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Joy From Us Holiday

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Photo Card

Joy From Us Holiday

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More about Mallory

...written by the girl herself:

Hi! I am going to be 11 in 8 days! I am going to go to the movies with my friends. Then we'll go to Maggie Moo's for ice cream. This is a list of information of when I was 10:

Food: Chicken fingers and fries
Color: Blue
BFFs: All my aunts
Dessert: Cake
Subject: Science (just experiments)
Movie: Diary of a Wimpy Kid
TV Show: Modern Family and Toddlers &Tiaras
Book: Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Activity: Decorating Cakes
Goal: To start a babysitting business

Her mother will add:

Whenever Mallory is outraged or surprised or indignant, she'll say, "But what?" with the funniest, completely un-reproducible inflection. It makes no sense but it makes me laugh every time.

She's a keeper, that one.

As for Mallory

Mallory will be eleven (eleven!!) in eleven days.

She is five-foot-two-and-a-half inches tall -- just an inch and a half shorter than me.

She got glasses!

She doesn't like it when I say this, but I think she's very pretty.

She likes to experiment with makeup:

She loves babies. She's taking a Red Cross Babysitting class after her birthday and is beside herself with excitement about the prospect of getting babysitting jobs.

She loves puppies, and hates wearing pants:

 

In many ways she's still the same little girl she's always been:

 

But she won't be little for much longer. Where did my baby go?

Fortunately, I never have to look to hard to find her.

Sneak Peek, Ctd

Here are some other items I have for the craft show tomorrow:

So, yeah, basically, I have five of the same thing, only in different colors. (The head is creepy, isn't it? I found it in Chris's studio.)

I meant to make some appliques for the headbands -- flowers and owls and whatnot. Ran out of time. I meant to make some more hats, maybe a scarf or two. Ran out of time. Oh, I had big plans,all right. Ran out of time. I guess that's what happens when a) the craft show is only announced 6 weeks in advance b) you have a full-time job c) you keep finding cool projects and then abandoning them halfway through when they don't turn out exactly the way you want (see: nativity scene).

So, my pile of wares is going to be quite small. (I do have some other things, not pictured, but...not really that many.) Oh well, it's all for a good cause. If I make enough money to go out to dinner once it's all over, I'll be happy enough.

What the world needs

and what I would invent if I were at all an inventor, is a gauge, a scale, a measuring device of some kind, that could tell a parent, by means of a retinal scan or a finger prick or a puff of breath, whether a child is sick enough to stay home from school. And I don't want any gray areas, no scale from 1 to 10 because if the child gets a 5 then what? No, I want a red light (child is too ill, will not be able to make it through the day) or a green light (child is fine regardless of her own self-assessment, put her on the bus).

Why is this not a thing?

The Bangs are Back

Phoebe has always had bangs:

But this summer, I asked the girls if they'd like to grow their bangs out.

"Would that mean we wouldn't need so many haircuts?" Mallory asked. I said yes; she was sold.

"Hermione doesn't have bangs, does she? And she has long brown hair like me?" Phoebe asked. I said yes; she was also sold.

So throughout the summer, we had bangs in the face:

By the time school started, they were almost long enough for the side-swept look:

We tried various methods of keeping the bangs contained:

But mostly they just hung down over her eyes:

Then Halloween came, and Phoebe was a perfect Hermione:

And as soon as she took her costume off, she said, "Whew! Now I can finally cut my bangs!"

So this weekend, that's what we did:

Sneak Peek

Rather at the last minute, considering that the event is next Friday, I decided to crochet a Nativity Scene for the kids' craft show.

I finished Mary Saturday night and, no disrespect to the Blessed Mother intended, she was such a pain in the neck to do that I'm not sure I'm going to even attempt the rest of her entourage. Joseph and the baby, maybe. Three wise men, forget it. Lambs and donkeys, don't make me laugh.

So many fiddly bits! Hands and arms and sleeves and hair and head-dresses...I just have no patience. And I am no good at lining things up -- you see that her headcovering is slightly off-center and her arms aren't exactly at the same level. Plus her bangs are askew.

Chris told me I'm too hard on myself and perhaps he's right, but I hate it when things don't turn out exactly the way I envision them.

Then there's this:

I donated it to the craft sale raffle. I am happy with the way it turned out; on the other hand, I tried to make a puppy and a frog from the same basic pattern and both of them flopped.

It's hard, having a hobby.

More items coming soon! (Although not nearly as many as I'd like.)