And Now. . .Alice Otter (My Favorite Gift I'm Giving This Year)

Whew!  I finished making Alice Otter earlier this morning.  She is part of my Christmas presents for my parents, just as Emmet Otter was last Christmas.  

 I can't be with my family while they watch Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas on Christmas Eve--enjoying the movie over eggnog and dessert is a family tradition--but now they will have the complete set of "Ma" and her Emmet to hold my place.  :) 

I started creating Alice in November and soon realized that I was mistaken to have thought that Alice Otter would be easier to make than Emmet.  I had expected her to be easier since her body is hidden by her dress, but between the dress-making and simply the ongoing trying-to-making-her-face-look-right, she was quite a challenge.   At least she and Emmet are a two-member family, since I don't think I'd want to construct a third otter next year.  :)  I also didn't realize until right now that I attached her lace-and-red-ribbon trim to the front of her dress upside-down.  BAH!  Maybe I'll attach extra lace under the red ribbon to make up for it.  BAH!  And BAH! again!  Anyway, she is either done or nearly-done, depending on my handling of The Lace Issue now.   :)  Her outfit in the movie is just lovely, so to have gotten it even this close was quite the feat for me, since sewing's not really my thing.  

I began with a stuffed animal I bought to cut up for fur and parts. 

I re-cut it to form the body--

--and re-stuffed it to re-shape it a bit. 

The plan had been to start with her face, of course, but I found myself beginning with her costume instead.  "Measure twice, cut once"-type thinking made me too nervous to add her face, I think, since once it was attached, there would be no going back to correct it.  The collar and bow were made from a piece of leftover lace in my fabric stash. 

I found one button in Grandma's button jar that matched the dress well, and I took the lid off a mustard bottle to make the nose.  :)  

I had bought the fabric back in August after a long search for one that closely resembled Alice's talent show costume in the movie.  (I wanted to make the talent show costume because so many of Mom's other Christmas decorations are blue, and Alice's other dress in the film is a brown-with-gold print.)

I didn't realize until I went to attach the finished arms that I had made them way too big and too long, so I spent at least an hour redoing them. I made a basic wrap dress that I'd later cover with a pleated fabric-piece for a proper dress. 

I remembered from last year to use white paint to add a life-like glint to her eyes.  The eyes and eyebrows were pieces of black fabric cut off a raggedy piece of a bag lining. 

I found a doily in October that I thought would be the right size to use as a cap, and I guessed correctly.  I made blue ribbon/cord from a length of the dress-fabric and threaded it through the doily's holes.  The ball-trim is from a piece I've used for so many other projects.  It all worked. 

And then I stopped taking pictures until I was done with her this morning. 

If I had stopped to refer to the photos of her I'd been using as reference all along, I'd have noticed the upside-down lace-and-red-ribbon-trim, but I'll live. 

Dad will get a kick out of her, as he did with Emmet, but I know Mom will truly love her.  :)

I'm so tickled with this. 

I tried making a mouth a few different ways, but I never came up with one that looked even remotely right, so instead I added extra fur with hot glue and bunched it up until it looked like there was at least an opening there.  The suggestion of a mouth looks better than any of my attempts at a real one did.  I added blush to her cheeks with a little of my lipstick, to make her look different from Emmet, and I used a paintbrush to spread some white eye shadow above her eyes. 

I attached her to a plastic container to make her a bit taller and to give her a way to stand, since it bothered me last year that the boots I'd created for Emmet hadn't worked out and he needed to be leaned against something to stay upright. 

And like last year, I made a gingham label as a finishing touch. 

Oh, I love that cap!  Anything with ball-trim just sends me, I love it so much. 

I go home tomorrow for a way-too-short visit and look forward to seeing not only my family, but also Alice and Emmet together for the first time.  ;) 

And now to figure out The Lace Issue before I pack this into tissue paper and box it up for Mom and Dad.  This is my favorite gift that I'm giving this year, although one for my nephew keeps making me laugh too.  Ah, holiday silliness!  I love it. 

