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May the 4th be with you!

Blimey, I almost forgot!

I only get to make this joke once a year....

Are we nearly there yet?

Do you see this?

 

 

Goth Child took this pic as part of her 'Food Photos' week for Photography near the start of December and since then I've been begging her to take some pics of our Christmas decs. However, today and tomorrow she has 'Final Exams'.....except they're not 'Final'.

I'm still only getting my head around this American school system. At the moment she does 7 subjects at High School - English, Accelerated Math(s), History, Honours Biology, Mandarin, Photography and AFJROTC (Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps). And we're at the end of the 2nd quarter of 4 quarters (derr, sorry, it's still only half 6....I'm never totally awake this early). The marks from today's and tomorrow's exams go are weighted and added to her first two quarters class averages to get her grades and half credits in each subject. Is that as clear as mud? Yeah, me too.

I have to say I am incredibly proud and impressed with her. I'm sure she's working way harder than I ever did at school. In the first quarter she was a straight A student. As we speak before exams start (although her first one started just over 15 minutes ago at 6.25am.....yes, you read that right, 6.25am!! and Goth Child is the last person on earth you'd call a morning person) she has 3 As and 4 Bs where she's hovering under the magic 90% on a 86.55, 85.75, 89.37 and 89.75.....but hopefully she'll be able to nudge a couple or maybe all of these over into the As with the exam results.

And all of this revision whilst we've all been battling a seriously yukky cold. Goth Child had 3 days off school with it the week before last...that's unheard of, she's the last one of all 4 of us ever to be ill. Melchett had a day off, I took it easy for a couple of days when my throat blew up making me look like Jabba the Hut and Mr D. has had the most hacking cough for a few weeks now.....plus he's jet-lagged, as per usual.

So at 12.05pm tomorrow we'll be done with getting up at stupid o'clock for 2 weeks! And we can finally do Christmas properly, as a whole family, with no worries about having to break off to go and do more revision/homework etc.

Huzzah!

Before then I've got one last volunteering session at Melchett's school, marshalling for a run, which makes a change from all the art work I've been doing with her class, including a gift thing that I allowed the kids to 'hypnotise' me to forget as I need it to be a complete surprise when Melchett brings it home as a present tomorrow. (Psst, don't tell them I know but it's a calendar of their drawings and a piece of poetry for each month of the year that they've been writing and creating since December 1st.....but obviously I don't know that, I know nothing, where am I and what's my name?)

Other than that we're pretty set to have a jolly old time.....decorations have been hung, cards have been sent, presents have been wrapped, Christmas baking supplies bought in ready to do some serious baking with Melchett (and Goth Child when she wants to get out of bed), we even have in the fridge what Melchett calls "our ham that's a turkey" (it is indeed a turkey). We've been to all our favourite speciality shops to buy British provisions - we have our Bisto gravy, Paxo sage and onion stuffing, cranberry sauce, brussel sprouts, Christmas pudding, rum sauce, mince pies, Quality Street, After 8s, Matchmakers.....and courtesy of a lovely lady in the UK, a Christmas Radio Times is winging its way to us via airmail.....I seriously hope the USPS (United States Postal Service) get it to us on time so I can be pathetic and highlight my desired viewing with a highlighter. Though let's be honest, we all know the only show I'll kill to see is EastEnders (I SERIOUSLY need to see Yusef get his come uppance, for some reason I've found his and Zainab's story far more harrowing than Denise and Lucas's....and not looking forward to one of my faves popping her clogs, but at least it's not Dot....if/when Dot ever leaves or dies I'm going to need therapy again).

Aaaaaaaanyway....

I hope your last minute rushes aren't too hectic....and I promise I'll have some house tour photos on here in the near future, if I can get Goth Child out of bed at all once school breaks up.

Christmas Bucket List task 1: Paper Snowflakes, snowflake tutorials and resources

NOTE: Post now updated with lots more Doctor Who snowflake template links and other Doctor Who things here on Fanbloomingtastic, see half way down.

 

You'll notice I'm blogging about my Christmas Bucket List/Advent Calendar tasks out of order. I also have a confession, I took more than a day to do this task....although I got a lot done on Day 1......whilst watching Elf the Movie for inspiration:

 

In all, Melchett and I made about 70 paper snowflakes of varying sizes. We've enjoyed doing them so much, I can see us carrying on. They're great to make in front of an overly sentimental Christmas movie on the telly.

