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Custom Wedding Dress & Kimono Upcycled Clothes | オーダーメイドウェディングドレス&着物ドレス

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DIY Paper Origami Crane Mobile

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Today I wanted to show you a craft project I finished recently. When Kiko and I went to a mall the other day, they were giving out these paper origami cranes. They gave us three pretty cranes in pink and red; it was too cute to throw them out. I decided to enjoy them a bit longer by making them into a mobile for Kiko’s nursery. Although I did not make these cranes, it is easy to find many different origami tutorials online (Youtube is great for that), and you can follow this instruction for cranes. There is a custom to bring a mobile made out of 1000 paper cranes for someone who is sick or is hospitalized, to wish them to be well and for a long life. The crane is good luck here in Japan.

 What you need:
– Thread
– Wire
– Pliers
– Origami cranes
First I made cut a wire of about 50cm, made three little circles by bending the wire. The circles are to be used as hooks to hang the cranes. Then I made the wire piece into a big circle as a base to hang all the cranes. It helps to have some kind of circle object as a guide to make this big circle. I used Andy’s weight.
After that, I simply hung the cranes with a thread, and added another thread in order to hang the mobile from the ceiling.

Minnie Halloween Costume for a Girl

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Have you decided what you or your little ones are going to be for Halloween? I’m more excited about Halloween this year than any other year in the past because I have my little girl to play dress-up 🙂

This Minnie costume is not for Kiko, but I borrowed it for the sake of taking the photos. I made this for my friend’s daughter. She has a tradition of going to the Tokyo Disney Land with her daughter every fall, and dresses her daughter with a little Minnie mouse costume. Last year I made this dress for her. This year, she sent me her sketch, so I made a dress based on it. Her sketch has a white round collar, big polkadot baby doll dress with puff sleeves and tutu underneath of the dress to fluff it up.

I didn’t use any patterns; I traced an existing dress that fits Kiko well and added a bit more room and seam allowances. For round collar though, I did make a paper pattern so that they fit accurately. I like this tutorial on how to draft round collar patterns.

I added a sash in the back, and invisible zipper for closure. I made it a bit short so that the tutu will peek out at hem.

One problem I came across was pre-washing the fabric. I almost always pre-treat the fabric before I work on it, so I soak this polkadot fabric in a cold water first. Then I realized that the red color dyed the white dots! I wash it for three times, tried the detergent but the color did not come off. So the white dots are dyed in pink! I did a quick internet search on how to fix/avoid this problem, but no reasonable solutions were found.. Anyone has any advice? I think it was the right decision to wash the fabric even though the dots were dyed in the process, because if I hadn’t, the white collar would have been pink too.

My friend emailed me that her daughter loved the dress. I’m thrilled!

Mommy’s Diary 52: Measles Scare

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Sometimes I try to imagine my life 10 years from now, having maybe four kids. I will constantly be sick. This year, I’ve gotten sick four times already. I’ve gotten the rota virus, a flu, and the good ol’ regular cold twice. All of which came from Kiko! Before having her I never really got sick. Occasionally, I would catch something of course but not with the consistency I have this year

Kiko got sick last week and after three days, her fever did not go away and she had strange red spots all over her face. She had a lot of eye discharge and runny nose so we took her to the doctor. Since our regular doctor was closed on this particular day, we took her to a different one nearby. As soon as I went in I got a bit nervous since the doctor was let us say quite aged. But, considering the circumstance, I told myself, she should be very experienced and it’ll be fine. She started to examine Kiko and told me that she might have measles. She said the zits on her face made her to believe it might be measles, but just told me to watch her for a few days and come back. When I told this to Andy he was furious because the doctor did not do further tests to determine whether she had measles and if she did, she should be separated from others since she could spread the virus. Since our regular doctor was closed, we spent that day and night anxious to find out whether she did in fact have measles.

We took her to our  regular doctor the next day and it turned out that she just has a bad cold plus a weird reaction from some strange bug bite. I was relieved but then went on to yell at this doctor and told him “Don’t you think it was irresponsible of the doctor (the one we took the day before) to give me a premature diagnosis without testing and send us home?!”. He was like, “Don’t yell at me for it!” . I realize it wasn’t his fault but I was frustrated although relieved!

Today we got her vaccinated for MMR. Oh the wonderful things a child can bring to our family…