Elsa!

I believe I mentioned in previous posts that Aunt Dottie made doll clothes are most of us girls. With Christmas coming up, I was thinking about what to make my adorable nieces Abby and Avery for Christmas. They love, love, love Frozen and I thought ..... Frozen doll clothes. But first ... the doll.

So I got online and looked at reviews for 18" dolls. Of course, American Girl dolls are all the rage, but I didn't want to spend several hundred dollars on each doll. The reviews I saw lead me to hunt for Madame Alexander dolls. The Madame Alexander dolls are very close to the quality of the American Girl dolls. Going to the Madame Alexander official website showed these dolls sell for roughly $75.00 - still too expensive.

Amazon was my next stop and I found a couple of dolls, last year models selling for $30.00/each. Sold! I found a blonde and a red head doll and received them the next week.

Keeping in the spirit of Aunt Dottie, I wanted to make the dresses for the dolls. I began my research for what was already out there. There were a couple patterns you could download ranging from $5-$20. Hmmmmmm......... Or ....

I really wanted to make this pattern from scratch. I failed in my Olaf design, so I set out using an 18" doll pattern as a base. After several attempts with my muslin, I finally came up with this design.

I love the cape material - it is beautiful! I paid a pretty penny for it at Joann's. Holly did Elsa's hair - she's getting real good at french braids....

I wanted to also mention that my cousin Cindy recently sent me a barbie dress that Aunt Dottie had made for her.

I was so touched by that gesture. So thank you Cindy .... from the bottom of my heart. I will treasure it.

Next up! Anna .... the dress pattern is pretty much the same and the cape should be fairly easy.

olaf!

Over the years Aunt Dottie made barbie doll clothes for me when I was a child. And when I had girls she made barbie doll clothes for them. Sadly, none of them survived the years. It makes me sad to think of those lost treasures.

I was thinking about Christmas and what to get my two beautiful nieces Abby and Avery. Abby LOVES Frozen. Did I mention she LOVES Frozen? Avery, while younger, shares her sisters LOVE.

So my thought was to get Abby and Avery barbie dolls and make them some Frozen costumes for them. It then morphed into 18 inch dolls instead of barbies, but the idea was still there to create costumes for them. So then, I started to think about the other small beauties in my family, and began to think of Olaf.

Wouldn't Grant, Matthew, and Lena love to have Olaf?! I began to look around at the different blogs about creating Olaf, but they all seemed to lack the full face and kind of 3 dimensional look.

I tried several times to create the perfect pattern but grew frustrated very quickly. Why hadn't I paid attention in math!? I was ready to give up when Julia suggested I buy an Olaf and create the pattern from that. Good idea! So off I went and began taking the purchased Olaf apart at the seams.

I redesigned parts of the pattern along with the eyes, buttons, and mouth for my Olaf. To add an extra touch, I embroidered the name of the child on the bottom of the foot.

So Brandy, if you read this, Grant's Olaf should be on the way soon - just in time for birthday #2! I actually finished stuffing Olaf while I was watching Frozen. Jackie came over for lunch and now .... well .... guess I'm making 4 in total.

Julia's choir concert

Julia loves Choir and especially loves her music teacher, Ms. Sarah Price - who I have to admit is pretty wonderful. Julia was very excited and anxiously awaiting the Veteran's Day Tribute concert at Saline High School.

She had to buy some new shoes for the concert. Her outfit requirements were black shoes, black pants, black shirt, and black blazer. My daughter Jenny and her are about the same size, so Jenny lent her the blazer. It's looks nice!

Here's the outside the school, the performance arts entrance.

The Choir had a bake sale to help send the Choir to Carnegie Hall in April. Everyone chipped in and brought baked goods to contribute to sell. Julia made Swedish chocolate balls made with some ingredients that her parents sent from Sweden.

The line started to form outside the auditorium.

The auditorium has 3 levels inside it.

And the lower level where the Saline New Horizons band was already on stage.

I tried several times to get a closer view of the choir and band together, but my camera just is so bad. Every picture turned out blurry. Julia spent extra time learning all the patriotic songs that we all learned from birth. 

The show was very nice. Inspirational and brought a tear to my eye several times with the patriotic melodies and the tributes to our veterans. Here's Ms. Price singing "America the Beautiful". Her voice is just amazing. I really wish my camera was nicer....

Here's the artwork for the concert that was distributed around town.