A lot of the snowflakes we made randomly without use of templates or patterns, but we also used the tutorials and templates on these websites:

Vintage Junky's snowflake patterns and how to's

Lizzerds86 snowflake cutting templates

Bon Temps Beignet Faux Sneux Flakes - and different way of folding and great templates

If you like these I have a few more snowflake links and other Christmas craft ideas on my Pinterest, which is where I also found this great link to making Star Wars snowflakes:

dancell.cwahi.net/star-wars-paper-snowflakes.html

mattersofgrey.com/diy-star-wars-snowflakes

Here are some of the finished snowflakes:

 

Of course, being me, I had to try making some geeky snowflakes. I did a Boba Fett one from the link above, and two Doctor Who ones - a TARDIS complete with centre bow tie (bow ties are cool), although as Goth Child correctly spotted, I got the number of window panes wrong on the TARDIS, and a Dalek snowflake:

 

Here are some how-to's for making Doctor Who snowflakes:

Oodly Crafting's how to make TARDIS, Dalek, Ood and Cybermen snowflakes

Oodly Crafting's templates for TARDIS, Dalek, Ood and Cybermen snowflakes

The Angels have the TARDIS snowflake

The AntiCraft's Dalek, Cybermen and Sonic Screwdriver snowflakes

Just Folk Arts whole collection of Nerd Flakes

Sierra's Tardis snowflakes

Diabolical League's Adipose, Weeping Angel and 'Are You My Mummy? Gasmasked' snowflakes

Doctor Who crafts on Tumblr

And if you like all things Doctor Who, here's how we altered or doctored even, some Van Gogh posters for our Doctor Who Gallery:

And here's links to our Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon Road Trip to the actual filming locations, click any or all of the following circle links for each of locations (the beach/lake, Monument Valley where the gang meet up....and the Doctor wears a stetson now, stetsons are cool, and the dam where Canton captures Rory) PLUS FULL DETAILS, DIRECTIONS AND GPS CO-ORDINATES if you want to visit the filming locations too:

And here's a post about progress on the Third Doctor and Eleventh Doctor's costumes ready for the 50th Anniversary.

Back to snowflakes....

These are some of my favourite traditional shaped snowflakes:

 

It took us 3 nights to make about 70 snowflakes, but then yesterday I had a Christmas movie marathon (another Christmas Bucket List task I'll tell you about soon) whilst I strung all the snowflakes together. I used ordinary white cotton thread but found that the weight of any more than 6 flakes strung together was too much and caused some accidents and rips.

The Christmas Bucket List task said that I should also decorate a room like in the movie Elf - I thought this might be a bit disruptive, and that I might not have sufficient snowflakes...so instead I decided to suspend them from the staircase bannister at one end of our dining room:

 

They're quite delightful. When the heating comes on and blows out of a ceiling vent behind them they start swaying and spinning. It makes me happy :)

 

 

And I think they complement the fairy lights I've strung around the bannister too:

I've still got to put up white paper chains I made from the off-cuttings from making the snowflakes (Melchett thought we were being ever so clever doing this and very green). Of all of our Christmas decorations they look quite tasteful ;) And great fun to do with the family. Very Christmassy.

 

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The World's Scariest Christmas Tree Ornaments.....you decide.

I was going to blog a review of Fright Night (new remake of the camp horror classic now starring Colin Farrell, David Tennant, Toni Colette and the kid who played Chekov in the Star Trek reboot). I'll have to do that later this week, because this morning I went to our local Hobby Lobby and discovered some things EVEN scarier.

Are you ready fright fans?

You might want to hide behind the settee. Or at least have a cushion handy.

You have been warned.

 

No, it's not them. By the way, did you realise it was Christmas? If you've been following my Twitter account, you'll know that I first posted pics of Christmas decs appearing in the shops/stores here in Phoenix back in July! It's ridiculous. They're right next to the Halloween decs. Also ridiculous. It's still Summer for goodness sake.

Ah well, the Americans do like to party (any excuse) and I suppose they need to get their stocks in. The essential Nutcrackers of course....they're HUGE here:

 

Nope, they're not the scariest either. Not even those 2 Rat King Nutcrackers in the centre there. No. Way. Near.

You can tell I'm teasing you, can't you? Building up to a big finish.

Of course, these are not to be confused with the World's Scariest Happy Meal Toy. Though I'm beginning to understand why American children might be desensitised to horror now.

OK, here you go.....I can't even decide which of the following is the most surreal or scariest - you might have to decide, we might have to have a vote, democracy shall prevail (some how I don't think this is quite as momentous as the events happening in Tripoli and Libya at the moment). Leave your opinions and pleas for counselling after the trauma in the comments below....

Ready?

OK, I predict that this year's top/hot trend in Christmas tree decorating will be..... forget your black tinsel trees, they are sooo last year.......*drum roll*....

Planet of the Apes!

 

These weren't ACTUAL Rise of the Planet of the Apes (or ROTPOTA as I keep hearing it being called) merchandise. They were just one of three different types of ape/chimpaneze Christmas tree ornaments I spotted today. I bet there WILL be official ROTPOTA decs too. You can get almost anything here in the USA. Goth Child couldn't decide between a Tron: Legacy racer last year or a Darth Vader for the tree. She eventually went for a glittery pink rhinocerous doing karate. Hmmm.

