Vacation!

Yep, it's early in the year to have a vacation, but Mr. BTEG's employer paid for him to attend CodeMash again this year. CodeMash gives a yearly tech conference, based out of the Kalahari indoor waterpark in Sandusky, Ohio. There are a handful of hotels that offer overflow rooms, and one of those is Great Wolf Lodge, also an indoor waterpark, and just down the street. Mr. BTEG has attended CodeMash before; you can read a review about the waterpark and general facilities here. You can see a doll-sized 3D printed tea set that I had printed at CodeMash here.

We as a family have very fond memories of Great Wolf Lodge. The first time we attended was in 2004, and we've been back several times since. Since Mr. BTEG knows how much I love GWL, he booked his room there this year, and I hung out and used the waterpark, while he was attending classes and functions at Kalahari. So I had a lovely vacation from Monday night to Friday morning.

Great Wolf Lodge is really targeted more for younger kids. There are no large water slides or more adult-friendly only water activities at GWL. There are several storytimes, including one at night when kids get to come down in their pajamas. There is a "dance party" where they play kid-friendly dance music, and the kids bop around in their jammies.

There is an "interactive, live-action, roleplaying game" called MagiQuest, that is really slanted towards tweens and younger, although I have seen some enthusiastic roleplaying adults running around the hotel. There are various treasure chests, and interactive screens and so on, situated throughout the hotel lobby area's four floors, and there is a scenario that you go through, after you buy a "magic" wand to activate the items. There are also accessories like capes and swords available for purchase. My niece had a great time playing this back in September. She was ten.

There's also a small craft area, where coloring pages and other simple activities are offered throughout the day. It was fun to see that the chairs are the same as the one as I have in the doll-sized Ikea furniture set that I bought. For some reason, I forget to get a picture of the doll-sized chair back then, so here it is, and then the (small) human sized chairs.

Here's a picture of the waterpark, and of the giant water bucket that fills up and tips every so often.

There is a doll (figure) involved here! The gift shop at Great Wolf Lodge offers some of the World's Smallest brand items. This trip, I picked up a Totally Hair Barbie mini. Despite the name, this Barbie is definitely not the world's smallest Barbie doll. The mini original Barbie, that I got with the 40th Anniversary Barbie doll, is much smaller. The stand is a nice touch with Totally Hair, though.

There was also another figure involved in the trip, a 3D printed one. Thursday night, CodeMash paid Kalahari to keep some of their water attractions open late, and there was food and free beverages, as well as alcohol to buy. There were also a bunch of board games available in one of the conference rooms. Some of the CodeMash coordinators hid mini, 3D printed Baby Yoda figures around the conference area, and if you found one and turned it in, you got entered into a drawing to win a larger Baby Yoda, about a foot and a half high, or 31.75cm.  Mr. BTEG found one, but he didn't win the big Baby Yoda.

He did win an Artistic Achievement award in the Badge My InternetofThings Life competition. Badges were given out (run by an ESP32, if you're a geek) and people customized them. Mr. BTEG designed the 3D printed case, but he also created a program on the screen that Rickrolled other convention goers.

Lastly, I wanted to share this picture with my Australian readers, especially. It's a ride at Kalahari, that gives you the chance to surf, if you can get up on the board. Most of the people that tried it couldn't stand up. A few did a 360 in the wave; most just held on. It's the closest thing that we have to surfing here in Ohio, although I did have a Surf Ohio shirt when I was in my twenties. :)

I hope you don't mind this mostly off topic post! It's what has taken up most of my time so far this year!

40th Anniversary Barbie

This won't be much of a review, since this is an older doll. But I wanted everyone to see pictures of this pretty doll I picked up a couple of months ago. I was fortunate enough to find her locally, so that I didn't have to pay shipping costs to get her.

