Making dolls into TV show characters.

If any of you have seen the show Once Upon a Time, you will know what I'm talking about in this post.  If you haven't seen it, you might still enjoy seeing what I've been doing with Karina, but the characters probably won't make as much sense.

Karina and I discovered this show last fall.  I saw previews for it with Anna and Elsa and decided to check it out.  I enjoyed it and Karina and I started watching it.  For Christmas, I got the first two seasons on DVD, and bought myself the third later.

Karina and I have just had so much fun with this show, and one day I read a blog where the mom had used an 18 inch doll and turned her into their favorite character from the show, Emma.  That gave me the idea to do the same, but on a much less expensive and smaller scale.  Thank you, Barbie dolls, for existing in so many forms.

First, I made dolls for Karina.  I made all her favorites.  I mostly went to thrift stores and found cheap Barbies I could work with, and a few of them I bought new simply because I needed them to have a certain kind of hair or feature and I couldn't find it secondhand.  But I had so much fun making them for her, that I began my own set as well.  I'm going so share photos of them here.

Just to be clear, I'm not affiliated with the show, the doll manufacturers, or the network.  I'm not affiliated with anything but myself.  No one gave me money or anything else.  It just happens that Barbie dolls come in a wide variety, are easy to find, and can be found inexpensively.

These dolls are mostly incomplete.  But my friend Rachel wanted to see them, so I'm sharing them before they're really "done". 

Okay, so I thought only one at a time was going to load up, but apparently Blogger really wanted them all on the page at once.  I can work with that.

I am dressing the characters for their lives in Storybrooke, not the Enchanted Forest.

First is Regina (the Evil Queen).  I just made this shirt today and it was the first time using this pattern.  It's okay.  I will probably make or buy her a new one, but for now it's okay.  This doll is one I bought new because her face looked so much like Regina's to me.  I cut her hair. 

 This is Emma, the main protagonist.  I think she came in a set with the doll I used for Regina, but she is a basic blonde Barbie and any number of them would have worked.  The jacket was a crazy amazing ebay find that came on a doll I thought I might use as Ruby, but I couldn't bear to try dyeing parts of the doll's hair, so I just gave the doll to Karina to have.  She has cool red streaks in her hair.  Anyway, here is Emma.

 This is Mary Margaret (Snow White). She's a thrift store Disney Snow White doll whose hair I cut short and then glued the bangs on.  She doesn't have a real outfit yet, so she's just wearing a coat someone else made that I bought on ebay.

 This is Maleficent.  Her hat was super hard to make and I'm still not happy with it.  I found one tutorial on making a fedora.  The tutorial was by My Froggy Stuff on YouTube.  I made Maleficent's top and jacket and my aunt made the pants many years ago when I was a little girl, so they just came from my stash (now the girls' stash) of Barbie doll clothes.  There's a better look at her face farther down (thanks, Blogger).

 Something went really wrong with Blogger and it didn't include the closeup of Maleficent, so here she is.

Here is Captain Hook.  He doesn't have a hook yet because I refuse to chop off the doll's hand and I haven't yet found a suitable cover.  I do have the hook, though!  My dad found some little screw hooks at the hardware store.  Isn't he the best?  The doll is new, a Ryan doll (Barbie) because he had the best face for making Hook.  I painted his beard and mustache, darkened his eyebrows, and added his pirate eyeliner.  Then I sealed his face.  A billion times, because every "matte" finish sealer I tried ended up shiny.  I finally just gave up and he looks constantly sweaty.  His jacket came from ebay and it's a story.  There was an old Ken doll for sale with this jacket.  The price was good, especially compared to the prices people were asking for JUST a jacket.  I finally decided I'd get it and use the doll to try to make a Rumplestiltskin.  That was a royal failure, but in the end it worked out.  Karina wanted a Neal doll, and I was able to make that Ken into Neal for her.  Oh, and she's in bed so I don't have pictures of her dolls.  She has Neal and Henry, and I don't have them.

