i spy a road-trip!

*

thebelfries are hitting the road - woo & hoo, baby!

because the smallest of us is not a fan of being in the car for longer than an hour, i had to come up with a bag of tricks to occupy him. the first thing i made was this i spy bottle. he fell in love with one at a friend's house, so i knew we needed one for our holiday.

i bought the water bottle at my beloved japanese $2 store (for $4, don't ask), the bag of rice at the 99c store, & gathered the miniatures from around thebelfry, with most coming from our borrowers' house. definitely an affordable diy.

originally i had planned to use only things found in nature (stones, acorns, shells, etc), but i left the gathering until the last minute. ah well.

it is hard to tell in the above photo, but the dark rectangle is a miniature book. an actual flip-the-pages book!

if you have never played with an i spy bottle before: when you turn or gently shake the bottle, the rice shifts. as it does, the items within are revealed, as others are hidden. in addition to the things seen in these photos there are, buttons, shells, miniature toys, & even a teensy plastic buddha hidden in the rice-y depths. hours of fun! i hope.


tomorrow i'll tell you what other fabulous tricks i have planned :)
~peace.

for now

*

it has been much too long since thebelfry had a faery garden. once thehobbit outgrew his love of faeries & all things teensy (can you hear my heart breaking from there?) i stopped finding time to maintain ours.

now that elfling has discovered the world of the wee folk, i am yearning to make a new one with him. i have a lot going on right now, so all that is happening is a great deal of poking around the internet for inspiration. pinterest has loads of beautiful faery garden photos, as does my lovely friend over at the magic onions.


one thing i was able to do now was to pot a few bits of succulents for my kitchen window.

i used a bucket stolen from thehobbit's old borrowers' house, & a tiny wooden container that was missing its lid.

it may not be the faery garden of which i dream, but it is enough to satisfy. 


for now.


~peace.

in which a hobbit is made very happy

yesterday began stormy both outside & in. manlyman's mom was supposed to spend an early christmas with us, but a heavy snowfall on her mountain kept her away. this made an already rainy, gloomy day much more gloomy for a certain hobbit.

just as we were finishing lunch, the mail arrived. packages from my parents! i knew what his prezzies were, so i knew one of them was just the thing to brighten his day. manlyman gave me a brief version of his annual you cannot open that. it isn't xmas yet. lecture, & i bopped over to little misery to give him the most perfect prezzie ever.



this kit is amazing! it's a wooden, 185-piece puzzle that makes over 30 pieces of dollhouse furniture. he tore into it, squealing with glee, then spent the next 2 hours happily building teensy tables, chairs, & the rest.

they need to be glued still, but that can wait. he was talking about painting & staining pieces, which i hope he does, because right now it's all looking a bit like an unfinished furniture shop.

right now there is a pile of furniture he's yet to install, as well as a pile of things he made out of bits & bobs. i'm trying to convince him to keep some of the better things he created, because i don't want him to think that store-bought is better to have than handmade. that said? i shall not cry to see the majority of corks, match boxes, & their ilk hit the rubbish bin.

it's safe to say that the prezzie saved the day. my favorite thing in the kit?

heehee.

i hope your day is lovely.

~peace.

** the little bowls were purchased here. the toy cubicles are mega legos turned on their side. the cool bamboo wall behind the toilet is from the japanese dollar store - it's tabletop zen garden furniture. **

day :: 30 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

finally! wait, let me rephrase that: fi-na-lly! as much as i've enjoyed the pressure of being forced to post every single bleeping day of november; i must tell you that i have never been so glad to see a month come to an end.

don't get me wrong, it wasn't dreadful. that is to say i didn't detest the whole of it. i only thought evil thoughts about the nablopomo creators every few days or so. this last week perhaps the thoughts came daily, but i am sure that is fairly common. tinker (she who sent me to nablopomo) had a similar experience. on days where i had nothing to say; so would post random babbling; she would just tack up a photo. i'm sure that says a lot about our natures, but let's not delve that deeply.

***

this past week has been freakybusy as i'm sure you noticed. one thing that has been difficult has been making time for thehobbit. some days i wasn't able to be as present as i would have liked, but for the most part i managed to rock the mamahood. like this day:

thehobbit designed the house, & i did the cutting. yes i know we don't need more little houses, but - well i don't have a but... hahahahaha don't have a but hahahaha. i'm sorry, i woke 2 days in a row before 5am, & am a little slap-happy.

we saved the cut pieces to make the windows stand out more, & possibly some shutters. we are not in accord on the subject of shutters, my hobbity boy & i. i may have to leave a teeny note from the borrowers, asking for shutters.

here we have an interior shot of the first story. hey! my cutting mat gives the illusion of linoleum.

thehobbit wants to make this the guest-guest house. let me clarify: he wants this to be the place the guests of the guests stay. got it? yeah, it makes little sense to me as well. i was thinking of turning it into a faery house. we could cover the exterior in thin sheets of bark, the roof with moss perhaps, & all the furniture could be made from twigs. i know! i should be making this house with you instead.

ok my sweet one & only reader, i am off. thanks for sharing nablopomo with me. tomorrow we go back to the regular insanity.

~peace.

day :: 22

unfortunately for daddyo & the other relatives, i managed very few photos of thehobbit's face. it was impossible when every time i turned around, this is what i saw:

there was so much to see; so many things from which to choose. in this photo, thehobbit is trying desperately to decide what he wanted most. having only $10 to spend, he needed to choose carefully. in the end he managed to buy 3 prezzies for the borrowers, with enough left to pay the tax.

thehobbit also helped me choose a birthday prezzie for minisoap. i asked him to pick things for her that he thought were really cool. only 1 of the items he chose will really go to her. the rest shall be put away for thehobbit for xmas. hey! as long as he's still falling for my tricks, i'll keep taking advantage.

looking through tiny windows.

i'll take one of these in my size please.

the day was lovely, & i am definitely glad we decided to drive all that way. maybe one day i'll have a dollhouse of my own. a girl can dream.

~peace.