Lego Tales: Homemade Minifigs Part 2

As you know from here, 7-year-old Noah had been repurposing his old minifigures with paper, markers, crayons & double-sided tape to change them into the minifig characters he wanted to play with. Most of his homemade minifigs were limited to paper masks & shirts, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that he also "decorated" Wolverine's pants. I just love Wolverine's claws made out white cardboard!

It has become common for him to prepare his minifig artworks. See the shirts of the Spiderman characters he plans to make.

Though so far, all he's made is Spidey...

... and the Big Lizard - who he probably started to make as a minifig (see the cut-out shirt above?) but decided against due to the villain-minifig's inaccurate proportion vis-a-vis Spiderman.

Love the eyes he drew and glued onto his Lego creation!

While I prefer the shirts he draws himself, I eventually gave in and printed the Batman minifig characters he had been pining for. I used a black & white printer this time so he opted to color in the parts that needed color.

See how he used red & black markers on Harley Quinn and a green marker to color in Poison Ivy's bodysuit?

But even though I saw how he prepped for Harley Quinn, I did not imagine his finished creation would look like this!

He used red, white & black clay to fashion Harley Quinn's jester hat! I was so amazed!

He used clay too for Two-Face's wild hair...

And even on Catwoman's mask...

Notice how he used black clay to cover up her white arms - the only arm pieces he had left after making all the Batman characters (he ran out of hands & legs to finish Black Spiderman)? Here are the rest of the Batman characters...

Even mixed with the actual Batman minifigs he owned (Joker's a remnant of an old keychain, see the hook on his head?), I still think (warning: mommy-goggles on!) Noah's homemade ones look way better than the store-bought ones!

Noah, at 7 years old, had moved beyond just Lego & paper to create his minifig characters. He had evolved to using clay as well. A true artist using mixed media!

My Noah... His creativity never fails to amaze me!

Photos are all my own.

Click here for previous posts from the Lego Tales series. Click here for Part 1 of this Homemade Lego Minifig post.

Mommy Mondays: a new holiday eve tradition

What do you do while waiting for the Christmas or New Year's eve festivities to begin? What do you and your kids do during that time after dinner on December 24 & 31, before Noche Buena or the New Year fireworks?

During previous Christmases, I'd be frantically wrapping gifts in time for gift-giving on Christmas eve. But this year, since I had wrapped all my gifts and put them under our tree early here, I realized we didn't have a customary activity for this window of time. With nothing to do, Isabella and I googled the right lyrics to Christmas carols and didn't bungle them up like we did here. :)

After we had sung all the Christmas carols, Isabella started searching for the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne. The lyrics she googled was just of the chorus so I jumped up from my bed and popped in our DVD of the movie, New Year's Eve, and played the part where Lea Michelle started singing Auld Lang Syne. We sang along since it had subtitles.

The movie kept playing after and when it reached the closing credits where the cast partied to the song Raise Your Glass, we both started dancing. While Zac Efron danced perfectly with Michelle Pfeiffer who crazily danced in-character, we also went crazy, dancing in front of the TV and laughing at how crazily we were dancing. We even replayed the part a couple of times and kept dancing!

We both don't like to dance (Isabella prefers choreographed routines and I have two left feet here), but we had a blast dancing freestyle together while waiting for the Christmas eve festivities to begin.

I think we stumbled upon (literally too, 'coz that's how I look dancing) a fun new tradition. I'm playing the New Year's Eve DVD again tonight and will go crazy dancing again with Isabella.

Don't be fancy, just get dancey

Why so serious?

So raise your glass if you are wrong

In all the right ways

All my underdogs, we will never be, never be

Anything but loud and nitty gritty, dirty little freaks

So won't you come on and come on and

Raise. Your. Glass.

Just come on and come on and

Raise. Your. Glass.

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!

Photo from annnniegirl.

Click here for previous posts from the Mommy Mondays series. Click here and here for previous New Year posts.

blissful bungled carols

Isabella and I have been singing Christmas carols in the car for weeks now. And I discovered that we don't know the right lyrics to many, if not all, carols!

Sa-ilent night, Ho-oly night. All is calm, all is bright... Okay, what's next? Is it down or round? Okay, round... Round young Virgin... Turns out, it's "yon", not "young". And there are 2 more stanzas after that that I don't think I've ever heard.

It's the same for Deck the Halls. Deck the halls with boughs of holly. Fa la la la la la la la la. Tis the season to be jolly. Fa la la la la la la la la. On with our way gay apparel. Turns out it's "Don we now our gay apparel". Fa la la la la la la la la. Oh, the ancient yuletide carol. Fa la la la la la la la la. But it's "Toll the ancient yuletide carol" after all. And there are 3 more verses I, again, have never heard!

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. With every Christmas blah I blah. May your days be merry and briiight. And may all your Christmases be light? bright? white?

Isabella and I sang so many carols at the top of our lungs... even though we said "blah" a lot of times through them all. We did figure out the 12 Days of Christmas, but not after switching days 7 to 11 around so many times.

We even bungled Jingle Bells! And I've been singing that since I was a kid! Okay, we got the chorus right: Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells. Jingle all the way. Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh. We didn't do so well with the first verse though: Dashing through the snow. In a one-horse open sleigh. Oh? All? O'er the fields we go, laughing all the way. And then we just ruined the song...  Bella botcha ring, making spirits bright. What fun it is to ride and sing the sleighing song tonight!