Merry Early Christmas!  ♥

♥

My Parents Make Me Laugh

My parents' Christmas card arrived yesterday with the above note from Mom enclosed.  My laughter turned into cackling pretty quickly at this.  This crazy month.  Since she wasn't able to drive to get out to shop on her own the first few weeks after surgery, Mom's behind with All Things Christmas this year. 

Then I got to the end of Dad's included note and laughed again.  He clearly hadn't forgotten my "demotion" in his last note. 

'Too funny all-around.  Both blessed and charmed, I am.  ♥

The Best-Laid Plans

A bit earlier than usual, I've come down with my seemingly annual Christmas cold, so it looks like I'll be slowing down even a bit more than I'd even intended while writing my last post.  I'm most-grateful to be done with shopping for my family since my Christmas with them is next weekend already.  I had planned to put up the tree yesterday but only got as far as clearing the space on this tiny wall beside the mantel and then was too pooped to do more.  I went to bed around 7:30 last night, and there's no time or energy for tree-work today either, so it will have to be good-enough in the meantime just to have the spot ready and waiting, especially since I feel like dragging a blanket and pillow over to the cleared-out corner for a nap.  Ah, December!  I will take the cold as confirmation of all my good intentions from last Friday and simply let myself rest.  

And somewhat off-subject:  How handsome is actor Barry Bostwick?!  

His movie Holiday Baggage was on TV while Mom and I put up the tree while I was home last week, and as I told her:  Hubba-hubba!  Talk of tree-decorating reminded me of him and the movie just-now.  And I'll let that be the positive note on which this post ends.  :)

Gum on the Sidewalk, Carrot in the Soup: My December

Two favorite found hearts this past week, these.  And what a Discombobulated-Val week it's been, as any week I return home from any trip is, which makes the hearts all the more treasured.  December's are the weeks of the year that more than any others seem to blaze by in a blur of demands on our time and energy anyway, and their crazed hoopla doesn't really suit me anytime.  I prefer this commercial to all the look-at-me holiday-party eyelashes and diamonds-equal-love ones.  My December is not one of credit card debt, and please, God, let me not get swept up in the culture's near-mania that tries to convince me otherwise.  "There is absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the rush," wrote Robert Frost.  Indeed.  I'm spending today straightening up the apartment, then, and finally unpacking my bags from my couple days at Mom and Dad's, shopping for healthy groceries, and updating my to-do lists.  I finished all but the last few odds-and-ends bits of my Christmas shopping earlier this morning and took my daily vitamin and calcium-magnesium supplement too, and I'm counting those as the day's first two successes, one big and one small.  Designating a day or two at the start of each December for today's kind of quiet reorganization will become a tradition here in my home, I think.  Maybe I will even assemble a little Care Package to Self for next December and hide it away with the holiday decorations when I pack them back into the basement again next month:  Another candle, a couple bucks to treat myself to a bakery muffin with, a few stamped postcard to help me get brief thinking-of-you notes out to loved ones, and whatever-else I think of before next month.  The rest of this December day, then, will be one of dish-washing and list-revising, and of journal-writing and beef stew-cooking to help me get back on-track and to feel more organized for the days ahead.  One of enjoying a vanilla-scented candle while writing a note home.  One of washing the mountain of clothes in the laundry basket.  And of appreciating the heart-shaped hellos from God found in both sidewalk litter and store-bought soup.  May I always remember--or at least never go too long before reminding myself--to slow down enough to see them.  

November's Visit Home, with Video :)

