Yoo-hoo! Big Summer Blowout!

So what if all the girls in the world love Anna and Elsa? My heart belongs forever to Oaken and his sneaky little jar of lutefisk.

I'm going out on a limb by assuming that everyone in every solar system in every galaxy in every universe knows what movie these characters are from.

And that everyone (solar system, galaxy, universe, etc.) secretly sings Let It Go in the shower, the car and the gym locker room, in English and 24 other different languages. 

True story: I was in the changing room of a certain unnamed sports facility last winter, and there was this little girl with her mother. The kid must have been a preschooler - 4, 5 years old, maybe. And she was singing the chorus of Let It Go, while her mother did the verses. Not blasting the song the way the wretched radio might, but not whispering it, either. Yes - in public. Now, the kid didn't get all the lyrics to the chorus right, because that's how preschoolers sing, right? And her mother kinda corrected her, which is what mothers do, right? But then it got to the point where the mother must have decided enough was enough, because she said something like, "If you're going to sing it, you have to sing it right!"

Jaw drop.

All I will say is, "Give me Hiccup and Toothless aaaaaaaaaaany day".

But I digress.

So the kids are back at school. And we have an accidental tradition in our family of hiding some handmade toy on the first 4 Mondays of the first month in the lunch box of each new First Grade kid. You can read about it here. The kids think it's to help them cope with being away from home for lunch but, really, it's for me - the sentimental Mother doing her Empty Nest Syndrome Dry Run.

This year is Kate's turn, and I remembered that long ago I started another ambitious tradition of preserving her wonderful, opinionated clothing preferences in little painted peg dolls. Except that I never had time to perpetuate the tradition beyond that one birthday. So along with a Kate-and-Bunny pair, I painted her favorite Frozen characters as pegs for her First Grade First Days treasures.

They were loads of fun to paint, especially because of all that gorgeous detail in the movie outfits. 

And I added some hair buns. 

These were just air dry clay, 

• shaped into small balls,
• pressed against the doll heads to mold the curvature of the attachment surface,
• removed and left to dry separately,
• then glued snugly in position back onto the heads,
• and then painted along with the rest of the doll.

I'll give you the quick tour:

Elsa in her two outfits

Anna in her two outfits,

Anna and Kristoff

Anna and Whatsisface Bad Guy,

and Olaf.

No trolls or Sven the Reindeer- I only did the people pegs.

I'll show you in the next post what I made for Jenna and Emily. 

None of their toys involve singing, thankfully. 

And certainly not singing about winter and ice and other things we have more than enough of in Minnesota. Which are looming imminently and ominously in my very near future (and no, I don't want to build a snowman).