 Here's a closer look at Hook.

 This is another new doll I found very inexpensively at some big box store.  He's Prince Charming/David, and I did nothing to him because he already looked great.

 Here is Ruby (Red Riding Hood).  I love her character and I wish she'd come back on the show more.  I made her cloak and the jacket you can kind of see under it.  The doll was a thrift find.  The pants were bought from Etsy or ebay and the red top is from the Sparkle Girlz line at Wal Mart.

 Okay, here is what I ended up with for Rumplestiltskin.  He's far from perfect but trust me, he's a LOT better than my last efforts.  Plural efforts.  Some serious collectors will be so mad at me but this doll was a Patrick Dempsey as Robert Mackay from Enchanted doll.  I didn't do much to him though, other than paint his eyes brown and make his eyebrows slightly more angry looking.  I am going to gray his hair some and he needs some stubble on his face.  I haven't done any of that yet.  The suit is from Etsy.  I should have taken a close up of his face.

 This is one of the best finds yet.  This doll looks, to me, just like the character of Zelena, who is Regina's even more evil sister.  I have not found another one like her even after scouring literally thousands of listings on ebay.  I have no idea what Barbie this is but she is perfect.  Her outfit is not done at all, in fact, this is not really her outfit at all.  But she was indecent before, so she needed something. 

 Here's Cora, Regina's even more evil mother, and she is a work in progress.  She was a thrift store find.  I painted her eyebrows and tried to add some lines to her face.  She needs a little work and her hair isn't even close to being done.  She'll get a new dress, too.  This doll's head was actually on a ballerina doll, and there was a headless doll in the bin, so I took both and put the head on the other doll.  It's a little wobbly, but for now it's okay.

 This is Belle.  I haven't done anything to her other than put some clothes on her.  I got the jacket from the same ebay seller as Snow's coat. 

 Robin Hood.  Same face sealing problem as Hook, which is why he looks shiny.  He's a regular thrifted Ken.  I used sharpie to darken his hair a little and I painted his facial hair.  I made his jacket and pants.  He won't keep the jacket though.  He's going to get a shirt and green vest.

 Oh hey, another look at Belle.  I made her skirt.

So those are my dolls.  As I said, Karina has her own set, including a Henry and a Neal doll.  I think all of her dolls except Hook and David were from thrift stores.  Oh, and Regina.  But still, Barbies are pretty affordable, depending on the ones you want, so buying those few was not a big deal.

I have learned how to sew a jacket for a Ken doll, pants for Ken, a jacket for Barbie (and had to alter the patterns many times to get them right, and they still need work), painted faces, and just had the best time.  My mom is now going to borrow my DVDs of the show and start watching, too, just because of the dolls. My mom has always been a doll collector.  I guess I am too now.

2015 could be better

This year is off to a rough start.  My grandmother passed away on April first.  But the story doesn't begin there.

The girls and I would go eat dinner with my mom and Nana once a week, right now on Tuesdays.  Because of how Valentine's Day fell, we celebrated a little early.  The Friday before that, Nana had a doctor's appointment, just routine, but she was nervous about it. She had developed a general anxiety over the past few years and was being treated for it. She also had dementia which was progressing slowly.  She stopped driving (a good thing) and gradually allowed my mom to take over things like cleaning and cooking.  But aside from some arthritis, and the gradually worsening dementia, she was pretty much herself.

Sometime over the weekend, after her appointment on Friday and before we came to visit on Tuesday, she hurt her knee.  I don't know how, but when we came to visit, she was in bed.  My mom said she'd been in bed for at least a day because her knee hurt so badly.  We went over anyway, and had dinner, and shared our little Valentine goodies with the girls.  We went back and forth from living room to bedroom to visit with Nana, too, and she seemed like herself for the most part. 

When it was time for us to go home for the evening, we all went back and told Nana bye and good night.  I joked with her that next week when we came she'd be feeling better and tap-dancing for the girls.  She laughed.  But something struck me, and I was so upset all the way home.   I just knew something was wrong.  I looked at her in that bed and it was like she was in the hospital.  I told myself I was just being negative, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, and cried most of the way home.

