A visit from Cho

Hi! Cho Jess is from China and she came over to tell us about Chinese New Year. We also did crafts to celebrate it. Chinese New Year is coming up on January 23. In the Chinese Lunar Calender it will be the year 4710 (some say it's a different year but around this time).  It is the biggest traditional holiday in China and goes on for 15 days. It basically marks the end of winter.  In preparation for Chinese New Year, people do things to give them a fresh start such as cleaning the house and getting a haircut. Cho talked to Ivy and said you might want to check the business you go to that are run by Chinese families (such as a restaurant like The Happy Panda) because they might either be closed or they might have extra special things going on to celebrate the new year. The Chinese also have a 12 year cycle of animals that has one that represents each year. This year was the year of the rabbit, but now it's going to be the year of the dragon. Cho helped us make dragon masks that we found on a Disney Printable website. (For dolls you might want to make one for yourself and scale one down to around 33-35% to match their size).  Cobaltcat did an oops by not getting the hole right but we'll fix that. We will later color them too. We also made a couple red paper lanterns for decoration. We would have made more but our printer ran out of ink. It was a lot of cutting and taping but it was worth it. Since we didn't have enough ink to print more lanterns, we put the Chinese Zodiac Wheel we printed earlier in the middle with the dragon on the top. They generally put red lanterns up on the 15th day of the New Year. They are red to symbolize good luck- that is why you often see many red things when it comes to Chinese pictures, decorations and clothing. Fireworks are also very common to scare away evil spirits!

Cho also showed us some envelops with money that is given out during the New Year. One envelope had a Koi fish on it to symbolize success. They are so pretty! Cobaltcat remembers reading that they breed koi to look beautiful on the top of their head and body since they are usually put in places where you see them from above.

This would be a great time to read some American Girl Julie books to learn about Chinese New Year and Chinese culture thanks to her friend Ivy Ling such as Happy New Year Julie!,  Good Luck, Ivy!, and The Puzzle of the Paper Daughter. There are also other good books like Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat by acclaimed author Amy Tan (she also has a lot of great longer books for adults), watch Mulan (though not really accurate) and get some Chinese food to eat for take out.





Gung Hay Fat Choi!

McKanani Version 2!: Warm-up Outfit Review

So Kanani is back in town and what is she wearing? The exclusive McKenna Warm-Up outfit that everyone wants but you can only get it if you spend like $200 (including taxes and all that) on her starter collection because they won't sell it as a single item as a clever marketing scheme. Well luckily we snatched this up on eBay for around $40 and we HAD to get it! Now I am seeing other warm-up outfits go for much higher than that.  I mean we do sorta want to add McKenna to the family but right now we're enjoying Kanani and friends. The outfit is cute. The top is more pink (I thought it was purple for some reason) and the bottom is orange. It has a tie-dye dipped effect but it's actually what do you call it- printed? on and the color is only on one side. Kanani's kukunut lei goes great with the jacket though it would not be at all practical for warm-up practice. The pants are a bit snug as AG seems to like to use the least amount of material possible and charge more lately. I do like the little trendy scrunch up sides (whatever they're called)- they remind me of a few pants I have had in the past. The shoes are pink and accented by a super bright greenish-yellow. I don't know why they chose this color. Maybe it's suppose to be a copy of a reflective strap on a shoe? Or maybe they didn't want it too matchy-matchy? I could only get the shoes on without socks. Of course you can use the excuse that McKenna doesn't need socks since she's going to gymnastics but super tight shoes go along with the super-tight pants and super-tight shirt theory. However I was able to get the Pretty and Plaid shirt under the sweatshirt. I love that blue shirt. I always seem to have a doll wearing it one way or another.
However all in all I recommend this outfit