Bits And Blythes All Over The Place

Jakey says hi!!!!! Don't you just LOVE his smile!!??!! 

Hi everyone!!!!!!!!! How are you????? What have you been doing???? Wow, it's been AGES hasn't it!! Sorry for not posting for SUCH a LONG time! The last time I posted was during the December holidays LAST YEAR! Well, of course then school started, so I got all busy with schoolwork and lots of new activities. Then I had gastroenteritis for almost 3 weeks!! I even had it during the March holidays, BOO! But I'm all better now, thank you Jesus!!

So this post is going to be a little long, because it's a bunch of stuff over the past months squeezed together (I don't have lots of pictures though, because our little old camera slowly died a couple of months ago). Before I start though, I'm going to do some SHOUT-OUTS! In case you don't know, a shout-out is like a greeting, which people usually do over the radio or during a concert, to people you can't see right then. It's a way of saying HI!! If you'd like me to post a shout-out for you to your friends in my next post, let me know!

Here are my shout-outs:
Shout-out to Qin Yi, my classmate and probably the best follower ever. Thanks for swinging by my blog almost every day!
Shout-out to Nicholle -- thanks for being a great friend and my Science partner in the SCSA competition!
Shout-out to Dion -- thanks for being a great partner!
Shout-out to Harmony, Jana, Leeann, Ser Jia, Chloe, Maisy and Jodie for celebrating my birthday with me -- thanks for your super presents and an amazingly fun day!
Shout-out to everyone involved in Earth Hour -- good job!

Now on to my post! (I would have liked to share more pictures of my awesome birthday party with my friends, but I don't really have pictures because the camera was dead at that time. This picture was taken by Maisy's mom, but we're all looking at other people taking pictures with their handphones. Anyway, we had a great time!! Thank you everyone!!!).

So, see me in my blue uniform up there? That's right -- I'm with the Girls' Brigade! Do you know what the Girls' Brigade is? Well, it is an international and interdenominational Christian youth organisation. It was founded in 1893 in Dublin, Ireland. The Brigade operates in over 60 countries worldwide!

The international vision statement of the GB is "Girls' lives transformed, God's world enriched". The motto of the Girls' Brigade is "Seek, Serve and Follow Christ" and its aim is "To help girls become followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, and through self control, reverence and a sense of responsibility, to find true enrichment of life". The GB programme follows four themes: Spiritual, Physical, Educational and Service. These words spell SPES, which is Latin for Hope. Isn't that great?

I chose to join the GB as my school co-curricular activity (CCA). All students in Singapore must participate in a CCA. As a GB girl, I have lots of important things to take part in and different roles and responsibilities. For example, we have gone to help at the nursing home and had camps in school to learn important life skills and about the fruits of the Spirit. We even had a year-end field trip to Pastamania, where we got to make our own pizzas -- YUMMY!!

Last Saturday, I took part in my official enrollment in the GB. There are six badges which can be collected throughout a year (I got my sixth today). Each badge stands for something; in this case -- God's Book, My Journey, My Service, My Treasure, My Activity and My Responsibility. The first letters of the badges spell "GB J STAR", which means a really AWESOME Girls' Brigade Junior :D

And now, here's a quick pic of little Jakey!!! Isn't he the most adorable fuzzpot ever???? He's already 9 months old, and he can stand up all by himself. He has a huge appetite and the most awesome laugh ever!!!

Just yesterday, my Dad brought me, Ro and Jakey swimming. We put a small black swimsuit on Jake and decided that we would put him in the water slowly, and get him used to it step by step. The last time we brought him swimming, he screamed his head off the moment his toe touched the water. However, this time he really enjoyed himself, and Daddy carried him around in the adult pool. He was laughing and happy and Daddy said he swam better than Ro and me (haha, very funny, Dad).

Here we all are hanging out in front of the balcony TV. I know I look deep in thought or plain bored, but I suppose that's how I look when I digest my food. It's a pretty small space, but really cozy. Just behind me is my Mom's tiny craft area, which brings me to my next topic!

Remember my Blythe dolly Isadora? Well, do you know, my Mom is a doll customizer! Doll customizing is really an art form, where the artists take a basic doll and totally transform it. The dolls they make are called art dolls and they are collectors' items. This dolly is Sadie, one of my mom's dolls. Isn't she pretty? Sadie was bought by a lady all the way in the USA. Sometimes she shows my Mom pictures of Sadie all dressed up with her other dolls, which makes my Mom really happy.

