Happy Valentine's Day

From C.A. Cupid

And Lizzie Hearts

And the Valentine's Day cards that I made for my daughters this year with the Cricut. My eldest loves Winnie the Pooh. I found a cute pattern that I think was supposed to be a cut-out, but I didn't want to deal with all of those little tiny pieces of paper. I discovered that you can tell your Cricut to use an ink pen to draw a pattern, instead of cutting the pieces out.

My youngest daughter is into cooking Asian food. She and Mr. BTEG buy pho by the large box from Costco. This pattern did have little pieces, but not as bad as Winnie. This turned out a little odd looking, partially because of my spacing issues and difficult gluing little tiny pieces, partially because the pieces didn't match up as well as they looked in the pattern (which was digital and didn't show an actual paper version.) 

 

I bought the Pooh pattern for $1.99, but I can now reuse it whenever I want. The pho pattern is subscription based, but I think since it's in my saved folders I can reuse it?? And my daughter will say it's pronounced "fu" and not "fo." And I will say, be grateful "fo" your Valentine's Day card. Happy Valentine's Day! :)
 

Happy Halloween!

Our three friends here are on their way to a costume party. I think they're going to get the best prizes, don't you?

You will be seeing more of me in November!

Ever After High Tri-Castle-On Cerise Hood

Assisted by her genetics as the daughter of the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood (it's complicated), Cerise is the fastest runner at Ever After High. She's wearing a pretty boring (in my opinion) outfit for running.

Cerise is taller than the average Ever After High doll. In order to do this and still allow for clothes switching, Mattel simply made her legs longer than other dolls. The basic track pants with no overskirt really show off how long her legs are.

Cerise seems to have a small smile on her face, which is different from some of the other Cerise dolls that I have, especially Legacy Day Cerise. I think Mattel might have been better off giving the dolls a closed-lip smile in the first place, instead of the somewhat bland expression they had at the beginning. Do you see a smile?

Cerise does not have a huge head of hair, probably to allow it to go through the back of her hood. In the cartoons, she always wears a hood to hide her wolf ears. However, I think there is an adequate amount of hair to cover her roots, even though it is very uneven in the back, as often happens.

Like Lizzie Hearts, Cerise's shoes look like tennis shoes, only with giant heels. The little crest detail on Cerise's heels is very well done. Cerise gets black paint on her shoelaces.

Cerise's extra accessory is a very detailed water bottle. I can't get mine to rest on Cerise's shoulder, so she ends up having to hold it like a purse.

While Cerise is taller than other EAH girls, the group of girls from Wonderland, including Lizzie Hearts, are all shorter. I put Birthday Ball Blondie in one of these pictures to show how tall most of the EAH girls are.

I think Cerise is the least exciting doll in the set, in terms of what she is wearing, and what she comes with. I like her character in the show, though, and the smile that I see makes her different from the other Cerise dolls that I own. I already had three different Cerise dolls, and don't mind adding this one at all.

Ever After High Tri-Castle-On Lizzie Hearts, and Pet Hedgehog Shuffle

Wow, November was a tough month. Despite my light box and Vitamin D, I'm having a hard time coping with the gloomy weather. I'm trying to get back on track for December.

On the Ever After High (Monster High) message board that I read, I saw that the EAH Tri-Castle-On set was on sale at Target. This was a three-doll Target exclusive set, based on the webisode where EAH students compete in the Tri-Castle-On competition. The Apple White/Raven Queen School Spirit two-doll set is related to this set; Apple and Raven cheer on fellow students at the Tri-Castle-On events. I blogged about Apple and Raven back in May. I wasn't really interested in getting the Tri-Castle-on doll set originally; however, with the sale, each doll ended up costing just over $7 each. At that price, I decided to buy it.

I was going to blog about the whole set at once, but there will be close to 30 pictures, considering there are three dolls and accessories, so I decided to blog about each doll individually. I'll try to get all three doll reviews up reasonably close in time. Today I'm going to start with Lizzie Hearts.

In keeping with her lineage, being the daughter of Wonderland's Queen of Hearts, Lizzie is the winner in Hextreme Croquet. Lizzie comes dressed in her croquet outfit, which she also wears in a different webisode where she encourages Apple and Raven to settle their differences with a croquet match. The doll also comes with her croquet mallet, which resembles the flamingo from the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland story, but is gold, with a black beak. Unlike any other EAH dolls (that I'm aware of), Lizzie has unusual eyes in that there is a white heart highlight in each pupil. Fellow Wonderlandian Kitty Cheshire does have eyes that look like cat eyes, but that is because of her cat lineage.

Lizzie comes with earrings, but they're not very impressive. A little paint would probably perk them up. She also has a large gold ruff around her neck, and ruffs around her wrists, with her hands painted black to resemble black gloves.

Her shoes are the usual mile-high heels, but they do resemble tennis shoes. These could also use some paint to bring out some of the details. The heel appears to be a heart, if it was really squashed.

I never planned on getting a Lizzie Hearts doll, because for me, she never measured up to her webisode character. On screen, the heart around Lizzie's left eye is a scarlet red, which contrasts beautifully with pale skin and what look like bright green eyes.

On the doll, both the heart and her eyes are more subdued colors, and she just doesn't look as pretty. I'd be tempted to try to paint that heart a darker red, except I'm not sure I could manage to successfully paint around (or repaint over) her eyebrow and eyelashes. Still, I'm not sorry to inexpensively add her to my collection.

I realize that I haven't mentioned her hair. She has a large piece of red hair coming from the middle front of her head, which is twisted around her face, and joined into a rubber band in back with the rest of her hair. I plan on removing the croquet visor and redoing her hair a little, now that I've reviewed her.

This is a good place to review Lizzie's pet hedgehog, Shuffle. Shuffle is for sale individually, along with a few other EAH pets, like Apple's pet fox, Gala, and Maddie's mouse, Earl Gray. The packaging for the Tri-Castle-On set shows a hedgehog being used as a croquet ball, as in the Alice book, although the hedgehog just looks like it's taking a fun slide on its back.

Rest assured that real hedgehogs are not used in the Ever After High webisodes, nor are real flamingos used. Lizzie's mallet does look like the one her doll comes with, but regular hard croquet balls are used for all the matches.

For Dragon Games, Mattel came out with a small line of baby dragons that matched up with several of the girls. Unlike those dragons, the various pets that were produced next are bobbleheads, including Shuffle. They're still cute, if not exactly all true to size (Earl Gray is as big as the other pets.)

Aren't I sweet?

I managed to pose Lizzie holding Shuffle in her arms.

A girl and her hedgehog

The Tri-Castle-On dolls are a weird mix. The outfits are not very elaborate, since they're for participating in sport. Lizzie's dress does have two prints, and faux princess style seams. Her plastic accessories all have a nice amount of detail, even if they could use some paint to bring out some of those details. Lastly, the three dolls all came with stands! I believe the three-doll set originally cost $50, and though the dolls may have been worth it from the point of view of how much they cost to produce, their outfits aren't exciting. I found it hard to get good lighting on the big box that the set came in, but would you have paid $50 for this? Not meaning any sarcasm here.

As a comparison, Disney Descendants currently has a four pack of dolls out that retails for $60, and is on sale right now for $50. They don't look anywhere as detailed as our EAH trio. I'd love to see sales figures on the four-pack, and a previously released DD four-pack. I personally prefer EAH. :) Do you have any thoughts on Lizzie, multiple packs of dolls, or Disney Descendants versus EAH?