The next day, my mom called me and said Nana had to be taken to the emergency room.  The two neighbor ladies who'd been coming over to help take care of the dog for my grandmother had found her in such a state of panic that they could not help her.  They insisted my mom call the paramedics, which of course she did.  The paramedics could barely get her out of the door--my mom said she was gripping the door jamb so hard her knuckles were white and they had to pry her hands off one finger at a time.  She was hysterical and afraid she was falling.

As soon as my husband got home, I went to the hospital.  Nana was still in the ER with my mom.  They had given her some medication to calm her so she was sleeping.  My aunt arrived from 3 hours north.  My other aunt was out of town on vacation but was keeping in touch.  At one point Nana woke up and I saw just how hysterical and panicked she was.  We all thought she'd had a stroke.  Her speech was slurred and almost impossible to understand, but she knew us all.  She addressed all of us by name.  They scheduled an MRI and checked for various infections and things.  They ran a lot of tests.  She was moved to a room where she stayed for the weekend.  She remained in a state of general panic almost the entire time.  She slept very little and ate almost nothing.  Finally they discharged her to rehab because they could find nothing "wrong" with her.

One time a nurse was in the room to try to feed her while I was there.  Nana was being rather cooperative but not making a lot of sense.  The nurse asked me, "Oh, so this is her baseline?" as if this was as good as she had always been.  I said, "No!  This is the best she's been, that I've seen, since this episode happened, but she was much better than this."  And I told them.

She moved to the rehab facility on Saturday, Valentine's Day.  We were able to get her into one that was very close to my mom's house and close to mine as well.  About halfway between.  Once she arrived, she did calm down somewhat.  Moving her was difficult, but she liked the young guys who drove the ambulance.  She was very upset on the way though, so they put her on oxygen, which she remained on for about a day at rehab.

My aunt who had been on vacation had a terrible time getting back home because of bad weather and snowstorms, but she finally made it.  She did see Nana in her panic state a little, but after she arrived, Nana seemed to calm down a lot.  However, she never did regain most of her mental faculties.  She knew all of us, even my brother's fiancee, my dad (my parents are divorced), and friends from church.  She confused the names of some of the staff at the center, though, and sometimes referred to me as her daughter, but she got our names right and knew us when she saw us.

Gradually she improved and was able to feed herself and get around a little in a wheelchair.  She had never used a wheelchair before the episode.  They were wonderful at the rehab center, and she was able to stay there after her rehab finished.  The week before Palm Sunday, we finally took Karina and Elena to see her.  She was so happy to see them, and Karina especially was happy to see her.  We ended up staying a lot longer than I had thought we would.  We hadn't taken the girls to see her at first, because we weren't sure how it would affect them to see Nana suddenly in a wheelchair and not making any sense.  She often talked about things that weren't there, people long dead, or just general nonsense.  It was Sunday when Bill and I took the girls to see her.  We stayed very late and the girls hadn't even had lunch but they didn't want to leave.  Finally Elena was getting too restless, so we did leave.  Karina was ecstatic that she could now come back to visit Nana with me.