I knew even Saturday morning that I needed sleep more than the visit home, but I wanted to help Mom put up the Christmas tree, since she's only four weeks post-surgery and still can't lift much on her own and I didn't want her to push it, and I wanted to see my family, of course.  I was to have caught the bus home to my parents on Saturday but called them that morning to say I needed another day to sleep and catch up around here, so I returned home Sunday instead--and soon realized I'd uncharacteristically told my dad the wrong time to pick me up at the bus station.  When I called home to let him know, Mom said he was out for a walk.  After finally arriving at my parents' house around 9 am, I felt half-asleep again and ended up napping in my former bedroom until about 2:30 in the afternoon, only waking because Mom knocked on my door to let me know my brothers would soon be there.  The exhaustion just dogged me the entire visit.  I went to bed Sunday at 9 pm but woke up around 3 am and read til joining Mom when she got up at 7.  I napped from 1-4:30 pm Monday but then only slept from 10 pm to a little after midnight, reading the rest of the night.  I somehow stayed awake on the bus's return-trip today, finishing the last of the three books I'd packed for the trip, but then crashed once back here at the apartment and slept from noon-5, only rousing myself because I needed to run out for salad things for supper.  The book trilogy I'd decided to reread the past few days was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and the disturbing world of the three books coupled with my collapsing into sleep, or confusedly emerging from it, all weekend added to the muddled-brain feeling. We all had a great dinner Sunday, though, and Mom and I did get the tree up Monday morning, so all was well, even if I felt a bit like I was underwater the whole visit.

The yard was coated in frost Monday morning, and the deck in ice, but the snow held off.  Despite the rain, my younger brother got a deer on the first day of  buck season, and when my two-year-old niece saw it in the back of his truck, she commanded him and my nephew to "Wake it up!  Wake it up!"  Sweet angel.  My older niece also simultaneously broke my heart and made me smile when I learned that after having eight inches of her hair cut off a couple weeks ago, she came home and wrote out a Christmas wish list and the first item on it was "My hair."  These girls!  It is so wild and funny and heartbreaking and beautiful to watch them grow up.  Here's a minute and thirty seconds of Mom with little Bianca:

Sweet, sweet, sweet.  And so begins December.  ♥

Thanksgiving Cornucopia Rice Krispie Treats

After getting home from work this morning, I made a quick dessert for Mike to take to his mom's Thanksgiving dinner.  He thought the "Bugle" chip cornucopias on top of the Rice Krispie treats looked more like ice cream cones, but I think the idea has potential.  If nothing else, maybe they gave his family a needed laugh during a difficult holiday today.  ♥

I thought about using the tiny "Runts" candies that are shaped and colored to look like different fruits, and maybe the little fruits would have given me the look I was going for here.  Anyway, for a quick dessert, these worked and are still cute enough to make me happy.  I added a bit of pumpkin pie spice and a few melted pumpkin spice chips (new to me--they're like chocolate chips but taste exactly like pumpkin pie filling [Ah, strange food science!]) to the Rice Krispies, but the finished squares only taste vaguely of cinnamon.  That's fine too. 

And now, off to work.  Happy Thanksgiving, and a happy day to you all.  ♥

An Early Thanksgiving

Mike and I decided Monday afternoon to have a Thanksgiving dinner together on Tuesday.  Since I work this Thanksgiving and Mike will be home with his family for the holiday--their first Thanksgiving without his dad--we hadn't made plans to have a just-the-two-of-us dinner at all, and I had kind of figured I'd just miss Thanksgiving this year.  Monday afternoon, though, that seemed stupid:  I had the next day off and wouldn't see Mike again until next week, so why would we not just celebrate on Tuesday?!  Last night was our little Thanksgiving, then, and it was a sweet one. 

It was the second consecutive Thanksgiving for this favorite vintage tablecloth of mine, a brown patchwork print that looks like something Holly Hobbie would throw onto her own table for the holiday.  I love it so, and it survived Mike's red wine with no damage, so all the better.  

As I did a couple Thanksgivings ago, I went with paper plates, which made things a bit easier.  I think 2013's simple orange-paper-plated dinner remains my favorite Thanksgiving table setting so far--the orange was just so warm and vibrant, as it was when we had an orange Christmas breakfast table last year--but this year's table was cozy even if a bit muted. 

We had turkey cutlets--neither of us like dark meat, so we never bother with a whole bird--Marie's zucchini gratin, our mushroom stuffing--that I just realized the recipe for is still in my list of posts as a draft, so I'll have to hit "publish" on that one soon--quinoa with just a bit of butter and salt and pepper stirred in, buffalo cauliflower because Mike wanted to try it, and green bean casserole.  Neither of us cares much about potatoes or gravy, so we skipped them, and since Mike was diagnosed with diabetes this fall, we went easy on flour-filled foods and bread products too.  Our mushroom stuffing was mostly mushrooms instead of the more equal bread cube-mushroom ratio it's been before, and we had no side-bread this year.  For dessert, we split a slice of chocolate tuxedo cake from the bakery.  Mike will be having his mom's apple pie and pumpkin pie tomorrow, so he'll be splurging a little more then anyway.