Since she was made to celebrate Barbie's 40th anniversary, she's wearing a takeoff of Barbie's iconic black and white striped swimsuit. She has the Mackie face mold, and she came with two accessories, an anniversary bouquet of roses, and a miniature original Barbie doll. The miniature doll was actually my biggest reason for wanting to buy 40th Anniversary. The mini doll was supposed to be on the pink box next to Barbie, but one of the rubber bands had deteriorated, and the doll slipped down to the bottom of the box. A couple of rubber bands in here had fallen apart; this doll herself turned 20 years old this year!

She's got quite big ruffles at the bottom of her mermaid gown. I think the one ruffle is standing up so much because it was put in the box that way. Her shoes look nice, but the heels have bent in, as happens with a lot of Barbie shoes. Her skirt is unfinished on the inside, but I imagine Mattel was looking at this doll as strictly display.  She does come with a stand, but that skirt is so tight, I don't know if I could get her on it. And her gloves are pretty nicely cut.

I personally love the Mackie face mold, and this doll's makeup is fairly nice too, I think. I like her French twist up-do, although there's a little bit of a "space" in the back.

And I had to take a picture of a Barbie doll holding the mini Barbie, to give you an idea of scale (especially since the mini doll wasn't visible in the big box!)

This is a nice doll to add to my collection. I don't know how much you will see her with my other Barbies, as this doll looks pretty swanky as is, and I don't want to mess with her hair style. She'll probably be in a photo or two at some point, as well as the roses and mini Barbie. Speaking of which, my daughter just walked past my computer, looked at my monitor, and said "Is that a doll holding a doll?" with a little eye roll. But only a little one. She knows her mom's doll craziness, and as she pointed out, her dollhouse when she was little, had a mini dollhouse. :)

#SNAPSTAR Green Stand, and Barbie Comparison Photos

Boy, November really got away from me. I've been trying to get my Vitamin D intake and light box use at the right balance, and there were just too many days where I wasn't up to doing as much as I did during the summer. The BTEG family has also been busy with other things, including making six homemade pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving, but I'll talk about that after the doll stuff.

In the comments of my previous post, Rachael asked if the green stand would work with other dolls. I promised her I'd check the stand with one of my Cu-Poche dolls and let her know. I didn't think it would take so long, Rachael!

Looking at the two stands, you wouldn't think a doll could use both, would you? However, note that both stands have a round peg at the end, and that they are close in size.

Yes, my Cinderella Cu-Poche can actually use the green stand! Now, the green peg is very close to being bigger than the hole in the Cu-Poche back, so it's not a perfect fit, and thus the doll can fall off the green peg very easily. Then again, I haven't done a lot of photography with the white stand yet, so maybe Cu-Poche dolls don't stay on those that well, either.

Since the green stand does work with Cinderella, you know what I had to do.

I green-screened her onto a beach on my beloved Lake Erie, from a picture I took a few years back.

Here's some other examples of green screens I have done. These two are from last Christmas.

 I put Poppy skating into this picture of me taken on the ice many years ago.

And here are Madeline and one of her friends driving down a snowy road.

Lastly, here's a picture from the first chapter of my storyline, which I really need to get back to. I had to dress Hunter in clothes other than his customary green top, which would have disappeared right along with their green background. I do have blue screen capabilities too, but not a nice blue backdrop, at the moment.

Also in the comments, Dana asked if the #SNAPSTAR body could be used with a Petite Fashionista. Unfortunately, the answer is no. Dawn is very much shorter than the Petite Fashionista and the Skipper body, which I threw in for further comparison.

If you'd like to hear about the BTEG family Thanksgiving, continue below the fold.

#SNAPSTAR vs Liv

When the #SNAPSTAR dolls first launched, so many people compared them to Liv dolls, myself included. And since I wasn't interested in the #SNAPSTAR dolls themselves, I really just cared about seeing them with Liv dolls. I was interested in their similarities and differences more than the dolls themselves. When I found a #SNAPSTAR doll for a good price, this was my chance, and if you were interested in comparing these two dolls in more detail, I hope you'll enjoy this.

