Thursday, 10 July 2014
A little orange!
I had the urge to make something with a piece of fabric that I bought recently. I have absolutely nothing in orange for my dolls and it's not a colour that I'm ever asked about.....so I made a very short, simple, summer dress using this orange and white cotton and edged it with orange rick-a-rack. I intended for it to be this short because I love the Sashas legs!! I made her a headband from some ribbon and she made herself a necklace and bracelet with a couple of orange slice beads. Bailey is happy!!!
Tuesday, 8 July 2014
Gotz girlies.....
I took some photos of my three slate eyes Gotz girlies to compare them. I can see now that my newest girl, the blond Destin, has chubbier cheeks than the other two but that they really only show from a three quarter profile view.....from the front her face looks narrower. Destin also has the most 'preserved' eye paint, although her lip paint is almost gone. When I see them straight on like this, I think Destin looks like a slightly younger child than the other two. However, when viewing them in profile, I think they all look pouty and young looking! I think Lindt, my brunette girl, is fractionally smaller in height than the other two but it's hard to tell as she is barefoot. Another difference is that Destin and Lyric have bigger shoulders than Lindt...and definitely bigger than the English girls and boys.
And here you can see that Lyrics cheeks are less pronounced:
And a full length of all three girls:
I'm very happy with these three girls, I now need to decide if I want to reroot Lyric or leave her wigged....decisions, decisions!
Here's a closeup, with left to right, Destin, Lyric and Lindt...
And individually, closer still. You can see Destin has quite large cheeks, as does brunette Lindt:
And here you can see that Lyrics cheeks are less pronounced:
Another close up of the three girls together:
And a full length of all three girls:
I'm very happy with these three girls, I now need to decide if I want to reroot Lyric or leave her wigged....decisions, decisions!
Monday, 7 July 2014
A little Spanish garden.....
I've been meaning to take photos of our garden here in Estepa, Sevilla, for ages, and today I finally got around to it! Our garden isn't large but it suits us perfectly because we spend so much time back and forth to the coast....we don't really want to leave our son Brendan with too much extra work! When we were house hunting back in 2003 it really was the garden that sold it for me. So many houses here in rural Spanish towns don't have gardens, they have patios and terraces, but I wanted a 'proper' garden! So here we have it! We do also have a terrace upstairs, which I will photograph another day.
The first part of the garden is actually a big square covered patio that is walled on three sides and entered from either the kitchen or double doors from another room in our house. There is a full bathroom off this patio, which is really handy, particularly in the summer when we don't want to traipse through the house when wet from the jacuzzi/hot tub. In winter, for protection, we fill the covered patio with plants that normally are in the main part of the garden during the spring/summer/autumn months. However, at this time of year, it is plant free as the temperatures can get so high that they just burn up, poor things!
The main part of the garden is entered through a white stone arch to which we added a wrought iron gate. Here you can see the garden from the archway. You can also see our walls which are badly in need of a coat of paint...another job for later in the year when it's cooler!
The jacuzzi/hot tub can be seen on the right. We have two large Yucca plants in pots standing either side of the jacuzzi. The door you see on the left is my hubbys 'workroom', housing all his tools and stuff. Originally, and many years ago, that room was an outside kitchen and has a very large, now unused, chiminea inside in one corner.
We have high walls on all sides, which is great, it makes for an incredible sun trap! We get sunshine all day long and well into the evening, which is lovely. The jacuzzi/hot tub is invaluable in the hot months. We used to have a pergola over the top of the jacuzzi as the fibreglass can be damaged by the hot sun, but it was brought down in 2012 by the heavy (for here!) snow fall, so we are waiting to have a replacement made. I was hoping Dee's clever hubby Paul might fancy a holiday in the sun!! ;)
As you can see, the whole patio is paved in non-slip terracota tiles. We have a lot of plants such as Geraniums and Hibiscus growin in pots, as well as some herbs such as mint and basil. But we have planted quite a lot of things in the raised part of the garden, we also added a rockery, which we filled with cacti and Aloe Vera. We've found that these are the best types of plants to grow here as they don't need quite so much water and are very hardy. We originally had a small water feature in the rockery, but it proved impractical as the water was forever evaporating, so we removed it. You can just see our little stone mosaic topped table on the right hand side of the garden, where we often sit to enjoy our elevenses because it's shaded until later in the day.
Our house is attached to our outbuildings, which extend right the way down the garden to the end. The door you see on the left in the above photo is our laundry room, next is a storage room, the door is situated around the corner to the laundry room door, and then the rest of the outbuilding is another large storage room, the door is at the end of the garden. The old chair above is on it's last legs, and is just used for propping open the laundry room door when the tumble dryer is on!!
I really like the plant above, I can't recall it's name but it has several different colours of flowers all growing on the one plant! It loves the sunshine and the little flowers close up in the late afternoon when they are in the shade.
