You're all going to our community toy chest!

I couldn't bring myself to work on projects the other day, so instead I made this.

A Toy Town! I used to make these things all the time. This is a pretty small one; when I was little I built many a vast metropolis that covered the whole living room floor.

Here are some details.

As should probably be obvious from what the non-art half of this blog is dedicated to, I love toys. As the youngest child in my family, I ended up with all the hand-me-down toys, and couldn't be happier about it. I'm on the road to 21 now, and toys are still the things I want for birthdays and Christmases, more than any other stuff. (Well, aside from Batman DVDs.)

But, as anyone who isn't pretending they're too cool to be interested knows, there are always those unattainable toys that only the RICH kids got, like American Girls dolls and those big ol' plastic kitchens.

Toys I want desperately, but shall never have. :(

*Throws temper tantrum like a 3-year-old*
Ok I'm not even sure they make some of these anymore.

But! The toy I want MOST OF ALL, no one EVER made.

 

THIS, my friends, is Princess Pitts' toy castle from one of my favorite video games, Chibi-Robo! I couldn't find any screenshots of it online, so I fell back on the tried and true method of any kid-in-the-early-aughts-with-a-major-crush-on-a-cartoon-character: Take photos of the TV screen. 

I took a whole bunch.

 

From these, (and way more) I pieced together the basic idea of the whole.

 

Ok it's not supposed to be a great work of art. 

So SOMEDAY, I will get a bunch of plywood and paint and MAKE this thing!! 

And I'll also make a ball jointed doll of Princess Pitts herself to live in it.

 

Someday...

Toy screenshots copyright their owners
Princess Pitts picture copyright Nintendo and Skip

Yesterday was Homestuck Day

Thus, I quickly drew this picture.

It is based on the iconic scene of Aragorn and Arwen at Rivendell.

Screenshot from The Fellowship of the Ring

(Rather unkind to myself to put the two pictures by each other.)
The correlation makes sense if you read the comic. TRULY it does.

A different take

"I am promised that my prince will come to wake me someday, so I shall sink into sleep, for what use is my waking life to me until he appears?"

I like to think of new twists for fairy tales. In this version, Sleeping Beauty would rather just use the enchanted sleep as a shortcut to getting the guy, as she has no prospects at the present. Not a bad idea...

Some pretty things

Here's a picture I did the other day.

Desperately trying to get better at cloth.

Here's a picture of a bunch of eggs we (non-pysanky) dyed.

 

Dyeing brown ones makes for some weird results.

And, as promised, here's a picture of all my bunnies.

 

 Good day.

 

Easter time

Easter is radically different here! For one thing, nothing compares to our old church. :(
For another, it just snowed again.

But still, we persevere!
On Palm Sunday we made Pysanky eggs!

Well it was a good try.

Here are just the ones that I made.

 

Here's an unflattering comparison to the professional ones we've bought in years past!

 

We have a long way to go... -.-

Not really relatedly, here are some pictures from a logging sight at the nearest lake.

I just love it! It looks like a perfect place for an orc battle!

And here's the Easter Bear.

Impatient was in my Easter basket this year. He is so named because he stamps his foot real well. He also has a bib that says 'teddy bear,' in case you didn't know.

I think I should put up pictures of all my stuffed bunnies sometime this week.

While it's still lent...

We'll cap off our squalid-dc-poverty series with this picture of Green Arrow.

Lyrics are from the Smothers Brothers' Since My Canary Died.

Photo post coming up next.

Many more things

The first thing today is that I finished knitting this Jason Todd doll for Mary.

 

I think he turned out just great.

The second thing is that I've done another poverty-in-the-shanty-town picture.

 

The team from Young Justice, in Maurice Sendak style, roasting the Helmet of Fate! Because whenever they talk about whether they're desperate enough to use said helmet, I always think they mean are they desperate enough to try to eat it.

Speaking of desperate food situations, ours ain't too good itself. The one thing we have in abundance (read excess) is eggs. We definitely need to slaughter more hens. The other day we got this tiny egg!

Here it is compared to a normal size egg.

In an effort to use these eggs, we have bravely decided to try out one of the dishes from Xxxholic! Dashimaki Tamago! So I looked up a recipe and... it had Dashi. And Mirin. ....Yeah. Pretty sure we'd have to go all the way to the cities to find either of those for sale anywhere. So we substituted! Imma take a page from Melody's book here and give you our recipe findings!

Poor Man's Dashimaki Tamago

·  4 eggs

·  1/4 cup chicken broth (substituted for dashi)

·  1 tsp soy sauce (we actually used worcestershire on account of being out of soy. I'm sure both are fine.)

·  1/4 tsp salt

·  1 tsp sugar

·  1 tsp sherry (substituted for mirin. Vodka might be better, but we're saving what little we have of that for Easter.)

Ya mix that all together and then you pour about a third of it into an oiled pan. Let it sit till it's cooked underneath and then roll it up. (like an omelet, but more of a tube. This is quite difficult.) Put the tube way to the side in the pan, and pour another third. When that's cooked underneath, you roll the tube you've already got up in it, and then repeat with the remaining mixture. Take the tube on a plate and cut it into lil cylinders. (You're supposed to roll it in a sushi mat, but again, we don't have one.) And then eat! It actually turned out pretty good!

So there's one way to use up eggs. 

They should really make a complete Xxxholic cook book, if ya ask me...