And here's the link from the Saline Post covering the concert. Thanks Tran!

http://thesalinepost.com/photo-gallery/new-horizons-band-saline-school-choirs-pay-tribute-veterans

mischievous matthew's bubble bath

Aunt Dottie was very much into photography and I believe that if computers were common like they are now, she would have had fun with manipulating photos.

So here's the story ....

I was awakened at 3AM by happy baby noises. I had put Matthew's bed in my room, and I stumbled out of bed to check on him. But the bed was empty.

There it was again .... the happy baby noises. But they seem like they were coming from downstairs. I crept downstairs cautiously.

I stood there astonished and absolutely amazed. I grabbed/ my camera and snap this shot. Matthew is only 4 months old.... We had just watched Adams Family 2 and I saw Matthew smiling at the baby Gomaz. Looks like he got into my Halloween paint. He looks just like him!

He finished off 2 bottles and did a little light reading while enjoying his bubble bath in front of the fireplace. How does he do it?

I also noticed that the new doll I had purchased was out of the box and was nearby.

Oh boy .... who's gonna clean up the place?!? Mischievous Matthew ....

how to throw a zombie event

I love Halloween. I mean who doesn't love vampires, werewolf s, and especially zombies. I eventually talked our Saline Music Boosters into putting on Zombie events this year as fundraisers for the schools music department. One at the high school called the Zombie Prom and another at the middle school called Zombie Bash.

Once the decision is made, immediately contact your local facility scheduler and obtained the gym at your school. Once your location is locked down, get to work on your marketing materials. I did several ... a full color image for distributing via email and a black and white for yard signs.

We printed up small coupon-like materials to distribute. The music teachers handed them out to music students and asked them to give it to their friends. You can't promote enough. Contact your superintendents office, they usually have a weekly email blast where you can advertise the event. Check with your local newspaper and community ed too. Have the school put the event on their website for reference.  And of course, the Saline Music Boosters had the information of our Facebook, Twitter, and website.

We set up a spot on our website to sell tickets online. A week before the event, we began to sell tickets at school during lunch hours. The first day will be slow, but as you get closer to the event, you'll sell more tickets. We wrote down names on a sheet of paper and had them at the door of the event.

The price of admission included a slice of pizza, bottle of water, a trip to the photo booth, and a DJ. We found local vendors who gave us a great deal.

We had a variety of other items to sell, candy, chips, soda and Gatorade. Don't forget to have paper plates and napkins available. We borrowed a food warmer from Food Service to keep the pizza warm. Make sure you have plenty of $1 and $5 to make change. Make it easy on yourself and don't sell anything that require change.

We had bracelets at the door that we put on each kid when they entered the dance. Whenever they got a item promised with admission, we used a Sharpie and marked on their bracelet. Worked like a charm and the kids didn't have to carry around tickets or coupons. 

We used SignUpGenius to sign up volunteers to help out at the event. It was free and has a lot of  useful features, like sending out email reminders before the event. Make sure you have lots of parents to help with food and to keep the kids in from leaving the building.

We brought our own decorations and asked our chaperons to bring whatever they had at home too. We ended up with a nice supply of decorations for the event and we didn't have to buy anything.

I borrowed a projector from our community ed department and downloaded the movie "Warm Bodies" on my laptop. I projected it in the very back corner of the gym. The kids that weren't interested in dancing hung out and watched the movie and it kept them from running around.

We had a game available and also a best costume prize. We purchased 4 $10 Amazon gift cards for best costume prizes. The music staff walked around the selected 15 best costume candidates. When it was time we had all the kids line up and the vote was completed by applause. The loudest applause won!

It appears that this event works best at the Middle School level and it was well attended and everyone had a great time! And .... we made lots of money to support our school's music program.

the giggle box turns 30.

My daughter Jacquelyn just celebrated her 30th anniversary. An amazing feat considering I was only 5 when I had her. :) Ok, that's creepy - I found out I was pregnant with Jacquelyn on my 21st birthday.  She was such a happy, giggly baby - that I always called her "giggle box".

Stacy and Jackie are besties. Jackie graduates this December from University of Michigan and Stacy graduated last December. Their birthdays are just days apart, so we had a birthday brunch for them this Sunday. Jac has a gluten allergy, so everything is gluten free. Pancakes, cookies, muffins .... good stuff.

For months I had been hearing about how everyone has a quilt but Jackie. "Mom, even the guy you work with gets a quilt for his newborn!" she whines. I knew she had a big birthday coming up and now was the time to make it extra special.

