Lilly, Rylan, and Andie realize they don't know how to build fairy gardens + shout out

There was a plan. At the beginning, there was a brave plan to make a fairy garden. The plan fell apart was when it was discovered that no one knew how to make a fairy garden. This, like all plan's pitfalls, ultimately led to the project's abandonment.

Despite their lack of knowledge in the field of fairy garden building, the intrepid trio plunged into the back yard with a passion only teenage girls can muster. (Rhinos, incidentally, happen to be just as enthusiastic in their endeavors to do... rhino... ish... things. Oh gee. The point is, Our girls here have the determination to rival a herd of strong willed rhinos.)

She has arrived.

*humming*

Our rather short story begins with a brand new doll arriving at a brand new place of residence. She is slightly nervous, and the third person omniscient narrator is slightly incompetent in her line of work, as the omniscient part is not entirely truthful.

Pointless Ponderings

In which I write down random thoughts that float through my brain or things that happened recently.

I like fruit. I should remind mom to get some fruit. Mmmm strawberries. And stamps. We need stamps.

I tried curling my hair last night and in the morning it looked like a hexagonal ball of lint on my head. My hair has some natural curl to it and it's very thick so I hate having it on my neck. And pony tails are nice for getting it off my neck, but when I take them out they give me Dave Grohl hair. (At least that's what dad says)
I kind of want to get it cut again.

I discovered mice in my closet. They ate my snickers bar, chewed a hole in my favorite sweater, and pooped all over the place. I spent a lot of time getting everything out of the drawers and cleaning up. And dad washed a lot of the clothes with bleach, so now the colors are messed up.
We put poison under the dresser. REVENGE IS MINE.
But when I found a dead mouse in the hall I discovered that revenge is not at all as sweet as it's cracked up to be.
*shudders*

I got some of the free Pixie Faire patterns and made a t shirt. It's really tedious because I still can't make my sewing machine sew, so everything is hand sewn.

NEWS FLASH:
Last week I finally bought #58!!!!!!!!!!!¡¡¡ <---- the exclamation marks are so happy they're doing head stands.
She should be here on Friday. Let us pray to the gods of shipping (and handling?) that this is true. XD
So ever since I wanted her (last August) I've been thinking I'd name her Parker.
But now I don't knowwwwww!
Do you have any suggestions? I have this list that I use for Izzy's (forever love dolls) Name Game
Potential doll names:

Esme

Erin

Archer

Xylan

Aisling

Kiri

Audrey

Rylan

Kellyn

Ivy

Parker

Basil 

Sarah Wednesday 

Indie

Reason

Zuri- beautiful in Swahili 

Kaimana- powerful ocean in Hawaiian

Zola- calm in Zulu 

Elemental names

Ocean

Misty

Mica

Hazel (nut?)

Fern

River

Sky 

Meadow

Rainy 

Yuzuki- moon

Mizuki-beautiful moon

Sequoia
Of course, this is just my whole list. not all of them would fit her.

NOT MY PICTURE! Found here: http://smg.photobucket.com/user/okore/media/mara.jpg.html

Suggestions of your own?

I might know right when I take her out if the box. It was like that with Andie. She was named before I even got out of Aunt Tiffany's car.

Then again, she was named Rachel back then. And lilly was named Cadence for about two seconds.

So now I am overly excited and have two days to go before I can reasonably check the post office.

~Gwen

Sunshine, green things, and reacquainting myself with the big camera.

There was a period of time when I discovered The Big Camera (As in not my iPhone).

 I loved experimenting with the manual focus and zoom, full of twisty dial fun! But when I posted the pictures they seemed fuzzy (At least on the mobile version, which is the only place I view blogs from). I figured that was because they were too small, so I stopped with the big camera and went back to my phone.

BUT TODAY THE BIG CAMERA HAS RETURNED.

And it is glorious. Because I edited them too.

SO. If the pictures are fuzzy to you, you can enlarge the pictures or something. 

Ugh too much sun on Lilly's face. And this fern frond decided to do a nice dance for us while I took pictures. So if you're wondering why Lilly's overexposed face is up here (shame on you, sun!) It's because the dancing fern wanted to partake in the post.

Trying to decide if this is cool or not. 

Input?

We have this wooden ladder that was going to be part of the slide, but we stuck the slide on the Monstrositoy (that's another story) and let the ladder on a nice big rock. So if you were curious about the glowing white book of confusingness, it's not glowing, white, or a book. It's that ladder and the sun just loves it.

It's pretty warm today in my backyard, perfect for stretching out and letting the sun shine down. Aahhh.

Looks at this! It's split down the middle- Lilly has more springy colors and vibrant leaves behind her, but Andie has muted colors and dead (or at least not budding yet) branches behind her. It's like one is the goddess of spring and the other is the goddess of fall.

The colors seem to go so well here!

Oh pretty Andie. I wasn't really sure about the vest at first, because being "fashionable" is more something Lilly would do. But I like it pretty well, especially when it comes out more red then purple. 

What do you think? Was the vest a good idea?

In these next 2 photos you can see the difference between the edited and not edited.

For this one I bumped up the vibrancy and temperature, I think. 

I love this so so so much I think I'll change Andie's picture to this on the meet my dolls page. (And put up the drawings. I kinda forgot to do that.)

Here's the original. It's sort of washed- out looking, huh?

Oh da feets. 

About Andie's boots: Since I had two pairs of the same boots from the My AG meet, I tried to customize them into awesomeness. If you'll remember, the first pair I painted with coffee. That was cool for the shoot, but they got sticky pretty fast. So I tried again with gouache paint and that might not have failed if I had used the right shade of brown. So I sanded off the old paint with a nail file and tried again with water color. I also cut the tops off. Don't ask me why I did that; I don't know.

Shooting into the sun was a rather silly idea in this spot- I am displeased with the lichen being the background, but the shadow was cool, so I kept it. 

Changed the angle for a greener background.

I like how Andie seems taller. It's probably just how I placed them, but she is supposed to be older. 

I'm wondering if Andie and Lilly have different skin tones, or if this is just an optical illusion. If they do, Andie has kind of an olive tone, and Lilly is more peach. It's funny how we compare colors to fruits.

Grrrrrr Lilly why are you out of focus?

ooooh shiny!

Well that was three pictures with no variation in angle or pose. A mark of laziness. I shall have to make a mental note of this. Good thing we're done.

Alrighty! That was fun! You bored now? Yeah, me too.
soooo have you heard of Izzy's poster contest? Should I enter one of these? Which one looks most poster-ish, or belongs on a doll's wall?

Ta ta for now!

I have no set purpose, but here I am.

I sort of forgot how to photo shoot. I went out to take some pictures of Andie, hoping inspiration would strike on the way out the door, but it didn't.

Yup. Forgot how.

But here's the ok ones, just to prove I did something.

Heidi was out there with me, and she dug up a carrot from last year and carried it around so proudly. She was even more pleased when she discovered it was food.

Apple blossoms

Later that day I went to my cousin's house, which is getting remodeled. Max made a set of bridges from the shed to the garage. We sat up there and ate grapes until my aunt noticed and had us get down.

It has a nice view, up on the roof.

Especially of the Japanese maple tree. Like a great green explosion.

And we walked to the grocery store and found this mini library, where you can take a book out if you see one you want, and put one of your own in later. THIS IS BRILLIANT! I wish there was one of these in my neighborhood, but no one really just walks by there.