But who (except perhaps Dian Fossey) would want to hang this on their Christmas tree? And how will Andy Serkis hang on every Christmas tree around the world on the same night? Is he in league with Father Christmas/Santa? I'm assuming both of these are Andy Serkis right?

And as I say, these were only one of three ape-related decs I spotted....and there were about 5 rows like this to choose from....I may have missed some:

 

Actually I tell a lie. There were 4 ape/monkey/chimp decs I spotted including this one: What the heck is this trying to be?

 

I tell you, no wonder the apes want to take over the planet if they see us hanging stuff like this on our Christmas trees. 

I'm guessing in a planet ruled by apes they'd get their revenge by hanging like this on theirs:

 

What is this? An Osmond gone wrong? And what possessed the designer to put nylon ginger hair on it?

It has friends though, including:

 

 

So sorry it's out of focus. I couldn't stop giggling. It's the synthetic hair that does it for me.

OK, some more scary/surreal ones. What about some more animal-related ones?

Gecko in a Santa hat anyone?

 

Cow with a Christmas wreath around its neck? And wearing Christmas pyjama bottoms/pajama pants?

 

Large pink poodle (actually this is possibly the sanest of the lot)?

 

What about hanging symbols of our modern way of life on your tree? The essential chips/french fries and burger Christmas tree ornaments:

 

And of course, a gun-toting Snowman on a rocking horse:

 

I've saved my 'favourite' until last. And by 'favourite' I mean the one that I had to pick my jaw up off the floor for. This is one where I prove I'm a Brit and not a native Zoni (Arizonan). Sorry it's out of focus slightly again, but I was gob-smacked/giggling/concerned - Santa, in camo combats, with his hunting rifle in a glitter jeep containing presents.

I'm sorry, I might have to type that again, I never thought I'd ever type the words:

Santa Claus.

In camoflaged combats (though red trousers/pants).

With his hunting rifle.

In a glitter jeep...

...with presents:

 

Huntin' shootin' fishin' Santa. *speechless*

 

So which one do you reckon is scariest? I'm not convinced I can decide. I suspect the nearer we get to REAL Christmas I might find some even scarier.

*Shudders*

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Remember your vote counts. This isn't Celebrity Big Brother or X Factor. This is even scarier....

Harry Potter - it's not over if you don't want it to be

So have you seen HP7-P2?

Don't you think that would be a fab name for a distant relative of R2-D2? Sorry, I digress, I mustn't get side-tracked onto the links between Harry Potter and Star Wars, I mustn't.

I noticed the glee that news broadcasters jumped on the 'Harry Potter - the end of an era/it's all over/grown women crying in the streets etc' stories at the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 premieres. And I totally see how people could be incredibly upset about it all being over. I'm not feeling that way at the moment though.

 

(Yes, I and my sister-in-law are totally shameless publicity seeking mothers, dressing their cute kids up and going to the opening screenings/book launches knowing the newspaper photographers would be there too ;) Spot Goth Child and Melchett with their cousins....yes, we are aware they all look like one family....adds to appeal to newspaper photographers!)

 *******

I have to admit I was sad about it ending reading Deathly Hallows for the first time....I faced the difficult balancing act of wanting to devour the book as fast as I possibly could, but slowing my reading down, trying to only read a few chapters each day because I didn't want it to end.

Now those of you who know me, or know my family, know we're geeks. We love great stories, we love partying and we definitely love any excuse to dress up.

Harry Potter was a godsend to us.

 

(Goth Child far left with her cousins....the littlest, far right didn't see CoS at this time as we considered it too scary for him, he saw it when the DVD came out, he was just dropping his brother and sister off with us....on my chest in her Baby Bjorn carrier was Melchett though, who slept through the whole movie....thank goodness)

*******

I have to admit the first two books initally passed us by. We can't claim to have been Harry Potter fans from day 1. I remember being at a friend's house and seeing he'd built a cardboard model of this castle with a sign saying 'Hogwarts'. "What the heck is that?" I asked and got preached to by an exisiting Harry Potter convert with all the conviction of a fire and brimstone pastor about why I HAD to read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and the Chamber of Secrets.

It was 1999 and there was a smattering of news coverage on the newly released Prisoner of Azkaban. I also watched a programme about JK Rowling and the Harry Potter phenomena even though most of it made little sense. But everyone talking about Harry enthused, their eyes brightened....so as I hate to be left behind on any craze, I bought the Philosopher's Stone to read on holiday.

IT WAS BLOOMING FANTASTIC!!

