Temptation

 Back in January, when I went in search of Miniverse Lifestyle balls, I joined a Facebook buy, sell and swap group in the hopes of completing my collection faster, and at a lower price than buying the balls retail.

And once I'd completed my collection, I decided to stay on so I'd be alerted if more items were released (which have been, but I'm only interested in a couple of the pieces so am holding off making a decision until I see if they're released in Australia).

Yesterday someone posted in the group about a new home series by a different company, Mini Brands, and based on their photos I was intrigued, especially as someone else posted that they were mainly 1/12 scale.

Some research last night caused me to stare into the fridge and pantry, decide I could sacrifice some of next week's grocery budget, take an early (and long) lunch break today to scoot down the hill to Kmart and buy a couple of the balls to see for myself if the series was as good as it looked.

I bought 3 balls, feeling a bit adrift as there were no cheat sheets that I could find to indicate what was in them, so had to be content with some gentle shaking to make sure they all sounded different.

Surprise number one was that each ball contained 5 sealed bags: as a blind-ball beginner when I started buying Miniverse, I'd assumed that all balls contained just one thing. This made the $12 cost much more palatable as, divided by 5, each mini cost just $2.40.

Surprise number 2 (as I hit my one and only duplicate across all 15 items in 3 balls), was that there seemed to be no rhyme nor reason for what was included in each ball. Again, having started with Miniverse, I'd assumed there was a theme.

Surprise number 3 was how well-made and detailed the items in my balls were for the price. And here I have to confess that I didn't think to take detailed photos while I still had light, especially as several items came in boxes that included the standard custom-designed packaging you see in full-sized appliance boxes: I hope to get to that tomorrow.

And not really a surprise, but a disappointment especially as one of the options was a Poäng chair and footstool, the furniture pieces I got weren't 1/12 scale.

Here's what my 3 balls got me (and how they're described in the accompanying leaflet: I do like that they give you an idea of how often the items might turn up):

Ball 1

Masterchef frying pan (Ultra rare: not bad for the first cab off the rank, and might be useful for next year's club project)

Cupcake pan (common, good scale)

Ice tray with ice (common, good scale)

Shell armchair (rare, feels like 1/24 scale, which pleases a friend I offered it to greatly)

Egg carton (common, good scale).

Ball 2

Small cupboard (luxury, feels like 1/24 scale but I suspect I can use it as desk-top storage)

KitchenAid food processor (ultra rare, looks like it's good scale)

Bar chair (common, 1/24 scale but perhaps I can do something with it?)

Egg carton (common, good scale: my first and only repeat)

Garbage bin (rare, probably 1/24 scale but could work as a small bin in 1/12).

Ball 3

KitchenAid Espresso machine (ultra rare, 1/12 scale and I am swooning over the fact that not only is the packaging showing like it's recycled, the tamper and jug are included in separate packaging when you open the box)

Air diffuser (common, 1/12 scale)

Black and Decker iron (rare, good 1.12 scale)

Makeup stool (ultra rare, definitely 1/24 scale)

Sistema bento lunch box (rare, 1/12 scale and makes my little Kiwi heart happy to see a New Zealand company included in an international product)

My final reaction?

Oh my lord: I wanted to leap back onto Mickey and head back down the hill to buy the rest of the box at Kmart.

Then I had a stern talking to myself about being responsible apparently-old person (according to my work), and having insurance on my scooter which means that I can't take it out more than twice a week on average, and maybe I had beginner's luck, and they might still be there next pay day and then perhaps I could survive on beans and rice for a few weeks, Or months.

Oh dear.

(Also: if you need an earworm)

What's cooking

Just before the Christmas break I was at the Reject Shop stocking up on something (laundry powder? dishwashing liquid? small bags of cashew nuts?) when I spotted the most adorable (and I don't often use that word) little fry pan with a Quant-inspired black and white daisy pattern printed on it.

I was desperate to bring it home but couldn't justify it as I have no need for a little fry pan, mainly because I already have a perfectly excellent Tefal one that I use regularly.

I'd occasionally pine after it (possibly a bit more than I thought, as a friend I was visiting in New Zealand ended up saying "Just buy it already: it's only $14!").