On Wednesday, March 25, I went to see her alone.  I went a little later than I had been going, because I stayed to fix the girls' dinner.  I had been going as soon as Bill got home from work.  This day I was later, and I almost drove right past and went to my mom's instead because I was really upset and cried all the way there.  But I did go.  Nana was in bed at 6pm already, and she said she had a lot of pain that day, knees hurt, etc.  Arthritis.  I just sat with her like I usually did and we talked, though she wasn't making much sense.  She asked if I'd been crying.  Fortunately I didn't have to lie.  The girls had just gotten a new movie, "Tinkerbell and the Legend of the Neverbeast" and it made me cry at the end (this was also the reason I was late that day; we were watching the movie).  So I told Nan that's what it was.  But I think she knew.  The TV was on playing "Walker, Texas Ranger."  I made fun of it and joked a little and we talked.  Around 7 I left.  I called my mom to update her, as usual. She had been out there that day too, around 2, and Nana was in bed then, too.  The staff said she'd just had a really bad day and was in a lot of pain.  She complained to my mom a lot that day.  Sunday, March 29,  Palm Sunday, Karina had her first communion.  I took her to see Nana with me after church.  When we got there she was by the nurses' station sleeping in her wheelchair .  We put her cupcake in her room and then went back to see if she was going to wake up.  She did, a little.  She remembered Karina had first communion, and we moved her over to a little sitting area to visit.  But she kept falling asleep, so I finally just told her we were going to go because she was tired and sleeping but I'd be back that week again.

I told my mom what had happened.  Monday, the next day, Mom went to see her.  She was in bed and the staff said she had a fever and some infection somewhere.  She was on oxygen just for comfort.  They asked about her advance directive to be sure of it, because the doctor wanted to admit her to the hospital and run gobs of tests.  Nana never wanted that, so instead they put her on IV antibiotics.  The next morning her fever was gone.  That afternoon, when Mom talked to the staff, they suggested she contact Hospice to have Nana evaluated.  Mom asked if it could wait until after Easter, and they said, no, go home and call them today.  At 4am on April 1st, I got a phone call from the convalescent center because they couldn't get through on Mom's cell phone.  Nana had died.  That's how fast this all happened.

The MRI had not found any evidence of stroke and we still don't know what happened.

Some weird things happened the week Nana got sick.  There was some really bad weather, including a big snowstorm that I mentioned which kept my aunt from getting here when Nana was in the hospital.  But it's even weirder.  All of the following things in Mom and Nana's house broke: the TV, landline phone, microwave, stove, Mom's alarm clock, Mom's cell phone, and a teacup bird feeder outside.  Plus the electric teakettle Nana gave me for Christmas a few years ago also broke and the George Foreman grill she gave me.  All in the same week.  That's just weird.

We had a memorial service for her on the 16th of this month.  She died April 1st.  I think she was waiting to see the girls one more time.

It has been a really rough time.  I was very close to my grandmother.  We moved in with my grandparents when I was about 6 or 7.  It's her house we go to every week when we eat dinner with my mom, although it will become my mom's house legally.

Nana was a huge part of my life.  I remember one time in particular when I was sick with some stomach bug.  My stomach hurt so bad, and I was just sobbing while my mom got ready to take me to the doctor.  Nana sat on the couch next to me and rocked me, and it helped me calm down so I didn't hurt so bad.  She used to sing what we called the Honey Song to me. She helped me find my first apartment after I got divorced from my first husband.  She supported my choice to use formula with my daughters.  No one else could do that without "discussing" breastfeeding with me.  Nana never questioned me.  My middle name is her maiden, Scottish name.  Karina shares it as well as my cousin.  She was one of the bravest people I knew.  She met my grandfather during the war, went on three dates with him and married him.  She came here alone, on the Queen Mary, when she was 19 to be with him after they had married in Scotland when she was 18 and he was 24.  She didn't go home for many years.

Nana had three children, 7 grandchildren, and 4 great-grandchildren, one of whom she had not met yet.  Another one is arriving this fall.  She was the last of her 11 brothers and sisters to die.  Her younger sister Moira passed away just last year, only a few months before Nana.

I miss her every day.  I always will. 

 Our last photo of Nana, me, Karina, and Elena, taken at the convalescent center 2 weeks before Easter.

My friend came to check on this blog recently, and of course I haven't written anything in ages.  I stopped trying because I was just running out of time.  It just hasn't been a priority.  I haven't forgotten it, though.  Here's a brief summary of our lives right now.

