Monday, July 25, 2011

Last day of the Hols...birthdays and puppets...

...a bit of what we did!

We went and saw 'Hare Brain' at the wonderful Spare Parts Puppet Theatre...actually, I saw it 5 times, because I volunteered to help out for a couple of days, ushering, taking tickets, vacuuming the foyer and making sure the loos were kept well stocked with loo paper (very important when you've got lots of very small bladders in the audience!)  I have to say, I enjoyed it every time, and laughed at the 'blue lettuce' joke as much on the 5th as the 1st time.  The Spare Parts people generously gave free tickets to volunteer helpers, so I took my girls on my smallest munchkin's 7th (eeek, when did that happen!?) birthday.  Spare Parts is a WA institution, celebrating their 30th birthday this year...I'm looking forward to their next season!

And that birthday...I don't know how it happened, I'm sure she was 2 just last week!
Daddy and his girls!

Daddy decided to help blow out the candles...and there were great exclamations of "DADDY!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Followed by the 'Connect Four' tournament.  It looks like bigger munchkin has just lost to Daddy, but smallest did well against Grandad (and they both beat me...without any help...on several occasions...oh embarrassment!)

Smallest munchkin went Goblin Hunting...apparently this is the regulation GH uniform.

Biggest joined the pirates.

Inspired by 'Hare Brain' and to combat the 'I'm bored!' syndrome, we made some (rather odd) puppets.  Faeries of course.  Not quite finished, but never mind.


Finally, just when you think you've tired them out and can afford to sit down with a good book...you make the mistake of saying 'well, you've got mummy and daddy home today, what do you want to do?" And biggest says "Lets make a movie!"

Ahhh...ummmm...hmmmmm...okaaaaaaaaay...I guess we can do that...
Biggest had great 'Cecil B. De Mille' yearnings, involving everyone getting dressed up as Princesses and Princes (hmmm, if you can convince daddy to dress up, you're a better woman than I am, sweetheart!!), and doing Cinderella...on location in the front yard!  Given the cast of thousands required (the Ball scene) plus all the trained mice and birds, I managed to steer her to a slightly lower budget (think cool, indi and hip) style, and Little Red Riding Hood instead (only needing a cast of 4).  It was hilarious really, I do wish I could show you, but our video camera really is a VIDEO camera, circa 1999, and needs to be wound up with a large brass key and fed dusty little cassette-type things that some say can only be found these days in the very bottom of old leather suitcases belonging to ladies who go exploring while wearing button-up boots and crinolines.  Luckily, we had a couple on hand!  A whole day and a half was spent making sets, props, costumes...and casting (very important, you have to consider things such as...is Barbie too tall for our leading man?), while filming took all of half an hour.  So here are some 'stills' from the epic production of 'Little Red Riding Hood'!
And a good time was had by all!

What else did I do...?  Oh yes, I turned the 'spare room' into a 3rd bedroom, so my girls have a room each now...which is very exciting for them.  Alas, as I'm sure you all know, there actually is no such thing as a 'spare room'...stuff tends to expand to fit the available space.  Which means that everything that was IN the so-called spare room is now NOT in it.  

So at the end of the school holidays I have about 3 weeks worth of house-cleaning to catch up on...as well as the Herculean task of trying to find the lounge room floor beneath all the stuff excavated out of the spare room.  There's layers and layers of it to go through...I wonder if Time Team would be interested?!


6 comments:

Lunar Hine said...

Will you please come and be my mum on my birthday? What a gift o give - making your own film! And good luck with the house. We're just this morning back form a festival and looming behind me is a pile of bags and tents and... other stuff I don't even recognise. Later.

Charlotte said...

What fun, that is my kind of birthday party. Happy Birthday to your munchkin. They get older too quickly.

Yours might enjoy stop frame animation. All you need is a web cam, computer and the free download of MonkeyJam or similar animation software.

We do plasticine or lego figures for it, but you can also do 2d and back lit. It's great fun.

Valerianna said...

Christina - What a cool day! I'm pooped just reading about it, let alone organizing it all! But I'm with Lunar Hine, come be my mum in October! What a great set that film has... love the odd puppets, too, very cool.

And if you're in need of a name for one of the goblins that was caught, my word verification word is
"upsynorg" which sounds to me like a perfect name for a goblin!

A mermaid in the attic said...

He he, no it wasn't all on one day, spread over several days, and unfortunately a day on the couch with a massive migraine intervened as well. But I'm holding a faery birthday party for about 12 little ones on Sunday, so it will be all go next weekend as well. Then some serious painting, as I have committed to a couple of competitions/awards and better knuckle down and get working!

naomi orana said...

how absolutely wonderful!
LOVE the goblin hunter and pirate photos - SO FUN!!
If only we could rent you out, rent-a-mum for when the shool h'days are draaaaagging?! But not to make a mess - we already excel at that one ;-)

Windsongs and Wordhoards said...

Happy Birthday to littlest one! Looks like you all had wonderful fun! (I daren't look at my house right now except out of the corner of my eye to avoid tripping over all the stuff strewn over the floor! Why can't I have tidying up fairies or a friendly Nis or something!)

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