As I suspected would happen, I gradually forgot about it, especially as other exciting acquisitions entered my life.

Until this month's mini club meeting, that is, when the discussion turned to the theme for next year's club show and the idea of creating scenes in fry pans. And I remembered my love for that little black and white daisy fry pan.

A search on the Reject shop website didn't show it as in stock anymore and I resigned myself to it becoming the next swan lamp in my life: a missed opportunity that I'd regret until one day in the future one would pop up in an op shop: in this case probably well after I needed it.

But (and I'm sure by now you know where this is going!) since I took an early mark today to head down to the scooter shop to get my back rack installed (and there's a story for another day, involving a rack from Toto, the Vespa I bought in the late 80s, which followed me from one country to another, then onto Felix, my next Vespa, into the garage and then to a friend, only to return home almost a decade later to be mounted onto Mickey and make me very happy indeed) I took the time to pop into the Reject Shop on the off chance they still had them in stock.

They did.

So I bought one. Slightly terrified that this project will also go the way of several other projects that are downstairs in the workshop, abandoned and crying in the corner.

But I have thoughts: particularly as I'd been discussing with a colleague several weeks ago the idea of creating a miniature cafe called 'Whoopsie Daisy', kind of like Karen's diner, but with circus- and gymnastics-trained wait staff who are constantly seeming to almost drop things, fall over and break things (but recover just in time, of course!).

Perhaps I should scale back a bit and just do a black and white, daisy-themed cafe. Which would be an interesting challenge in such a constrained and oddly-shaped space.

And, if all else fails, I could just add it to my pot drawer on the off chance I need to cook something really really small 😉.

May be minis (again)

I've been stalking Instagram over the past week or so, hoping that there'll be another May mini makers challenge this year: with no luck so far (and I assume if there was one planned for this year it would have already been announced).

So I guess I'm on my own, unless you know of another May mini challenge?

Alas the day escaped me, and it wasn't until the light was disappearing (oh so terribly early it seemed) that I thought that I should probably have planned this whole thing through a bit more.

The good news is that I did do something miniature-related today: after spying some Daiso dolls' house furniture that I hadn't seen before pop up on Facebook Marketplace, I took a longer lunch to scoot over to pick 2 sets of it up from the buyer.

And I did take some photos, but only (or so I thought at that stage) to share with my fellow Daiso-obsessed friend, planning to take better ones to blog after I logged off work for the day.

But I got a call from a client a few minutes before I'd planned to log off, and by the time we were done it was too late to catch the light.

So please excuse the au-naturel pics!

These were the sets I bought, minus the coffee tables that the seller forgot to pack, and which I'll pick up next time I'm out:

Daiso-obsessed friend asked if they looked good in person, or if it was a waste of time her going to Daiso on the weekend to see if they had them in stock in Wellington.

(As someone whose nearest Daiso is 3 and a half hours away, of course I replied that going to Daiso was never a waste of time!)

So I sent her some close-up photos to help her make her mind up:

pointing out that they were smaller than standard, but that makes sense: they're similar to those cheap Kmart ones (or, indeed the very cheap ALDI ones that I still have in pieces in my workshop).

and that corporate Wendy looked comfy enough in one.

Finally I sent her a picture of the bottom and back of it, showing the tabs holding it together, and mentioned that it looks like pulling them apart to flock and/or paint looks doable:

In other miniature-related news, the Sydney miniatures and dolls house fair is on this weekend, and my local miniature club is arranging carpooling up to it.

I haven't gone since 2018, as to travel there and back, or to buy anything much was hard to justify with my voracious offset account, the location made it difficult to do a day trip on public transport, and, of course, there was that little matter of a global pandemic that got in the way.

I'm still tossing up if I want to spend 7 hours in a car with people I don't know well out of curiosity to see the new venue (and be tempted to add Daiso Hornsby, just one stop up the train line from the venue, to the list of Daisos I have visited).

Mini club meeting is this Saturday: perhaps I'll leave it to chance and see if anyone mentions that they still have a spare seat in their car...