Some of my friends own Blythe dolls in their original form and asked me how my Mom could make them look completely different. Well, let me show you! This is a picture of a Blythe in her original form. Even though their hair and eye colours might be different, their faces all have that shiny plasticky look and those same sort of features.

So, to customize her, my Mom has to completely take her apart. This is a picture of Blythe in pieces.

A lot of the work happens on the face of course. My Mom has to remove all her original colour and carve her to look the way she wants. This is what it looks like in the beginning.

This is what it looks like after awhile. Carving is hard work and takes a long time. My Mom says it's kinda tricky because it's 3D and not flat like a drawing. You have to look at it from all different angles.

The carving tools are all very sharp and so are the doll parts. My Mom has a box of plasters on her craft table. See? Poor Mom's finger got a deep cut and was bleeding :(

After she finally finishes carving, it's time for the faceup. This is when she paints in all the colours and things she wants.

My Mom also has to change the eyes and the eyelashes and decorate the eyelids. Sometimes she also colours and cuts the hair. The face she was working on in those pictures became the dolly above -- Francoise! Francoise is also living in the USA now.

Here is Rowan, getting her newly coloured hair and waiting for her new body.

And here is Rowan, all done! Rowan is going to live in South America, wow!

My Mom always takes pictures of her dolls before she packs them up to send to their new owners. She says that after working so hard on them, she really misses them when they go. Here is Miette sitting on the dolly travelling trunk. My Mom also has to put beads and charms on the doll's new pullstrings. The pullstrings control the doll's eye mechanism. Original Blythes have one string to change their eyes (they have four pairs of eyes looking in different directions), but they don't have sleep eyes. Customizers usually put in the second string so they can close their eyes if they want.

These are Sadie's eyelids.

Here are a few pictures of some of my Mom's dolls. They all live in different parts of the world now. This is Marine. I think she has a very cool city look.

This is Ophelia. She is like a romantic princess in a haunted castle.

And this is Scout! She is the only dolly available in my Mom's shop now. I think she is really cute, like a real little girl.

She's a bit of a tomboy too, so I think we should keep her! My Mom says she'll think about it.

OK -- I'm going to stop now for my dinner. I think I'll have more pictures next time because we have a new camera now, yay! But these few weeks we'll be having exams, so I'll be busy with that. Thanks for popping by!! See you again soon everyboooddyyyyyyyyyyy!!!

Staycation Fun!

Do you know why I am doing the dance of joy here? Yes! It's because we went to our other home for a hotel staycation!! It felt like ages since we had been on a little holiday. Again my Mom didn't tell us anything about it till the lastest minute, and we were so excited!

Of course, we did lots of fun things! Even crafting is so much more fun in a hotel room! Here you can see Roro and me on the floor doing our drawings and eating McDonald fries and nuggets at the same time!

This is the velvet poster I was working on. It was so fun colouring the posters, and I like feeling the poster's soft velvet patterns. 

We went out a lot since we were right downtown. Usually we don't go because Mom says it's too crazily demented with psycho weirdos. Here we are at one of our favourite toy stores (although one of the things we bought there didn't work). The display behind us is actually moving -- there are adorable Steiff bears popping in and out of those boxes. And behind me is a giant Steiff bear -- I wonder how much he is!

See? Here is one of the sweet little bears coming out of his box.

Another favourite of mine is this little macaron shop called Laduree. Laduree is a French luxury bakery and they make really delicious macarons (though I don't think they are so much better than some other places which are cheaper). They have about 16 different flavours and the colours are really pretty, but my favourite is the vanilla one, which is a plain cream colour. I like vanilla anything really!

Here I am taking a picture of Pendleton Mouse in a jewelry store. Pendleton Mouse is actually a puppet, so you can actually turn his head from inside him as if he's really looking or listening! I took a whole bunch of photos of Pendleton in the different places we went to on our staycation.

This is a Japanese fish-shaped cake called taiyaki. Mommy was so happy to find a shop selling these since she hadn't had one since she was little. You can watch the lady making them -- the fish moulds are so cute! Mommy got us some to try and we really enjoyed it! Mine was a brown chocolate one.

Here we are heading HOME after a fun day out!

I did a lot of swimming of course! Swimming is a must-do on my hotel staycation list. I had to wait to swim every day in the evening because Mommy says it's too hot to swim in the afternoon. Night swimming was lots of fun too!

We also spent a lot of time just lying around watching FashionTV. Here I am lounging on my comfy Panda pillow pet. Do you know you can fold him together and he becomes a toy? That's what Pillow Pets are. The whole time there we kept singing the Pillow Pets song: "It's a pillow, it's a pet -- it's a Pillow Pet (dum dum)!"