Karina is in Kindergarten and loves it.  Her teacher and assistant are amazing and wonderful and we just love her school.  The principal is great.  The school is all carpool--no buses--and the teachers and staff are always smiling and waving and happy, whether it's sunny and hot, raining, or 26 degrees out.  Her school has a focus on technology, engineering, design, and science & math, so they do design projects a few times a year.  The first was a simple rocket from a cardboard tube.  The most recent was a paper clock with a stand.  They had to see if their stand would work and not affect the clock hands when they were turned. 

Elena is in preschool three days a week at the school where Karina used to go.  She really likes her teachers but had a bit of a rough start.  She's very emotional and gets upset when other kids cry.  She made a good friend but unfortunately, the friend's dad is military and being moved, so her friend is leaving.  There are three other girls in the class, and five boys.  One of the boys is the son of a mom I became friends with when Karina was in the 2s.  Her daughter and Karina were in the same class all three years, until Karina went on to Kindergarten. 

Karina just turned 6 this past Christmas. Elena will be three in less than a week.  They are playing together a lot more, and they are so different.  Their differences are striking and fun.  I notice the way the play is even different.  Elena is very imaginative with dolls and animals and making them talk and play.  Karina is imaginative, too, but in a different way.  She likes to design and build and organize (just not her room, ha ha!) things.  Even when she was little, she would play with her cars, for example, by lining them up.  Both girls love puzzles and art. They love the movie "Frozen" and Elena loves all animals.  Karina still loves jellyfish and sea creatures.

Karina has learned to read a lot in Kindergarten.  All of a sudden over Christmas break, she was just reading stuff.  Now Elena will ask Karina to read things to her.  I love watching and listening to them play together. 

Elena gave up napping over Christmas break, to our dismay.  She may be ready but we aren't!  Friday last week, she was so tired that she almost fell asleep on the way to preschool at 9am!  She is still adjusting to no naps and an earlier morning than we had over the break.

I found a book a few months ago that I bought to share with them.  I believe it's called "Sisters".  It's just a board book, but the idea is so perfect.  It's about two sisters who are very different in many ways, but also alike in many ways.  At the end, the book says the most important way they were alike was that they loved each other very much.  That is definitely my girls. 

Here are some pictures of the silly things we did over our Christmas break.  We went to the zoo here and some photos are from that trip.

Click here to view these pictures larger

School

Karina starts Kindergarten shortly.  I can't even believe it!  When I started blogging, she was a baby.  A little, bitty baby!  Now she's all big and school-aged, and has a little sister (who is starting preschool!!).  To say the least, this mama is feeling a little nostalgic! 

I'm excited for her school though.  She was accepted into the technology and engineering magnet school, and with all the experiments and constructing of things that she does at home, I think she will just love it there. 

Elena will be going to the same preschool Karina went to, and I know she's going to love it, too. 

On the other hand, what am I going to do with myself for 3 mornings a week when I have no children to look after?  Wow.  Crazy thought!  This day seemed so far away!!  And it's almost here.

We're making the most of what's left of the summer (we go back after Labor Day), heading to the beach and a couple of local theme parks when we can.  Throw in some dentist appointments and open house, and we're pretty much done with summer.

I hope all of you wonderful people who still hang around and might actually read some of what I post on here are doing well.

If you feel the urge to do so, please send positive thoughts and/or prayers for my dear best friend who is still suffering with the results of her car accident, and after having root canal with no anesthesia for the second time (I'm not even making this up; she's deathly allergic to the anesthesia), she developed a massive infection behind her sinuses (or in them?) and had to be on IV meds to clear it up.  She can't get a break, and she could surely use one.  Another family that could use some good stuff is my cousins.  I mentioned a long, long time ago that someone I knew was adopting, but I couldn't say anything else about it.  Well, I can say a little now, and the news is not good.  They opted for international adoption, first through Honduras.  The government down there has been going through a lot of turmoil and they were basically told, "We don't know when you'll ever get a referral for a child."  So instead of sitting around, they looked for other options and chose Congo.  Now that's fallen apart, too.  They have legally adopted a child there, but the government ceased issuing exit paperwork, so now hundreds of legally adopted children are just stuck there.  Some are dying.  Some need medical attention.  We're lucky that my cousin's child is not one of those, but that could change at any time.  These kids need to come home to the parents who desperately want them.  For more information, you can check out "Both Ends Burning" campaign.  And while you're at it, if you're so inclined, send some good thoughts and/or prayers out to heal our broken country, too.  And if you choose to leave a comment about any of these issues, please be polite and appropriate.  Thanks.