Meet Daniela Liv and Dawn #SNAPSTAR. In this picture, they don't seem to have much in common, other than inset eyes, and oversized heads.

However, there is one thing that makes them stand out from most other doll lines, and resemble each other. This:

Yep, both of these lines have removable wigs, and both lines also have/had separate wigs available for purchase to change your doll's look. (I say have/had because the Liv line is long gone, although of course you can still purchase Liv items second hand, including those spare wigs.)

Not only do the dolls wear wigs, they both have holes in their noggins for a wig post.

So of course, I had to know if the dolls could swap wigs. One thing I noticed during the wig sharing was that Dawn's wig cap is much harder, kind of like a hat. Liv wigs, at least in my experience, need to be almost peeled on or off. This is not easy either, as the wig cap, while not as hard as a plastic hat, is fairly stiff.

Here's Daniela wearing Dawn's wig. It really does change her look quite a bit, and although you can see some of her painted on hair in the front, it's not a bad look for her.

I could see her wearing one of the #SNAPSTAR wigs that had bangs or something, very easily.

While Daniela's wig did not fit Dawn quite as well, it doesn't appear completely out of place, and it changes her look too.

This wig is loose on Dawn, and the wig cap doesn't touch all of her head. It wouldn't be good for play, as it would fall off all of the time. But it doesn't look bad here, and I like being able to see more of Dawn's face than her wig shows.

Wigs aside, one look at Dawn and Daniela will tell you they can't share clothes or shoes. Liv can wear some Barbie clothes; I do know that. For this post, I wanted to look at the newer doll on the block. Naked doll with clothing and shoe images under the fold.

My Last Halloween Project - Not Doll Related

I made this costume for the Dancer when she was 15. She wanted to wear it to a gaming convention called Origins. She's worn it a few times since, and she wanted to wear it to work today. The bodice desperately needed new binding, and I originally made the off-the-shoulder sleeves too large and too loose. So the Dancer and I drove out to a quilt store to pick out new cotton fabric for the binding, then I made some bias strips. The Dancer helped me rip off the old binding, I machine-sewed the new material on, then flipped the binding over the raw edges and hand-sewed it down. I also folded the sleeve material in half, tacked it together, and re-sewed the sleeves back on to the bodice by hand. She freshened up the fabric paint on the front and back of the bodice. I made this back in the original Frozen I heyday, so I was fortunate enough to find pre-printed material for the skirt. It doesn't look exactly like the movie, but I wasn't up for making a paneled skirt, and hand-painting several panels with the movie-accurate pattern. :P I also found her necklace, and the hair comb that Anna wears with this costume, on Etsy. I'm glad the Dancer has gotten as much wear out of this as she has, and of course she's planning on wearing it when she goes to see Frozen II.

I hope you all had a great Halloween. We don't get trick-or-treaters here, which I find sad. Maybe someday I'll have grandchildren to go out with.

October Instagram Challenge Day 18: Owl

Since a lot of you aren't familiar with the Ever After High characters, here Ever After High character Cerise Hood is helping Ashlynn Ella travel through the Dark Wood safely. Ashlynn is startled by the strange noise, but Cerise knows it's just an owl. Since Cerise is related to wolves (although few people know it) she feels safe traversing the scary forest near Ever After High, as opposed to the Enchanted Forest. I picked Ashlynn as her traveling companion in part because this particular doll is Through the Woods Ashlynn, who is in a story where Ashlynn and some of the other girls become lost in... the Dark Forest. It's also a little bit of a play on birds; they figure largely in the Cinderella story, more in some stories than in others, but Ashlynn doesn't know much about nocturnal birds. That might be overthinking it.

Still working on "we need to look like we're in the dark, but it needs to be light enough so we can actually be seen in a picture" photography. Owl was on loan from the collection of Mr. BTEG.

October Instagram Challenge Day 17: Favorite Treat

Who can decide on their favorite treat? I can't! I decided to just go with some festive sugar cookies.