King size quilts are not easy to quilt without a long arm machine. I started out wanting to make a double ring quilt for her. I found this video which is a quilt as you go for double wedding ring quilt here. I was very excited about it and went to my nearest Joann's Fabrics to get a template. I started working on it and realized that my measurements were all off. That the template I had did not work how I wanted it to. After messing up several times and wasting a whole day and a yard of nice expensive premium fabric, I abandoned the idea.

Because it is a King quilt, I needed to go with a "quilt as you go" version and I found this video. This allowed me have a reversible quilt and to be able to quilt each block at a time. To give it some more depth, I created some double blocks.

The whole thing took me about 2 months to make and every block is done with free motion quilting techniques. It was nice to not have a huge quilt to push through the machine - doing just a block at a time. I believe there was 89 blocks in all.

And I took the opportunity to embroider some of the blocks with endearing sentiments with her name, date and even embroidered some peacock feathers in it. Peacocks are her favorites and I was super excited to find some peacock fabric.

The thing I love the most about it is that it is reversible - once side is brown tones with her beloved peacocks and the other is more modern with black, blue and a smidgen of red.

standing up at work

Aunt Dottie never needed a fitness routine as her entire day was filled with "lots to accomplish tasks". She remained thin and fit most of her life spending large amounts of time out in her garden and tending to tasks inside the house. Always on her feet.

But me ..... I sit at a computer desk all day long ... for hours .... on end. I awoke a few months ago to a news story how "sitting was the new smoking". Really? Crap .... I just gave up smoking 2 years ago, now this is on my head too? The news story stated that sitting all day was just as bad as smoking even if you exercised daily. Double crap. The issue was related to colon health.

I had begun to notice my hips hurting at the end of the day more and more and it struck a cord with me and I began thinking about it. Hmmmm..... but what to do?

I did some Google searches to find ideas on stand up desks. Some neat ones I found with treadmills attached, or hydroponic lifts. Expensive - super expensive. This was my work desk and I wasn't willing to spend a lot of money and I knew my employer wouldn't either.

Here is what I finally ended up ... but wait there's more to the story.

So, it started with me going downstairs in my basement and looking around. Hmmmm......

I found several of these Ikea tables. This table was probably the right height to put on top of my current desk, but not long enough. I could have used 2 but I didn't want to use both the tables as they were my daughters. I homed in on the legs .... they screwed in!

Burke was not happy when I had him disassemble an old pantry style cabinet. We threw some of the rough broken stuff away, but the side of the cabinet were in good shape. Shelves! I grabbed one of the long white shelves and unscrewed the legs from the small table and screwed them into the long white shelf.

Eureka!

This was my original concept. I actually used my computer and turned it on it's side to raise up my keyboard. It worked .... but was a little awkward.

So began my first day .... would this help me lose a few pounds. I'm not gonna lie, it was hard. I kept wanting to give up and just sit down. So I brought in a stool like this.

It worked and was sooooo uncomfortable that I never wanted to use it, but I had something if I really needed it.

Standing requires more effect and burns more calories right? So I started tracking my weight. There were days were put on my headphones and danced away in my little cubicle.

But still .... what about days where you just didn't feel good and wanted a nice comfy chair.

Hmmmmm.... what else? My conclusion was ...the best desk is one where you could sit or stand whenever it suited you.

I did try and use my comfy chair with my stand up desk, but before too long, I would get kinks in my neck from straining to look up constantly.

I thought .... what if I had a monitor on my actual desk for those times where I wanted to sit. My computer was capable of handling 3 monitors.

I couldn't use a big monitor because it wouldn't fit properly under my stand up desk. Which, it helps that it's small, so I don't like to use it too much.

Awhile ago, monitor stands were all the rage and my employer ordered a ton of them. Soon everyone gave them up and they ended up in the storage closet. I grabbed 4 of them. Perfect height!

I put two of them together and a shelf on top for my keyboard and mouse. I even turned one upside down and hung it on my stand up desk to hold collections of crap.

Since everything came forward a bit - my painting ended up being covered up a bit by my lamp and I still need to move it. But here is what it looks like. The fam ....

So the cost of my stand up desk - $0. I got a little creative and reused some items and worked out a method right for me. I spent most of my day either standing or leaning on my stool. And those moments when I really need to sit in my comfy chair - I do.

If you are standing for periods of time, I would recommend getting one of these nifty kitchen mats - it does help. They sell them everywhere with different colors and patterns. I did actually spend a couple of bucks for one.

It's been several months now and what I've found is that I want to stand more and my hips and legs feel better after a day of standing - and my colon health is solid! I also enjoy my sit down meetings more these days. :)

And as far as losing weight? Well ..... not that I've seen.