sylvie discovered The Wizard of Oz a few days ago and the movie has been on constant replay in the crooked house ever since. She identifies very strongly with Dorothy and often refers to her as "Sylvie." This morning she was wearing her (too-large) "ruby slippers" -- she has taken to calling them that -- with her night gown when I remembered that the dress I bought her this summer for her second birthday looks a lot like Dorothy's. Up till now, she has absolutely hated this dress and refused ever to put it on. I think we're going to be seeing a lot of it from now on.

Luke's Lego Minifig Costume

He wanted it to look exactly like his minifig character in Lego Universe and he's very pleased with the result. I'd like to print out the Lego logo and glue it to the front of the body but Luke's not having any of that.

We took some inspiration from these extremely handy fellows but simplified, simplified, simplified. The fancy costumes they made -- they're practically perfect replicas -- took 40-50 hours each to make and required the use of a variety of power hand tools. Ours took probably 4 hours, tops.

For the mask, we used two sheets of yellow craft foam, taped together with yellow duct tape. Luckily, the tape and the foam were the same perfect colour. The  most finicky part was using said yellow duct tape to fasten a flat circle cut frome the same kind of foam to the top of the mask. We ended up using the glue gun as well and just fiddled a lot. The eyes were a bit fiddly, too -- they needed to look like minifig eyes but they also needed to be in the right places for Luke to see through them. We marked the positions of his eyes with a pencil and used an exacto knife to cut out circles. (Note: NOT while Luke was wearing the mask.) The smile was drawn on with a sharpie marker.

The little round connecter on the very top of the mask and the hands were both made from little round craft boxes we found at Walmart for two dollars each. For the top, we just covered it in the yellow duct tape and hot-glued it on. For the hands, we cut out the bottoms of the boxes, snipped a section out of the sides, covered them in yellow duct tape, and taped them to the backs of fingerless gloves that Luke keeps tucked inside his sleeves. (We had a pair of red mittens that would have worked better but Luke insisted that he will need his fingers free to select his Halloween treats.)

We purchased two cardboard display boards, one in red and one in blue, and simply cut out a front and back from the red in the correct shape for the body. We hotglued two strips of red fleece, cut from an old blanket, to them for shoulder straps. The body fits him like a sandwich board. (The cardboard display boards  each cost $11 at a craft store -- if you wanted to save money, you could just use any old cardboard and paint it.)

The legs are also glued to a strip of red fleece that wraps around Luke's middle and is fastened in the back with a couple of safety pins. If I had to do it again, I think I'd make the legs out of one piece of cardboard instead of two, as they tend to get kicked out to the sides as he walks.

When Luke isn't wearing his costume, Sylvie likes to put on the mask and walk around intoning "I BE ROBOT. I BE ROBOT." We have no idea where she picked this up.

It's been a busy couple of weeks for minifigs -- a mysterious 8-foot-tall one recently washed up on a beach in Florida.