Matching "Dollie and Me" Dresses

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I have been exhausted! We were at the doctor's on Saturday for a baby check-up and all is going really well. The baby is getting bigger and bigger as scheduled, but the one minor issue is that the baby's umbilical cord is currently wrapped around his/her neck! Eeek! The doctor said it's really not a big deal and that nearly 30% of babies are born like this. When the baby starts to pop out, we may need some assistance so that it happens quickly and oxygen isn't cut off, but he seems to think I shouldn't need a C-Section. Also, there is obviously a chance that the baby turns around a bit more and fixes the problem before the delivery - fingers crossed for that outcome.

Anyway, enough about me and the baby, back to the post! I am godmother to my niece who is now 7 years old. I can't believe she is that old already, but I guess that's what happens. This upcoming weekend is the anniversary of her baptism. While I wasn't there for the actual baptism (I was living in Japan already), I still feel like I should mark this day somehow. I usually send a little gift to her around this time, although I may have spaced on in last year - gaaa, I don't remember.

Last Christmas, she got an American Girl doll and I think the idea of matching dresses is adorable. As you may recall, I am still a tad unsure as to how I feel about matching dresses/outfits for siblings, but for a girl and her doll - it's precious. I looked online and found this pattern that I quite liked. Then I headed to the fabric store and found a lavendar print in a beautiful, lightweight fabric. I loved the idea of that paired with a bright pink or magenta. I ended up finding another summer-weight, double-layered gauze and bought that in pink. Since I ordered the pattern online and requested email delivery, the pattern was a bit of a pain to make. It took a lot of cutting and taping together. Once that was done, however, the rest was a breeze.

The front panel and sleeves needed a bit of pleating, but it was all very clearly marked out. Then it was a simple assembly - sleeves to the front and then sleeves to each of the back panels. The back is done up with buttons - so sweet!

The most difficult bit was getting the collar on nicely. To be honest, the inside is a mess. I really should have ironed it before sewing it on, but couldn't be bothered and it shows. Luckily, the outside looks clean, I guess that is what counts.

Also, the instructions about the bottom bit weren't very clear. There are two different views for the dress and the instructions were to finish the bottom of the main dress and then attach the bottom strip. This didn't make sense to me at the time, but I figured I would just follow the instructions. That was a mistake. The length ended up a tad short (between a 5/6 and 7/8), which is a bit of a bummer since my niece is quite tall. I considered taking it all out, but decided against it. It looks completely fine, it is just about 2 cm shorter than it was meant to be.

The back has buttons all the way down. I did a fun button for the top and then regular pink buttons for the rest of them down the back. I love accent buttons!

Once that dress was all done, I whipped up the doll dress. It is essentially the same, but with a bit simpler construction and Velcro instead of buttons in the back. Also, as I was on the train headed to mail off the dresses, I realized I didn't take photos of the finished product - hence, half of the photos are of the dress on top of the train seats. Whoops!

I hope she and my sister like the dresses. I think they will be adorable on her and her doll!

Banana Nutella Mini-Breads

A week or two ago, one of K's friends from school came over. K had a lot of fun and I think it kind of helped with him adjusting to school. Since that boy came over, he has been talking a lot about another boy in his class and how they play together at school. So, on Wednesday we had a second school friend come over to play.

The school recently made a little booklet that has a photo of each kid in the class as well as what the kid likes and a message from the parents. I think this is an ingenious idea! Under this boy's name was the fact that he loves Tomica, basically Japanese Hot Wheels. Ages ago, one of my good friends here gave me a Tomica baking mold. Perfect!

We had some bananas that were getting a tad ripe, so I decided on mini banana breads. I started with Emeril's recipe, as I always do. As per usual, I used half butter and half shortening. To add another little change to the mix, I used about 3/4 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup white sugar and no macadamia nuts. The main reason for the sugar switch up was so that I wouldn't have to go to the grocery store.

While I figured I would leave the car-shaped banana breads plain and give those to the boys, I decided to spice up the adult ones with Nutella. I love Nutella. I looked online for Nutella cupcakes, but didn't really like what I was seeing. Most of the recipes had either Nutella piped in after baking or in the frosting. As I was making a bread recipe, I didn't think the piping would work and I didn't want to use frosting. Then I came across this recipe that suggesting freezing spoonfuls of Nutella and then putting it inside the batter. She also suggests swirling some on the top - I opted not to do this, but I definitely regret it.

Once my batter was ready and my Nutella frozen, I got to work. I started first with the car molds. I have used this little guy a few times now and I generally have issues with the cooked cake sticking to the bottom of the mold because of all the little grooves and designs. This time, I put a tiny bit of oil into each one and used my finger to spread it around. I figured that would help with the sticking. Then I filled these up and they were ready for baking - although a tad bit boring...