When the weather was fine, we went out to play in the fountain! All we had to do afterward was wrap up in the nice big hotel towels and walk barefoot back to our room. Then we take nice luxurious bubble baths and relax some more!

It's so fun crawling through the watery "bridges". I love playing with water!

Well you know of course that staycation breakfasts are the best! Here I am on one of the mornings with bacon and sausages and hash browns and scrambled eggs and hot chocolate! I also always add orange juice, watermelon and plain yogurt for dessert .

This is Roro's breakfast plate. She likes Mommy to make smiley faces for her.

Finally it was time to go :(

It was too short, but Mommy says we will be back!!! Yes, we will return!!!

See you again soon!!!! More pictures here.

The Phantom of the Opera!

Hi everyone!!! How have you been?? It's the September school holidays at last -- yaahoooo! I am planning to do lots of fun things, like crafting, swimming, rollerblading and meeting up with my best friend!

We have been busy with my little brother of course, but now I have a bit of free time to tell you about some things I have been up to recently. First, let me share with you something I really enjoyed -- "The Phantom of the Opera"! The musical has been playing in Singapore since July but I think it ended on September 1st. The tickets sold out really fast, so we were really extremely lucky to get them.

Actually, Mommy got them secretly and didn't say anything about them the entire time. Ro and I kept saying we wish we could go and Mommy just kept saying, "We'll see" when actually the whole time she had the tickets hidden somewhere.

Then on the night of the show, she said we had to go to her friend's wedding dinner and had to get dressed up. So I wore my silk dress and Ro wore her rosy one. We were sorta excited to be going for a wedding dinner actually haha!

My Dad dropped us off at Marina Bay Sands and we still didn't know we were going to see Phantom. The place is huge and we had to walk and walk like crazy. It was only when we were in the crowd outside of the theatre and Mommy gave the tickets to the usher, that it finally clicked! I screamed with excitement!!

It was soooooooooooooooooooooo cool!! I loved the singing and the props and the music from the live orchestra. Just in case you don't know, "The Phantom of the Opera" is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Charles Hart. It is based on the French novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux, published between 1909 and 1910. We weren't allowed to use any recording devices during the performance of course, but here's a picture of the stage! Isn't it lovely!

During the intermission everyone was buying drinks and standing around trying to look cool. We just ate our hard-boiled eggs! Roro forgot to put in the forks like Mom asked her to, so we had to use our fingers, but that was fine with me.

After the show, we got some candy as a treat -- yum!

On our way to meet Daddy, we passed this awesome fountain. It's called the Rain Oculus and really, the sound it makes is just like a heavy heavy downpour. Here I am in front of it holding my Phantom programme (more about that later!).

It's like a whirlpool in a giant glass bowl that falls out of the hole like a waterfall. It reminds me of an hourglass!

This place is so big, it even has a canal going through it. You can actually be paddled along in a boat called a sampan.

Now let me show you my programme! What was so cool was that when we were in the theatre lobby and saw them being sold, Mom asked the lady how much they were. She said they were $25! So Mom said, "We'll think about it", which really means "That's ridiculous! There is no way we're buying that!" We started walking toward the one flight of stairs, and then Mommy suddenly said, "Let's just check if we should be going up the other flight instead" (the other flights of stairs was way on the opposite end).

Well just as we were reaching it, this Australian man just came up to us out of the blue and said, "Would you like to have this programme? They sent us a couple when I bought our tickets and we don't need this extra one". And he actually just gave it to us!! Wasn't that awesome? Mommy thanked God right there and then because these are the "little" things God does to bless us every day!

So, since I couldn't take any pictures of the show for you, let me share with you some pictures from my programme!

This photo shows the cast during the dress rehearsal of Hannibal. Seeing that huge elephant on stage was really thrilling!

Here are Christine and the Phantom! Roro says that in this photo Christine is slapping the Phantom haha.

Here is everyone at the masquerade! They're all really happy because they think the Phantom has left and won't bother them anymore. But of course, he hasn't. In awhile, he will appear at the top of the stairs in a dramatic red skeleton costume! I loved this scene.

Here is the little monkey music box. This scene is from the very beginning of the show where things from the Opera House are being auctioned off. When the music box is wound up, it plays the song "Masquerade" very sadly.

I loved it soooooooo much and I wish we could go again! Waaah! Oh well, I have to go now, but I've more to share, so see you again soon!