The Ikea Storage Units are Almost Full
photos taken December 26, 2007

Gads!
I keep having to rearrange the shelves so everything will fit.
The unlabeled blue and black storage racks
with pull-our drawers are for families and figures
I have yet to collect.

Hope you all had a safe and Merry Christmas!
 

Almost Finished!
photos taken December 16, 2007

Labeling the Families has been completed.
Here's how it looks re-labeling everything else in my collection.

This is where all of the above containers go after labeling.

There are only a few items left in these boxes from Japan
to catalogue on this website.

A close up of these very special Japanese figures.

I left the most special items, Japanese figure such as the Pink Baby Twins shown above.  You can also see the Japanese Halloween set in the orange package.

There are still several shops to be re-labeled and I'll have those completed tomorrow.  Then I'll open all the individual boxes in the shipping boxes as I make new pages for each of the figures or figure sets.  I hope to be finished before the two smaller shipments of families, figures and other Sylvanian items arrive over the next week or two.

I'll be having a very Merry Christmas once my studio has been cleared of Sylvanians.  Look for photos of my clean studio shortly.

In the New Year, I hope to be making movies for YouTube again.  I can hardly wait!!
 

Progress is Being Made!
photos taken December 13, 2007

Labeling my new families.

The storage cabinet before labeling has been completed.

The cabinet afterward.

I estimate there were ten boxes of Sylvanian items that I'd ordered during the months we put our house up for sale, moved, then organized our living space.  At this time, only a few items remain in four of them.  Hey, that's real progress considering how large the first three boxes were!

Shortly after Christmas at the latest, I hope to post photos of my studio as it should be.  All the Sylvanians will be tucked away in their labeled plastic containers.  All the boxes they came in will be stored inside Sylvanian house boxes.  If I run out of large Sylvanian boxes, well, I still have a few shipping boxes to store the smaller Sylvanian boxes in.  I might even post a photo of my walk in closet where the boxes are stored.  They actually brighten up the top shelves of the closet quite nicely.

Anyway, I've been working almost non-stop for the past three weeks opening boxes of families, special figures, lots of baby carry cases, furniture and other accessories.  I'm about to drop right now.  So off to bed I go to begin again in the morning.
 

At Our New Townhouse
Basement Photography and Movie Studio
photos taken October 31, 2007

We've lived in our new house since the end of August.  There were so many things to do with the house, besides unpacking household boxes, that I have only just begun unpacking eight boxes of Sylvanian items that had been ordered in June. 

Why did I not catalogue them earlier?  Well, when our old place was for sale, I couldn't have my studio set up and all the mess that goes along with it while potential buyers tromped through the place.  Then after we moved, we fixed two bathrooms - one with a leak in the shower!, fixed the fireplace, fixed a whole whack of things as well as do a serious clean up after the hardwood installer and painter were finished.  What a mess they left - but that's another story altogether.

I'm just glad to have my studio back in action so I can catalogue all of my new Sylvanians and revamp my website while I'm at it. 

Wish me luck with all those new Sylvanians!
 

My Photography Studio
photo taken May 18, 2007

• a blue Rubbermaid tub with top as my computer table.  This computer is used for looking through photos as they are taken so I can choose the best of several for publication on this website.  Website production take place in an equally messy area in our den;
• Lego and books to raise or lower the height of my camera to suit the subject matter;
• an old piece of countertop used to place scenery on; and
• a children's chair to sit on during long hours of shooting and selecting photos.

Lighting in the photo studio consists of:

• natural light from an east-facing window,
• a ceiling fixture with two 60 watt incandescent bulbs,
• a white, adjustable, clip-on-desk lamp with one 13 watt compact, fluorescent bulb which casts a yellow-ish light, and
• a silver goose-neck desk lamp with with one 13 watt compact fluorescent bulb which casts a blue-ish light.

Together, all these sources of light offer more of a full spectrum light to help my photographs look natural in colour.

Once the pieces of my video production studio are made and in place, I will post photos of it. 

Coming soon are shipments from Japan, the US and Australia. 

I think I'm beginning to feel that I have enough props, families and homes to begin making videos.  However, we re-did our display table.  I'm considering how I'm going to make a background for video production.  This could take awhile because I'm using a 4' by 8' sheet of 1/4" plywood.  Maybe I'll just paint it sky blue and be done with it.  Or maybe I'll get elaborate and paint hills, trees and clouds.  Sky blue is going to be so much less work than a detailed background.  Gads!

Anyway, I hope my US shipment arrives soon.  There are 68 (!!!!) items in it and it'll be the biggest cataloguing undertaking I've ever had.  Hmm.....  better go take a nap!
 

The package was well wrapped, and all the boxes were so intricately arranged, it was amazing he got everything in that one box.  I had to unpack the box to oogle my new acquisitions, but that's about as far as it went.  I did open one box, though - the Baby Swing. 

Too bad I can't read Japanese, but the detailed illustrations on the packages more than tell me what's inside.  Can't wait to finish cataloguing the items I received from the US, the UK and Australia.  There is so much work to making web pages, unpacking boxes, getting the figures ready to photograph, photographing them, then posting the photos to the right pages. 

After all these details have been attended to, which may take a couple of weeks, I can then begin to flesh out some story lines with the accessories and figures.
 

►My dear husband, Chris, bless his heart, has been reading the character descriptions from the original boxes the figures come in.  Once I get all the information off the boxes, I'll start removing them and making them ready for portraits on their individual pages.  So much work, but ultimately satisfying to have everything catalogued with photos for easy reference not only for me but for others interested in Calico Critters and Sylvanian Families,

►Okay!  Off to other parts of this site!
 

►Things are going to be changing a lot in my life over the next few weeks.  We are in the process of finding homes for our reef aquarium pets as well as our finches in their indoor walk-in aviary.  This part of the changes in my life and my husband's has a bit of sadness attached to them, but I'm very excited to be on the path to creating more Calico Critters and Sylvanian Families videos for viewing on www.youtube. There are movie sets to make, photos of my expanding collection to take and finding places to store everything.