Up side down side

The bad news: Bella's ipad went missing somewhere between the car sitting in the garage and the house and is nowhere to be found.

The good news: I found a coloring book, a crayon, a hairband, 3 cat toys, a plate, a set of acrylic bugs, a scorpion (in acrylic) keychain, and Bella's ipod touch that went missing a little over a year ago in Rhode Island.

Overheard: The Gift of Clouds

This Christmas revealed a very magical gift indeed.  Twice, Bella received jewelry from friends and family in a lovely box like this:

Bella immediately threw the jewelry to the side, pulled out the cotton rectangle and exclaimed, "They got me a CLOUD!"  Best Christmas gift ever.

Christmas 2011

As I've mentioned previously, I had somewhat urgent surgery 3 days before Christmas.  Turns out my gallbladder was full of rocks and pretty unhappy.  We decided sooner was better than later since we had family in town for Christmas to help around the house and with Bella.  Surgery went great, they went in laproscopically and there have been no complications (woohoo!).  It did mean that I was a bit hopped up on painkillers Christmas morning though, so excuse the dark footage.  The video is a little over a minute.

In my haze I sort of forgot to pick the camera back up after I put it down, but the day itself was wonderful and I have lots of great photos in my personal memories.

The massive bookshelf dollhouse (aka doghouse according to Bella) was handmade (by Santa of course) thanks to some wonderful assistance from the Camp Lejeune woodshop.  The plans are from Ana White (here) with just a few tweaks like the molding around the windows and doors having some shape instead of being square, the fronts being rounded off and the roof having some fancy edges.  Both Santa and his her helper elf were really proud of the final project, though it definitely was a lot more difficult that the plans made it out to be.  The furniture and people are the very simple unpainted versions from Plan Toys.  Each room came separately so it fits her doghouse dollhouse great.  And once she is out of 'playing with dolls' phase, it will work well for books too.  We always love multi-function!

It has settled in our new playroom and gets lots of laughs and bursts of creativity.

Sad Reindeer, Happy Reindeer

One of the things in Bella's stocking was a light up reindeer nose.  So without further ado, sad reindeer, happy reindeer:

And no, she wasn't really sad, just flexing her dramatic muscles.

Dollhouse

I wanted to share a post solely about the bookshelf dollhouse that Santa had the elves *cough cough* build for Bella this Christmas.  I'll be showing some pictures of Christmas morning soon, but here is some info from the elves.

The plans used came from Ana White at this link.  You can tell that they haven't put a back on ours just yet.  They were planning on doing the back in white bead board.  They didn't get around to it, partially because of time constraints and partially because they wanted to see if she would play with it in a 2-sided setup.  It can always be added later, so no biggie either way.

They liked the flexibility of these plans since it can be played with like a dollhouse, or later serve as a bookshelf.  The elves found the project more difficult than the Ana White site let on, but that's most likely because they were working in a woodshop where you can't just buy 12 inch wide boards like the plans call for.  The elves had to actually rip down and join together multiple boards to make the width correct.  Good thing for Bella that she had 2 very dedicated elves.

They also made a few detail adjustments.  They rounded off the fronts of all of the shelves, dividers and sides.  They used a fancier routed edge around the windows and doors.  And the boards for the roof line got routed to look like they were trimmed.

It's currently painted in bright white for the trim and interior.  The roof and bottom face boards are painted in Olympic's Stormy Weather (D16-3).  The sides are painted in Olympic's Pins and Needles (D51-3).

There are 6 rooms in total.  All of the furnishing and characters are from Plan Toys.  Each room is sold separately.  All of the characters came together as a family.

So let's meet our family:

Here's Daddy.  He almost always lives in the kitchen/dining room.  His hair is a little..um...unorthodox.  And his pants popped that belt the first day.  I couldn't make this stuff up, I swear.

Yep, that's Mommy, face down in bed.  Don't judge me.

Here's Bella, hanging out in the kids' room, her usual smiley self.

This is baby brother.  He doesn't exist in real life, yet.  Only time will tell.

This is the pet set. They were sold separately from the family.  Our real cat really likes the food bowls so one is always missing.  It also came with a dog house, a cat, a bunny, and a cow.  Ok, so it's supposed to be a dog.  But really, with those markings?

Technically this little cat doesn't belong at all, he's from a My Little Ponies set, but he looks so cute on the couch that we left him.

So there is the dollhouse.  Or, as Bella puts it, 'the doghouse.'

This is why it made for the best Christmas yet:

I'd love to hear what you think of it!

Yearly Ornaments

When I was growing up, each year I got to pick out a new ornament for the tree.  When I got married, my mother gave us my ornaments during our first Christmas together.

Vinny and I have continued the tradition, both for ourselves and for Bella.  We choose an ornament each year that signifies something we did during that year.  When we had Bella, we started getting 2 related things, one for her and one for us.  I write the year on each one in silver sharpie.  I decided when we started, that I wanted our ornaments to have a cohesive feel, so our ornaments are all handblown glass.  I'm hoping to continue this way for Bella, but we'll see.  This year, to commemorate our first year full time in the Navy, we got a life preserver/anchor ornament and Bella got a teddy bear with a stars and stripes hat. 

Because all of the ornaments on our tree are glass, the ornaments from my childhood (my favorite ones at least) are displayed separately.  I enjoy getting them out each year and walking down memory lane.  The light hit the 1989 disco ball this year and made them really shine:

Cause nothing says Christmas like a disco ball/smoke detector ornament!

Oh Christmas Tree: Bella's version

I was thrilled to discover over Christmas that Bella likes to draw something other than circles.  I figured I would just see what happened, so I gave her a piece of paper and I took a piece of paper and I drew a Christmas tree.  I went one step at a time and she did the same thing on her paper after watching me.  I think it came out pretty great, and she still got to use her wonderful circles! :)

The circles next to the tree were going to be a person but she got frustrated when it didn't look right and gave up.  Maybe next time...