Rummage Sale (It's Not Really a Yard Sale Since It's Inside) 2014

Well.  The great yard/rummage sale is over for another year.  Two years, really, since next year we'll be taking our youth group to Detroit for the National Youth Gathering for which this sale raises travel funds.  We did well this year, but it was not our best year.  I started wondering if a new, shiny thrift store in town might be hampering the yard sale crowd's enthusiasm.  I browsed in there recently and saw a number of items I know we had at our own sale.

Well, anyway, here are some pictures with commentary. 

 Here is a view from one end of our gym to the other.  I'm not actually standing all the way at the other end, maybe 1/4 of the way down.  The long tables in the middle are for housewares and glass, cooking items, etc.  In the far corner is electronics, by the green on the wall is kids and baby stuff.

 Here's our holiday table this year with a view to the sports/garden section and on to the books.  We had GOBS of books this year and sold a lot of them.  The school had a used book sale and what they didn't sell they gave to us. 

 Here's a view from one end of the housewares table looking down towards the other end.  This year we had two stand mixers, neither one of them Kitchenaid, but still.  It was so tempting, but the only thing I use my mixer for is to make cake, maybe once or twice a year.  So I refrained. 

 Here's just another view from behind the checkout area looking across holiday.

 Another view of most of the gym.

Our baby items.

 We had a bunch of Beanie Babies this year and a lot of them sold!  I won't tell you how many came home with my own girls....

 Two Disney brand porcelain or ceramic or nice plastic (not sure) Cinderella dolls.  They did not sell.

 Very nice playset with animals and dolls included.

 Lots of other dolls, including some old Barbie dolls.

 Gobs of old Littlest Pet Shop stuff. I think it all sold.

 Disney toddler Snow White, she sold.

 Toy section.  See that old white and brown doll house there under the table?  The people who donated it had stored it in a box labeled "Crusty Doll House".  Ha!

 Toy section

Here is the housewares table.  We had so much glass and china this year it was literally overflowing.  We didn't have enough tables and had to add two more!  We also had our first break this year.  The poor lady felt so bad, and I was just afraid she'd sue us!

 A lady had collected cut glass and when she passed away, her husband donated boxes of it to us to sell.  She had already priced and labeled a lot of it for a yard sale that she never got around to doing.

 Obviously this is not frames or baskets.  I took this while we were still reorganizing.  We ran out of room on these middle tables, as I said, and ended up taking all the frames, vases, and baskets to other locations.

 Linens area, and very diligent helpers.  One is in red, the other is waaaay back in the back by the books.

 Pyrex.  We had so much of it this year!  And check out the cool stacking canister set.  That sold.  I was surprised how much of the Pyrex did not sell.  The prettiest stuff did though.  We had three measuring cups, though, and I ended up buying those when they didn't sell.  Actually only two of them; I didn't need a four cup measure.

 We always have a lot of silver plate.  Some of it was sterling though. 

 

This is a Miche Prima bag with two covers.  We had to reduce it to sell it.  The other lady running the sale with me and I both wanted it, but we have Demi bags and of course these don't fit the Demi bags.  Oh well!

 Folks, that is a MINK coat.  Another lady working the sale called the store (local) where it had been purchased originally, and they no longer sell fur, and were apparently quite perturbed at being asked about the price for it.  We sold it at discount. 

 This is just a pretty teapot marked Japan.

 Interesting candlesticks.  These sold easily.

 Pretty dishes

 Loved the pink teacup set.