We watched Planes, Trains, and Automobiles over dinner, as has become tradition during our rather informal Thanksgivings here.  This was one of my and my younger brother's favorite movies when we were kids, and it continues to be, and now we all find ourselves quoting lines of it to each other throughout the year. It both tickled me and struck me as poignant to hear a few years ago that my brother and his wife were watching the movie while she was in the hospital to give birth to their dear Bianca--that this sweet film from our childhood was a part of those moments for him and his own family so many years later.  ♥ 

Stuffed didn't come near-enough to the table for pictures until after Mike and I had eaten and cleared things away, but he was his usual impossibly soft and adorable self all day, napping in just about every chair and even softly snoring while he did.  Love, love, love.  ♥ 

I added a chocolate turkey to our cake, as I did with our pumpkin pie on our first Thanksgiving together in 2007.  It took forever to find this tiny candy-turkey in the store; What seemed to be a hundred huge solid milk chocolate ones were displayed more prominently.  Is eating--or even just gift-giving--solid chocolate turkeys a thing that people do at Thanksgiving now?  At a Thanksgiving dinner I attended during my internship days in Wisconsin in 2004, one of the women invited arrived with a number of little foil-wrapped turkeys for all the children present, which struck me as such a thoughtful and fun offering, but the big--at least 6" tall--solid chocolate turkeys are new to me.  I'm sure they'd be gorgeous on a big-enough dessert or as part of a centerpiece, at least.  (And you can tell I work with children when Elsa's bust-topped Coronation Day cake is the first "big-enough dessert" that comes to mind.  :)

Mike did the dishes while I put away the leftovers, and another Thanksgiving had come and gone.

When I took my iced tea glass out to the kitchen sink, I found a soap suds heart dissolving before my eyes.  'One of my favorite found hearts, this one, and a fine finish to this Thanksgiving. 

A happy holiday to everyone celebrating, and a good day to you all.  ♥ 

Here at Home Tonight

"Go light somewhere," I found myself muttering to Stuffed today, just as Mom used to say to me and my brothers when we drove her crazy getting underfoot, as he ran from room to room trying one chair and another, then the cozy corner between patchwork cupboard and radiator, then a rug in front of the bathroom radiator. . . .I was working on my memoir-writing/index card-making, Mike was trying to concentrate while reading the paper, and Stuffed was racing, stopping, racing off again, changing direction. . . .Finally, I gave up and gathered fleece blanket, afghan, and a pile of pillows onto a chair to build a burrow for Stuffed.  And sure enough, within two minutes, he jumped up onto it, curled into a ball, and has spent the past few hours there, nose cuddled into tail, looking distinctly snugger than everyone else here tonight.  

A lazy indoors night here for all three of us, actually.  We ordered a pizza for supper for the first time in awhile, and I'm mixing up a batch of chocolate zucchini muffins after I write this.  The now-pelting rain is supposed to turn to light snow here in the next few hours, and I have both tonight and tomorrow off work, so I'm looking forward to making a blanket-and-pillow fort for myself soon and enjoying two cozy days and nights of reading and writing.  

Thanksgiving Mail

I only mailed out a few Thanksgiving cards this year, but it was still a treat to spend even that little bit of time catching up and placing Snoopy-in-Pilgrim-hats stickers on envelopes.  

Today's Charming Thing

I called home to tease my dad after reading his and mom's latest letters (and gift of contents/treat labels for holiday baking ♥), "You signed your letter with your NAME!" I laughed, and he said, "What?!  Instead of 'Dad,' you mean?  Oh!!  I'm sorry!"  We had a good laugh that I had been downgraded--and via letter!  so cold!--and I am still smiling over it.