Caroleen’s Treasures

We accomplished a quite huge task yesterday….that is doing the laundry. I say it’s huge because if you check my previous posts, the last time we did the laundry was last January 16. Blame it to our crazy weather. Just imagine 10 full loads of laundry in the washer not to mention the whites which I hand washed for four hours. We spent almost a week this month in Davao and I did the laundry there but it didn’t help lessen the pile after pile of dirty clothes. It was yesterday that I heard Donald regret about not getting the automatic machine. He promised that if he did earn from blogging, he would get me one. Maybe here we really need it since Mr. Sun always plays hide and seek with us but if we move back in my hometown where the weather is nicer, we could be fine with our washer. So today, most of the clothes are already dry after we gave ourselves some exercise of running outside to gather them when it drizzles and putting them back on the lines when the sun shows up.

Ella’s doing better and better during her wake up calls. She would not complain anymore about being sleepy and she’s really enjoying the three days in a week that they will spend the entire day at school. I asked her to pose for me in the camera before heading out the door.

Monday

Tuesday

They should be at school the whole day during Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and she’s looking forward for tomorrow.

So what is Carrot doing in this post? I got busy doing a make-over to her body. I bought it last November 2007 and through time, she suffered some injuries that needs to be taken cared for.

Since I ran out of white flannel for my cloth diaper project last Monday night, I finally found time for this poor doll. I have to sew so as not to break my momentum on sewing. When I asked Donald to send Cheche’s allowance for this week, I also sent money towards the fabric that I needed. Soakers for the cloth diapers needs to be thicker (that’s what Donald – my critic – says) so I ended up short. Cheche sent it through LBC yesterday morning and I am expecting it to get on my hands this afternoon…..but boy was I really disappointed because the Next Day Delivery of LBC is not that reliable. Maybe they are just like that here in Trento because they don’t have any competitor. Good thing that Carrot was here to keep me busy.

So last night, I started tearing Carrot into pieces. I have to cut the fabric used on her body piece by piece so I could make a pattern.

Ella was asleep when I started it and I was expecting that she would be disappointed with what I did with her doll. But she just stared at it and made fun of the poor doll. I wanted to finish it quick because she was squealing in delight that she has some Popsicle and pretended she’s licking it. That almost made me puke! And Donald adds to it by bugging me to finish it real quick because he wanted to see the outcome. He’s more excited than Ella and was my critic “again” with this project.

As much as I wanted to get it done that very night, I couldn’t make head and tails with my pattern. So I checked what was wrong. It was funny that I sew the suppose to be “arm” as the “back” of the doll and I attached the “leg” to the armpit. Since it was already late and my back was aching, I just left it there hoping the hands, feet and head won’t follow me in my dream.

Today after our nap, I started cutting new pattern and I used a lighter shade of brown fabric so it won’t get dirty easily and to make it look more real. Glad that Mama Ingrid sent these along with some other stuffs that we don’t have no idea what for.

I don’t know what they call these things but they are very useful. When Carrot started showing some signs of “old age”, I couldn’t make a new body for her because we don’t have these stuff. This is what exactly they used in making this doll and since I do not know the name and where to find them, I just left it like that and thought about getting a new one. But when I saw these in one of the boxes months ago, I knew that Carrot will be given a new life only if she can wait for me to have the time. These are actually very very useful.

It secures the neck,

….hand….

and the foot.

Then I filled it with new and much more fiber to make it heavier and firmer.

Now Ella was happy and somehow forgotten about her Teddy and she was very happy that she went to find her dolls clothes and dressed her for a photo shoot.

And I am sure Carrot was happy too that she was saved. Donald was actually wanting to get Ella a new doll since last year but a couple of times we tried, we ended up getting her a laptop and a guitar.