But not these!! These were not boring at all! I put a spoonful of the batter in each cup, then a drop of Nutella and gave the Nutella a little smoosh.

Then I covered them with another spoonful of the batter and they were ready for the oven. I was able to make the four cars, plus 10 regular-sized cupcakes. I baked them for about 20 minutes, although it might have been a tad bit longer than that. I just kept checking that for the tops to get a tad browned.

Once they were out of the oven and slightly cooled, I cut into one. It was exactly what I had wanted. It was delicious!! As above, I do regret not swirling a tad bit more Nutella on the top - I guess I will have to let some more bananas get a bit too ripe ;)

K had a lot of fun playing cars and trains with his friend and they had a good time eating their cars. The mom and I had a good time eating our little breads and just talking. What fun it is to make new friends!!

Bento Thursday - Nozomi 700

K has been doing much better with school this week. There have been no tears and only the occasional, "It's okay mama, I don't have to go to school this week." To which I respond, "Yeah you do." Followed up with an, "Okay." Pretty easy.

On Wednesday, K and I talked about his bento and what he wanted. He told me he wanted a Nozomi 700 Shinkansen with faces in the windows. He also looked through a book and saw a mouse sausage he decided he needed. The faces in the nori windows are made of ham. The mouse is made of a cut up sausage, ham for the ears and hand, and a cheese face. K also wanted cucumber and carrots. I threw in some fried chicken for good measure. In the mini bento box, he asked for sembei, but I gave him strawberries instead. I told him this morning and he said, "Wahoo!! Strawberries!!" Seems he was okay with my change.

 

As per usual, Y's bento is pretty boring - cucumber with furikake, fried chicken, tofu with greens and potatoes with sausages - and half of which was leftover from dinners during the week. Predictably, he also got two salmon onigiri.  

 

Happy lunching, boys!!

Doggie Bookmark

About a month ago, I made a bunny and strawberry bookmark for one of my English students. While I thought the combination of a bunny and strawberry was an odd request, it was pointed out to me by one of my Japanese friends that both are cute, girly symbols and so this should make complete sense. I'll go with it - it did turn out quite cute. One of the other girls I teach saw the bookmark and decided she wanted one.

Me: You want a bookmark, too? Do you want the same one?
Student: Yeah, I want one too, but I want mine to have a dog on it instead...any breed is fine.

Uhhh, you better believe any breed will be fine! At some point, these girls have to come to the realization that I am not a magician.

Anyway, I got started. She gave me more details of what she wanted - light blue for the front and her initials in it as well. As I had done to find a cute bunny, I Googled dog clip art and found a fairly simple, cute little doggie face. I sketched it on some felt and cut it all out. Once the dog face was assembled, I cut out the actual bookmark fabrics - it would have been awful had I cut them before hand making them too small! I also wrote in her initials with disappearing ink.

Then I sewed the dog face on and embroidered her initials in. I also put a tiny pink heart between the 'M' and the 'K', but you can hardly tell.

Finally I stitched the front to the back piece of felt to give it a nice, clean back.

 

I am not a huge animal lover, but I think this one turned out quite cute as well. I hope she likes it!!

It's Summertime!

 

It has started to get quite toasty here in Osaka. I think they announced that rainy season is upon us, but that might have just been for the Tokyo area. Regardless, it's been raining a lot and super humid. Today was a nice, sunny day to relieve us from the previous four days of drizzle. With the weather warming up, I figured it was a nice time to make some shorts for K.

 

I saw a pattern ages ago from one of my Japanese sewing magazines and liked the style, so I used that pattern. Sorry, no link! That being said, you could probably quite easily draft your own from an existing pair and then add the pockets and change up the fabrics. I started by cutting out all of the pieces.

 

Since both of these fabrics were a pretty rough weave, I zig zagged all edges. I really don't want all of the seams to come apart after one wash.

Then I prepped the pockets. For the front pockets this entailed single bias tape along the top edge and then ironing the outside edge of the pocket under. I had never done a rounded pocket before - rounded edges scare me - but it turns out it is quite simple to do. I sewed a basting stitch about halfway up the pocket, around the curve and then halfway across the bottom. Then I cut out a piece of thin cardboard to mimick the shape of the curve. After that, with the cardboard on top of the back of the pocket, I just pulled one of the strings and the pocket curved up perfectly. Finally just iron this as well as the straight edges down and done! Ready for sewing.

Once the pockets were ready, they were sewed on to each leg piece. This always makes me nervous - will they line up once sewed together?

Luckily they did! I sewed the shorts together, hemmed the bottoms and added the waistband.