Yes, we don't know the correct lyrics to common Christmas carols. But I think what matters is that we sang at the top of our voices, laughing hysterically every time we substituted a word with "blah" and felt the Christmas spirit all the way home. Maybe it can even be a way for us to be identified as family - singing the same wrong lyrics of Christmas carols (just like the father & son's Amazing Grace in the movie Maverick). :)

Hope you are having a holly, jolly Christmas - whether your lyrics are right or not!

All together now! Bella botcha ring, making spirits bright. What fun it is to ride and sing the sleighing song tonight!

Photos from annnniegirl.

Click here for a previous post on a Christmas song Noah botched up too. Hehe, runs in the family.

Lego Tales: Homemade Minifigs Part 1

When Noah turned 7 (click here for his Lego creations at 6), a love for Lego minifigures surfaced.

He started out by insisting I print him the Young Justice minifig bodies (I printed several sizes in the hopes that one of them fits his Lego minifig bodies). Then he cut out the bodies (just noticed now that he didn't just cut out Superman's shirt, but also his briefs! What attention to detail!).

He made a cape out of paper...

... and colored it in with a red marker.

And voila! Young Justice minifigs!

Noah already has a Lego Batman minifig but his shirt is gray so he opted for the black shirt cut-out. If am not mistaken, he used his old Harry Potter shirts for Martian Manhunter & Alfred. And the Martian's heads, I believe, are Toy Story army men's heads.

Notice how the faces of Red Tornado (the tornado legs made me chuckle!), Superman, Robin & Green Lantern are also taped on? Am amazed at how small the pieces are! Especially since he uses double-sided tape to stick the tiny pieces of paper on his Legos.

It took me a while to print out Nightwing's minifig so Noah drew a minifig while waiting (& constantly nagging me to finally print it).

It's quite obvious that Nightwing's face is taped on. But if you look closely, you will see that Noah even covered a yellow head with white paper (see the sliver of yellow at the neck?)!

When the Avengers movie was released, (after creating Avengers paper magic here), I guess he was itching to make Avengers minifigs and could no longer wait for me to print them out for him. So he drew the parts he needed himself! Shirt, shield, goggles...

Love the abs he drew for Thor & Hulk, how he used his old penguins' beaks for Ironman's hands, the boosters on Ironman's feet, and how Noah moved Captain America's goggles from his helmet to his eyes for the photo op!

This is version 1 of Noah's homemade Avengers minifigs...

But just a week later, he made new versions and adorably lined them up so they copy his Avengers movie poster. 

I much prefer his first version of Ironman vs. the Megablocks one here. Oh, and he had to add a Nick Fury minifig for consistency with the poster.

Noah even made Thor's blond hair...

... and Loki's helmet & scepter out of paper!

But out of all of his homemade minifigures in this post, his Captain America mask, molded out of paper...

... is my absolute favorite!

Photos are all my own.

Click here for previous posts from the Lego Tales series. Watch for more of Noah's homemade minifigs in Part 2!

super paper powers

Remember in my Tribute to Summer here, I promised to write a post about Noah creating handmade magic over the summer? Well, he did display a very specific super-power: a power over paper. After watching The Avengers movie here, he made costumes out of paper. Admittedly, Isabella helped him with his Ironman mask.

But he made the gloves himself with paper, crayons and oddly, some electric tape in his art bucket.

A week later, Noah made his paper Captain America costume.

Still with crayons and the stray electric tape...

Then later that night, he made Thor's hammer out of a leftover carton and the Tesseract out of paper.

The following night, he made Hawkeye's bow and arrow.

This time, he also used popsicle sticks and yarn.

Then my friend gave him a non-minimalist poster of The Avengers and he insisted on dressing up in his paper costumes and posed in front of the movie poster.

I love how he imitated each hero's pose... Which led to the need to make Nick Fury's eyepatch (with Isabella's help) at 11pm. Oh, he refused to sleep without a Nick Fury photo.

The following day, he made Hulk...

... and completed The Avengers. All out of... paper!

Yes, Noah certainly displayed super paper powers this past summer.

Photos are my own, edited via pixlr, and from here.

Noah says...

While we were watching the Sound of Music DVD, I pointed out the nuns - the "sisters" at the abbey - to Noah. And he exclaimed, "Those are sisters?! I can't believe a mom can give birth to so many!"

Oh my...

Photo from annnniegirl.

Click here for previous posts from the Noah Says series.

Whimsical Wednesday!

Winnie the Pooh said "Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon".

And it's true! Balloons are just whimsical, colorful and happy.

Maybe because balloons remind us of our childhood.

And birthday parties.

Or theme park memories.

Or maybe because balloons inspire us to dream - to fly.

After all, a movie made us think it is possible.

And someone tried to prove it is.

Indeed, "Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon."

So as you drive to work today, imagine you have a bunch of balloons flying with the wind.

And have a whimsical Wednesday!

Photos from annnniegirl, polkadotshoppingbag, frommetoyou, here, here, here, here and here.

Click here for previous posts from the Whimsical Wednesday series. Click here and here for down-in-the-dots versions of this balloons post.