The above photo shows the back of the rockery and the planters full of cacti and succulents. Also we have irises and more aloe vera! The door you see in the background is the middle storage room which I hate going into as there are spiders in there!!! Eeek!
Brian has tried to train the lemon trees to form a sort of arch over the pathway to the end of the garden. In the main it works....except sometimes we walk through and get a hefty wack on the head from a low hanging lemon or orange!!! The tree above holds both lemons and oranges. You can just see the large area at the end of our garden which you reach via two steps. At the moment we have artificial grass down as previously it was just concrete and extremely dusty, this area is a real suntrap and we dry our washing there (even denim dries in 15 minutes in the summer!) and we also have a patio table and chairs there......but after about 9am it's too hot to sit up there....although the dogs love to sunbathe there at any time of the day!!
Looking to the side of the garden again, you can see a large 'date' palm that we bought as a tiny little pot plant several years ago. It produces little fruit in the spring but we don't know if they're edible. Behind that is a rambling rose which is still smothered in small red roses, but a lot of them are perfectly preserved 'dried' roses now! Also above you can see our mandarin tree which is doing well since we took it out of it's pot and put into the ground, it's currently covered in small green fruit which should be ready to eat come the winter.
Here you can see the nectarine tree, behind that an apple tree and in the corner a low palm which was given to us as a wedding present in December 2005, it was a small pot plant and has now completely taken over the corner of the garden there! There's honeysuckle clambouring for space at the bottom of the nectarine tree. So far this year we've had almost 40 nectarines, and they are absolutely delicious, I'm still eating them each morning for my breakfast. You can also see just how dry and dusty the soil is, typical Andalucian dust!!
Above is a close up of the combined lemon and orange tree.
Above, our small hibiscus plant produced a gorgeous saucer sized flower!
Above is another planter of cacti and succulents.
Looking up at another beautiful blue sky!!
Finally I thought I'd add a photo of when our jacuzzi was delivered. Because of it's size, we couldn't get it through the house so it had to be brought in by a massive crane that was parked outside in the street, whilst the crane operator worked from our garden with his remote control. I had terrible visions of it falling out of the straps and crashing down onto our neighbours house.....thankfully that didn't happen!!!
So there you have a little tour of our Spanish garden, I hope you've enjoyed seeing it!!!
The first part of the garden is actually a big square covered patio that is walled on three sides and entered from either the kitchen or double doors from another room in our house. There is a full bathroom off this patio, which is really handy, particularly in the summer when we don't want to traipse through the house when wet from the jacuzzi/hot tub. In winter, for protection, we fill the covered patio with plants that normally are in the main part of the garden during the spring/summer/autumn months. However, at this time of year, it is plant free as the temperatures can get so high that they just burn up, poor things!
The main part of the garden is entered through a white stone arch to which we added a wrought iron gate. Here you can see the garden from the archway. You can also see our walls which are badly in need of a coat of paint...another job for later in the year when it's cooler!
The jacuzzi/hot tub can be seen on the right. We have two large Yucca plants in pots standing either side of the jacuzzi. The door you see on the left is my hubbys 'workroom', housing all his tools and stuff. Originally, and many years ago, that room was an outside kitchen and has a very large, now unused, chiminea inside in one corner.
We have high walls on all sides, which is great, it makes for an incredible sun trap! We get sunshine all day long and well into the evening, which is lovely. The jacuzzi/hot tub is invaluable in the hot months. We used to have a pergola over the top of the jacuzzi as the fibreglass can be damaged by the hot sun, but it was brought down in 2012 by the heavy (for here!) snow fall, so we are waiting to have a replacement made. I was hoping Dee's clever hubby Paul might fancy a holiday in the sun!! ;)
As you can see, the whole patio is paved in non-slip terracota tiles. We have a lot of plants such as Geraniums and Hibiscus growin in pots, as well as some herbs such as mint and basil. But we have planted quite a lot of things in the raised part of the garden, we also added a rockery, which we filled with cacti and Aloe Vera. We've found that these are the best types of plants to grow here as they don't need quite so much water and are very hardy. We originally had a small water feature in the rockery, but it proved impractical as the water was forever evaporating, so we removed it. You can just see our little stone mosaic topped table on the right hand side of the garden, where we often sit to enjoy our elevenses because it's shaded until later in the day.
Our house is attached to our outbuildings, which extend right the way down the garden to the end. The door you see on the left in the above photo is our laundry room, next is a storage room, the door is situated around the corner to the laundry room door, and then the rest of the outbuilding is another large storage room, the door is at the end of the garden. The old chair above is on it's last legs, and is just used for propping open the laundry room door when the tumble dryer is on!!
I really like the plant above, I can't recall it's name but it has several different colours of flowers all growing on the one plant! It loves the sunshine and the little flowers close up in the late afternoon when they are in the shade.