The final step was to add elastic and then try them on the kid. They fit pretty well. I made size 100cm, so the waist is a bit bulky. I should have probably made the 90cm for the width and adjusted the length to be the 100cm size. Ah well. Hopefully they will still fit next summer too!

K seemed to quite like them. He said they were "cool and windy." I think "windy" means the breeze goes through them?? Who knows. He kept them on all day, though, so I vote they're a success!

Bento Thursday - Chick Magnet

It was bento day for K at school today*! Last night we talked about what he wanted for his bento. I have a few bento books, so we looked at those and he decided on chick onigiris and a chick egg. K despises furikake, so the onigiri were just with salt. The faces were made of nori eyes and the end of a sausage for the beak. The chick egg was a rolled, Japanese-style omelet, the face was also made of nori and sausage - original, I know. He also requested sweet potato, spinach, cucumber and apples. I thought it was a lot of food for him, but when he got home he was so excited to tell me that he ate everything!

 

 

As per usual, Y's bento was pretty lame. Most of it was leftovers from the previous nights' dinners, along with a few cherry tomatoes thrown in for good measure. I also made him onigiri, but as Y actually likes furikake, they had salmon furikake mixed in the rice with flaked salmon and mayonaisse in the middle.

 

*In my last post, I wrote about how K was having a really difficult time with school. This week, however, he did awesome. He cried all weekend about having to go. Monday morning rolled around and I expected HUGE tears, but was met with just a bit of whining and a voice on the verge of tears. He held it together, came home, and said he had so much fun.

 

Yesterday we talked the entire day about school and why it is important that he go and mama stay home. I reassured him I would be waiting for him at the bus and that we could get some ice cream afterwards. He didn't cry, but didn't seem all that pleased. This morning, he jumped out of bed and was ready to go! He didn't cry at all, and generally seemed excited to be headed to school. Weird. And awesome. He came home and told me about all the fun he had. What a relief. Let's hope next week continues like this...

Dinosaur Cookies

As you may remember, K is now in preschool. The first few weeks went swimmingly - he was excited to go, had fun, and would come home and tell me all about it. Then out of nowhere, he decided he didn't like school and no longer needs to go. He makes up excuses (e.g. he has to go to work) and cries a lot. For a while he was waking up multiple times during the night begging and crying to not go to school, even on non-school days.

Quite obviously this has me concerned. I have asked him what the problem is, and he says he loves his teachers, his friends, the bus, the toys, everything, but the classroom is scary. During his field trip the teacher told me that the other day he went up to her and said something really long to her in English and she couldn't understand. He said it again and she still couldn't get it and then he cried. Apparently he cried for quite a while. I asked him what he told her, but he didn't remember. This broke my heart. Maybe the classroom is scary for him because he has worked out that if there is a problem and he can't express it in Japanese (very likely), then he is kind of screwed. Gaaa...just writing that makes me want to cry.

We have worked out a little plan - more one-on-one time (i.e. Japanese only time) with Y, me being super encouraging of his Japanese (I think he knows more than he realizes), and playing with school friends outside of school. So, last week I called a mom of one of the boys he talks about and they came over to play last Wednesday. The boys didn't really play together so much, but I think just becoming more familiar with a classmate will help.

A few days before coming over, I asked K what snack he wanted me to make for the play date. He said he wanted dinosaur cookies. This came as a big shock to me, since I didn't even know that he knew what dinosaurs were. Luckily, however, a few years ago on a trip home to the States I picked up some dinosaur cookie cutters!

I started by making a half-recipe of my sugar cookies and cutting them with the dinosaur cutters. This was a tad challenging since the tips of the tails are really tiny and kept tearing off in the cutter. I was able to salvage most of them, but some had to be scrapped.

Then, using leftover icing from the Shinkansen cookies, I decorated the dinos. I think the icing had lost some of its water, making it quite difficult to spread. The purple/pink color was the worst. Y said he thought it make them look more like dinosaurs, but I just thought they looked kind of messy.

 

That being said, they tasted just the same as they usually do, so it all worked out. The day after the friend came over, K had to go to preschool. He cried and cried the whole morning before leaving the house and finally the teacher had to pry him off of me to put him on the bus. It totally bummed me out, but he came home and said that he had such fun! What a relief. After that, I figured all this crying and stress would be finished, but he cried quite a bit on Saturday and Sunday just thinking about school. Dear me.

 

Monday morning rolled along, however, and he took it like a champ. There were a few times I thought he would lose it, but he held it together and didn't cry the whole day. Again, after getting home he told me about all of the fun he had. I'm hoping we have turned a corner, but I imagine there will be good days and bad days. Let's hope Thursday is a good one!