 This is an old quilt frame.  I saw similar ones selling for around $50 on ebay, but this one did not have all the parts. 

 Some rain sticks.  You hold them up and the rice or whatever is inside falls down and it sounds like rain.  They were really cool.

 We dubbed this the "Scales of Justice".  This sold.

 

Here is a Dickens Village (brand) Shakespeare's Globe Theater.  I actually know the person who donated it, and it was hard to part with.  We didn't sell it and saved it for next year's sale (2016).

 An almost brand new George Foreman indoor/outdoor grill, which retails for prices all over the place, from $90 to $130.  This sold.

 This was an unusual item.  It did not sell, but it was definitely interesting.

 Part of the jewelry table.  When we open up first thing on Friday, we always have dealers flocking to our jewelry area.  Fortunately, we have a couple who are very good at this and they always help us price and sell the jewelry.  We have never had anything worth a whole lot, but we did have some gold filled teeth this year (which our helper took to a jeweler and for which he gave her $75!) and a gold necklace that we also sold to a jeweler for $85.

 More old jewelry.  It came to us on this green felt just like this.  I think the old stuff is so neat.  There is a pin on here, and I don't know if you can see it or not, but it's a small, black circle and it says, "Mickael Jackson".  Odd.

 This painting/sculpture of a King playing card was handmade by an 8th grader at the school.  The teacher stored it and kept it for many years, but when she retired she had nowhere to keep it.  We had hoped someone would buy it, but unfortunately no one was interested.

I love seeing the old sewing machines and I only wish I had room for them.  This one had a whole accessories box with it. 

 This is an antique sled that is somewhat valuable, to a collector.  We didn't have any collectors this year.

 A Hershey's fondue and s'mores maker kit, and another Hershey's fondue set.  It's always interesting to see what items we get duplicates of.  We also had two tabletop George Foreman grills, in addition to the tall one, and two weird juicer things (I guess it was some kind of juicer) made of a material similar to Pyrex.  They sold.  The Hershey's did not. But the Foreman grills all did.

 Finally here are just a few unusual items.  This pot was HEAVY.  Behind it was some kind of golf shadowbox.  The elephant might have been handmade, I'm not sure.  It was very primitive looking and not at all heavy.  The porcelain lady was marked occupied Japan and that sold.  Below the black pot you can just see the top of an old iron insert--the old kind where you heated it up on the fire or the stove or whatever you did.  In big old letters across the top of this thing it says, "Asbestos".  We have no clue if that means it contains it, was made from it, or it was the company name.  We just kind of stayed away from it!

 

Well as I said, this was not our best year, but hopefully since we won't do a sale next summer, the following year will be better.  We had TONS of stuff, that was no problem.  Friday we made over $2000, but Saturday was just kind of slow.  It was a lot of fun though!  I had the girls with me most of the week, and my friend had her boys.  When we made our work schedule, somehow we shorted ourselves at least a day, so we prepped this entire sale in 4 days.  No really.  We were lucky to have some great helpers who worked hard.  The couple who helps us stayed late several nights when my friend and I could not (we have kids, theirs are grown).  And she and I stayed until about 8pm one night as well.  My mom was a huge help, taking the girls for me over and over again during the day and then taking them home with her after lunch almost every day.  My mom works at the church, so she was just down the hall.  She also kept my friend's younger son on the Friday of the sale when we had our kids there.  She took the kids down to her office and just played with them.  She said she had a great time!  She was a lifesaver, that's for sure!  

I hope you had fun checking out the yard sale!  Here's one last picture for you to enjoy.  There was one day we were working (prepping) and my friend and I had all our kids there.  They play together very well in spite of their age range.  Her oldest is 9 and of course Elena is 2.  Karina and my friend's youngest are the same age.  

 

Now how adorable is that?  I joked that if they got married to each other, this is how they'd end up.  That's Karina in green with my friend's son who is her age, and my friend's oldest is sitting with Elena.  It was just the cutest thing.  Love those girls AND those boys!!