I don't think I've ever read a book so fast, or read so much late into the night. Probably the funniest thing was that even though I loved it, I mistook it for 'just a kid's book' and thought myself soooooo clever all the way through to have worked out that Snape was the baddie. Finding Professor Quirrell down in the chamber blew my socks off. I'd been fooled. This wasn't just a book for 'kids' like so many other 'kids' books I'd read, this was intelligent, witty, massive, wonderful (in the true full of wonder and delight sense of the word).

Straight back off holiday I bought Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban (which remains my favourite novel and my favourite movie of the whole saga).

My sister-in-law got heavily into Harry Potter too and soon we were reading the stories to our children and getting them hooked.

The next joy was the Stephen Fry read audiobooks. These kept Goth Child company before sleep each night and HAD to listened to on every car journey, even the short ones. Stephen Fry is the BEST at all the multiple voices in Harry World world - I adore his Molly Weasley and his Aunt Petunia. (More on this later).

The Harry Potter birthday parties followed...I can't find at the moment photos of when we hired the village hall, set out tressel tables and prepared a Hogwarts feast all for just 8 or so children. My youngest nephew sprayed his hair bright orange to be Ron Weasley...he's probably be quite glad I can't find the photo. I have got these ones though from the opening of Prisoner of Azkaban....

 

(First appearance of Melchett there. It was her turn not to see the movie, she had to wait a couple of years before we let her watch the Dementors)

*******

And this...one of the many Harry Potter photoshopped birthday cards we did, this one for my brother-in-law's birthday:

 

There were the games of Quidditch we played in the back garden:

 

 

And the planning holidays so we could visit places they'd filmed the Harry Potter movies:

 

(By the way, if you're near Alnwick Castle next week they've got special Harry Potter themed events on for the UK school hols!)

As you can see we dressed up for the movie openings, and for the book launches. The best two of these were for the final two books and organised by the world's best bookshop Wenlock Books!

After what seemed an eternity after the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix my sister-in-law rang me full of excitement - Wenlock Books had chartered a steam train for the launch of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince!!!

The Severn Valley Railways train left Bridgnorth station just before midnight so that we arrived at the next station on its route in time for midnight when Dumbledore and lots of other characters from the books (played by members of the local drama group and secondary school) met us and presented us with our pre-ordered copies of the book. A bird sanctuary had also come along with owls for the kids to marvel at.

It was possibly one of the best nights of my life (I'm such a saddo ;)). The tickets sold out stupidly fast (predictably) and almost everyone on the steam train came in costume. What I cannot believe was that I didn't take any photos but I was in the pit of a deep depression at the time. Luckily there are some pics on the Wenlock Books blog.

I do have photos of us at the launch of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Wenlock Books this time took over the local science museum and decked it out for the night like Hogwarts. There were magic displays by wizards (ok, magicians), dance lessons from Professor McGonagall, songs from the resident band the Weird Sisters, plus butterbeer, chocolate frogs and everything else you could imagine would be part of the perfect Harry Potter night. Then at midnight, we queued up the spiral staircase to the 'Astronomy Tower' and were presented with our books by Professor Trelawney.

Here's the husband as Remus Lupin (do you like the werewold rips in the t-shirt?) and brother-in-law as Severus Snape (he got hissed and booed by kids all night, how little we all knew) and just behind his shoulder, you can just see me, with newly reddy-purple hair being Tonks:

 

So now that all the books have been read (including of course Beedle the Bard and the Comic Relief specials) and all the films have been seen, DVDs bought, HP Top Trumps & Trivia games & Playstation games played, Lego Hogwarts built, fan fiction read and written, Leaky Cauldron and other HP forums posted on etc.......is it all over? :(

NOPE!

Harry Potter is having a new lease of life with us!

Despite the fact that Melchett always loved posing with the books as if she was reading them...

 

...she's actually only started reading well this last year - and Harry Potter is all new to her again.

PLUS, with our Stephen Fry audiobooks all being on cassette and therefore not on the more acceptable ipods, we've had to start anew with the American Harry Potter audiobooks, read by Jim Dale of Carry On fame. I'm sorry but Jim's voices are not a patch on Stephen's but it is breathing new life into Harry again.

And then there's Pottermore! Loooooook look, I found a magic quill on Day 4 and I've been accepted for early entry before all the rest of you plebs (haha, to be honest, if you've read this far, you're probably as obsessed as I am and have been accepted too):

 

If you haven't found your magic quill and been accepted, tomorrow (6th August) is your last chance. Here's some extra hints about when the Pottermore clue will be appearing (between 12.30am and 3am BST) and what to do.

I'm SnitchFirebolt82 by the way.

So you see, Harry Potter isn't over, not until the Fat Lady hangs up her hat and retires forever from the Gryffindor Tower.....or something like that.

 

 

 

Mischief Managed.

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OK Christmas 2012, that's a wrap.