Tales of a Shoebox Princess

Geez, is it almost done yet? YES, thank goodness. And she's bought her prom tickets. Dinner is supposedly included, but she and her date don't want to go to the dinner. They want to go out just the two of them. They're planning almost a whole day together. Doing what, I don't know, and I don't think they do either. This is the dress and the nearly finished overlay. Katie has dumped the buttons on the dress in preparation to decide placement. The overlay still needs its ribbon binding around the top. Sewing on one button, just to see what it looks like. It fits! You can click on any of these pictures for a slightly bigger picture. Is it just me, or does Katie look ginormous in this picture? She looks like she's seven feet tall, and she's not even wearing heels. I don't know how I wrangled the perspective of this shot to make her look like she's Amazonian. She's really only as tall as the entertainment center in the background. And lo...

Just a sour note to begin with: It's snowing again. Woe is Minnesota. Someone told me there is forecasted 10 to 12 inches overnight. This is the spring that wasn't. Alas. Now for the funner stuff. I realize that I blog a lot about Katie. But she is a very busy child and she won't be living with us for much longer. Here she is, ratting her hair to get it more 50s-ish for the play. Her hair needs to be TALLER and BIGGER and POUFIER than it ever has been! Rat for your life, Katie! Now for ricotta. I made some today from dry milk, proving that if I ever have to live off of what's in my pantry, I can still have cheese in some form. And yes, it looks like cauliflower. And if you don't season it, it is somewhat bland. All cheese needs to be salted. Anyway, I made some ricotta. It is super easy! I also made some sweetened condensed milk out of powdered milk, but I didn't take a picture. I'm going to use the sweetened condensed milk to make a custard...

"Grease" opens tomorrow. Katie is very excited; heck, we all are (well, maybe not Paul or Jimmy as much. But they are going tomorrow night). As a preview of pictures to come (hopefully) here is Katie in partial costume (and facial expression) as Jan, one of the Pink Ladies. In the movie, Jan is the one who sings the Ipana toothpaste song with the beaver on TV. Katie doesn't get to do that song in the musical, but she gets to eat two Twinkies and a pretend cheeseburger (a hamburger bun with peanut butter in it in real life--my idea, I must say). She's happy about that because we NEVER have Twinkies here at the Shoebox Castle. And I mean that for real. I never buy them; I think Twinkies are icky. We eat ice cream instead. And chocolate. And cake. And brownies. Brownies by the metric ton. What is a metric ton, anyway? Last night, Katie and some of the other cast members went over to the high school and painted the school rock to promote the opening of the mu...

Dumb stupid phone and stupid computer and stupid technology. I have a picture of Matt at the field trip on Monday and want to post it here, but the computer is choosing not to "recognize" the phone. And the phone is miffed because it keeps saying "connect USB cable" when I try to access the picture. The stupid USB cable IS connected! And it has to be the right USB cable, because a) it fits both ports, and b) all the other USB cables in the drawer are for other devices--this particular one has to be the one for my phone. Anyway, picture Matt in a white hair net, with a mug in his hand; the mug is filled with soy protein powder and he's waiting his turn to dump the soy protein into a funnel that leads to a small plastic bag. That's the picture I wanted to post. The elementary student council went to Feed My Starving Children to package food for starving children around the world. I urge all of you to do this at least once if you live around this area. ...

I don't have much time to post because I volunteer at the elementary school this morning and then I have to go grocery shopping. Yesterday was tres busy. I went on a field trip with the elementary school student council (Matt is a 3rd grade representative). I have a picture to post from that, but it's on my phone so I'll have to do that later. Last night Katie and Paul played at the District Jazz Band concert--Paul in the middle school jazz band "Heatwave," and Katie in the Varsity Jazz band from the high school. The concert was fun and Grandma Olsen came to watch. She made me WORK! though. I had to knit on a sock while listening to music. Wah. To the left is Paul on trumpet. To the right is Amber(?) and Katie on piano. Katie had to explain that the reason she is wearing a hot pink headband with a yellow, white and gray sweater is because she was at "Grease" rehearsal until it was time for the jazz band concert and she didn't have time to redo...

No, we haven't just learned how to operate a zipper. We've (and by "we" I mean Katie) learned to install a zipper. It may not be the classic installation technique, but it's her prom dress and she's sewing it. I told her how to do it and she wanted the stitches to be right up against the zipper teeth. It ain't bein' graded, so what do I care? As long as the zipper stays shut while she's wearing it, I'll not make a fuss about how much distance there is between zipper teeth and sewing line. I made her twirl around a few times. A good prom dress must twirl appropriately. Twirly? Check! Now for the shoes! Pretty shoes! Have I ever mentioned that I love shoes? Too bad these shoes aren't mine. As a young girl, I used to dream of having gold shoes. I'd even settle for silver ones. Anyway, here is Katie modeling her shoes. P.S. I love shoes.

I took the two "little" ones for a walk today. Even though a steady drizzle was falling, I needed to get out of the house. So we scrounged around for umbrellas and appropriate footwear (NO NEW SHOES OUT IN THE RAIN) and headed out the door. As you can see, Matt didn't use his umbrella to shield himself from the rain; he used his alternately as a toy, weapon, a scientific experiment, and an instrument to bother his sister. The two of them may be inseparable, but even the best of conjoined twins occasionally irritate each other, I'm sure.