The above photo shows the back of the rockery and the planters full of cacti and succulents. Also we have irises and more aloe vera! The door you see in the background is the middle storage room which I hate going into as there are spiders in there!!! Eeek!
Brian has tried to train the lemon trees to form a sort of arch over the pathway to the end of the garden. In the main it works....except sometimes we walk through and get a hefty wack on the head from a low hanging lemon or orange!!! The tree above holds both lemons and oranges. You can just see the large area at the end of our garden which you reach via two steps. At the moment we have artificial grass down as previously it was just concrete and extremely dusty, this area is a real suntrap and we dry our washing there (even denim dries in 15 minutes in the summer!) and we also have a patio table and chairs there......but after about 9am it's too hot to sit up there....although the dogs love to sunbathe there at any time of the day!!
Looking to the side of the garden again, you can see a large 'date' palm that we bought as a tiny little pot plant several years ago. It produces little fruit in the spring but we don't know if they're edible. Behind that is a rambling rose which is still smothered in small red roses, but a lot of them are perfectly preserved 'dried' roses now! Also above you can see our mandarin tree which is doing well since we took it out of it's pot and put into the ground, it's currently covered in small green fruit which should be ready to eat come the winter.
Here you can see the nectarine tree, behind that an apple tree and in the corner a low palm which was given to us as a wedding present in December 2005, it was a small pot plant and has now completely taken over the corner of the garden there! There's honeysuckle clambouring for space at the bottom of the nectarine tree. So far this year we've had almost 40 nectarines, and they are absolutely delicious, I'm still eating them each morning for my breakfast. You can also see just how dry and dusty the soil is, typical Andalucian dust!!
Above is a close up of the combined lemon and orange tree.
Above, our small hibiscus plant produced a gorgeous saucer sized flower!
Above is another planter of cacti and succulents.
Finally I thought I'd add a photo of when our jacuzzi was delivered. Because of it's size, we couldn't get it through the house so it had to be brought in by a massive crane that was parked outside in the street, whilst the crane operator worked from our garden with his remote control. I had terrible visions of it falling out of the straps and crashing down onto our neighbours house.....thankfully that didn't happen!!!
So there you have a little tour of our Spanish garden, I hope you've enjoyed seeing it!!!
Saturday, 5 July 2014
A new pet?
Connor is playing in the garden when he comes across a beetle! A shiney black beetle with a hard shell and long legs, just scurrying along minding it's own business.....
Devlin and Connor call out to the rest of the boys, and Emilio, Jack and Alex soon come running to see what all the fuss is about!
There's a general discussion about the possibility of Connor taking the beetle inside and keeping it as a pet!
My four Gregor boys!
L to R: Jack (rewigged 71/72), Alex (Puddle eyes 73/74), Emilio (rerooted 1975?), Devlin (1969 PJs)...
Devlin and Connor call out to the rest of the boys, and Emilio, Jack and Alex soon come running to see what all the fuss is about!
There's a general discussion about the possibility of Connor taking the beetle inside and keeping it as a pet!
(He's certainly right about that!!!)
In the meantime, what with all the discussions going on, Mr Beetle makes a hasty (and unseen) departure....
Seeing Connor start to get a bit upset about the unlikelihood of the beetle becoming his new 'pet', the boys try to placate him, suggesting some nice cuddly pets that they know mum would be happy with!
(Ahh yes, nice fluffy, cuddly pets....good suggestions boys!)
(WHAT?? I don't think so....I think that's enough suggestions for now, thank you boys!)
In the end they realise that not only has Connor gone off in a 'real huff', but so has the beetle!
They leave Connor to his sulk and go off to play football!
My four Gregor boys!
L to R: Jack (rewigged 71/72), Alex (Puddle eyes 73/74), Emilio (rerooted 1975?), Devlin (1969 PJs)...
Monday, 30 June 2014
Beige? NEVER boring!!
Who says beige is boring? Not these two little girlies, that's for sure! I had to fight to take the outfits back after they'd modelled them for me! They were so nice and cool on the girls as the temperatures soared into the high 30s centigrade!!!
Two mix and match beige blouse and shorts sets with tiny heart shaped buttons on the front, just perfect with any hair colour, although these are destined for two redheads who live in the USA!
Bailey and Millie are modelling for you today!
Two mix and match beige blouse and shorts sets with tiny heart shaped buttons on the front, just perfect with any hair colour, although these are destined for two redheads who live in the USA!
Bailey and Millie are modelling for you today!
Both outfits are already SOLD. Thank you for looking!
Sunday, 29 June 2014
Summertime, and the living is easy.......
These are old photos but I thought I'd share them on here as I haven't done so before. The Monnaemi sisters, by Elfdoll, are enjoying the swimming pool in the sunshine. These resin BJD girls are 14cm tall and very skinny, I made their swimwear from narrow ribbon and trimmings!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)