I just have to share one of the photos I took at the lake on Saturday. It was very cold, and I was in a hurry, and I guess I wasn't paying enough attention, so when I got home and downloaded the pictures, I couldn't stop laughing......

Talk about tension points!  Ringo has the blades of the windmill at the Nuclear plant sticking out the top of his pom-pom!  He's wearing a 'beanie toque'!!

I try to be aware of tension points, but I was obviously asleep behind the lens that day - or too cold to notice.  Another thing I missed - I always try to keep the doll's stand hidden behind their legs, and Nami's is showing big time. And Jan's glove is showing too (he's holding the dolls).  Thankfully there's Photoshop, and all of those irritants were easy enough to fix......

........and while I was at it, I blushed their faces to make them look really cold.....

Anyway, I just wanted to show how important it is to be aware of all the small details while taking a photo, because most of the time the things wrong aren't as easy to fix as they were this time.

Some of the kids wanted to go down to the lake to feed the geese yesterday - the lazy geese who don't bother to fly south for the winter.  So Nami and Ringo brought bags of crumbled bread crusts

But because it has been so extremely cold and windy all of last week, there were huge jagged ice shelves protruding out from the beach, and the flocks of geese were out bobbing on the waves....

It was so very cold, that Nami's bag of bread that had been stored in the barely-heated 
car actually fogged up inside.  Brrrrrrr....it's COLD!!!!

Ringo pulled up his scarf to protect his face....

Needless to say, we didn't stay there long.

Just a few more pictures from Byuri's birthday party.....

When I was taking cake decorating photos earlier this week, I also took a picture further back to show my kitchen 'studio' set-up that I always use when I want my dolls to look like they are busy working in the kitchen. The technique is called 'forced perspective'. I always set up the dolls on a particular box on the counter to make them the right height for the photos to be successful....

I use a wooden bench made for my larger dolls as the 'counter' for the little dolls, then have to stand them on stacks of Eric Carle board books (my grandchildren love them) so they are high enough to actually work on their 'counter'. Then, move in closer with my camera on a tripod, check the doll's poses, focus, set timer, and use the back of that card leaning against the end of the counter, to bounce extra light into the shadows on the doll's faces.  And here's what I get.....

Byuri was thrilled with her cake! And she's very excited to be six!  

Of course, she was six already, and will always be - that's the perks of being a doll after all. 
All her friends are five or six, and they will also never age.  Must be nice.

Anyway, they all came to her party, and I even managed some photos with the cake...

One of my goals for 2015 is to acknowledge all the younger kid's birthdays - the day they arrived - and do something special for them. With 12 Iplehouse children here now, that means a lot of birthdays, although they are nicely spread out throughout the year.  And then there's the Kaye Wiggs girls as well. And the mice, and the frog..... Okay, this could be a bigger project than I thought.......

The first little girl to celebrate a birthday this year is Byuri, who arrived on this date in 2012. I was going to make her a cake, but I wasn't feeling very well yesterday and with no time left to spare, Elin, Erzulie and Ringo decided they could make one today.

One of these days someone will get a real edible cake, but because we were running out of time this cake is made of styrofoam with crack-filler 'icing'. I thinned some of the drywall compound with water and tinted it with a bit of pink paint. It looked and behaved so much like real icing that I had to keep reminding myself I couldn't lick it off when I got some on my hands.  Thankfully with it being winter and the furnace being on, the 'cake' is proceeding quite quickly since it can dry on a heat register each step along the way. 

Well, better put it back on the heat register so it can dry, and the kids can finish it......

Through much of the holidays, whenever there was a bit of time, I was working on knitting a sweater for Coco. The main colour is a new yarn, and new gauge, so I had some trouble trying to make everything the right size. The first sleeve was discarded as being too narrow at the top where the fancy stitches were. I was knitting too tightly. So I started knitting more loosely, and the main sweater body ended up way too wide, so I unravelled everything and started all over. The main body is rather long, but I'm not redoing it a fourth time. I just haven't finished the sweater yet since I can't decide if I want it to be a button-front sweater or a pullover....

I'm leaning towards a pullover, since I made a white shirt to go under it. That shirt was some chore - I've never made a collar with collar band quite so small. What a fiddly job!

I brought away Bono and Coco Friday evening, so they can get painted. Charie showed me some beautiful laces she'd recently purchased, and gave me a length of a gorgeous embroidered mint green lace. My first thought was to make a dress with a purple or green velvet bodice, but in the end I went for delicate spring party dress, with pale purple accents. I love using real silk, but have very little in the way of pale purple silk or ribbon, so will have to see what else I have in stock.

It's already two days into 2015!  My, oh my, time does fly!! Here's hoping everyone 
has a happy, healthy New Year! And lots of time for dolly fun!

To welcome in the new year, I managed to take a group shot of all the kids at the 
party the other night...........everyone smile at the camera!

Another new year, and another list of resolutions, and like the past few years, most will probably not get done. Too many ideas - which are the easy part - and a year isn't barely long enough to do them all. The best we can do is try, and if it really was possible to do everything I really wanted to, what would that be?

Well, first of all I'd like my newest two little ones painted. They also will need something to wear.  Then there's a couple of older dolls who are really starting to show their wear, and need to be repainted. I still have one official commission to tackle. I tried getting out fabrics and coming up with a design this past week, but it was too busy to be creative. Next week everything is back to normal, and that will be a better time.

I'd love to make some special costumes for the newest larger dolls which joined my group over the past two years. That includes Owen, Leona, Soa, and Butterfly Narae and Narin. That would take up a good chunk of the year already!! I'd also really like to make some Medieval or Renaissance costumes in various sizes.  My fabric boxes are all full beyond bursting, and there's no faster way to reduce the stash than to make gowns with sweeping skirts for larger dolls. Tiny dolls take almost no fabric at all, but make a costume for an SD or larger doll, and the skirt alone takes at least a meter.

I'd like to try sculpting a BJD head for a photo story I have in mind for later in the year.  I'm not sure what medium I'd use, but I would make it to fit on my Maya's body. I've wanted (needed) an older MSD man for some time, and I really don't like sculpting, so have been putting it off. But maybe this will be the year. There's also a couple of other photo stories that I'd really like to do, and I need to make costumes and props for those too.

I'm hoping this is the year I finally get my computer/doll room repainted, and get the display cases rewired so my BJD collection can move in.  The glass cases in my computer room are the only place on the main floor where the sun won't ever reach. Right now they are lit with fluorescent lighting, from the top and bottom, and that creates creepy shadows on the doll's faces. The plan is to replace the fluorescent lights with strips of LED lights down the back of all the vertical wooden door frames. That should give a much nicer, softer, overall lighting. I've had the strips of LED lights for two years already. 

Well, it's January 2nd already, and what have I got to show for it?  Better get busy.....