Aren't you sick of toys???

We are constantly cleaning up toys... they accumulate like mad.  How many toys can one little kid have???  Multiply that one kid by four and you have armies of toys!  How can we adequately take over the world with our arms full of tangled jumbles of assorted play things that we are continuously, wearily putting away???

As much as we would like to bash American Girl Dolls and their generic stereotypical middle class smiles, we kind of love them.  As a business they have a lot of things right... one thing that we have noticed (beyond their awesome historically connected stories and girl affirming image) is that their toys are NOT cheap.  They are plastic, mass produced, China made dolls that sell as much as their Etsy, handmade counterparts.  Why is this good?  Well, we don't see them in Goodwill.  We don't see them at yard sales, in thrift stores, in (horror of all horrors) garbage bins waiting for collection.  American Girl Dolls are cherished.  Why?  Probably because Mom, or Dad, or Grandma paid a fortune for them.

Let's think about this.  If all toys were as 'valuable' as AG dolls, there would be lots of great consequences.  Parents would push their children to play with those toys, to get their money's worth.  Those toys would become beloved by their children because the children would naturally love the toys they were being encouraged to play with with and they would keep track of their 'friends' more readily, without as much prompting.  Toys would not be simply bought as spur of the moment, shut your kid up, purchases.  Landfills would see far less plastic.  There would be far fewer toys per capita and houses would become far less cluttered.

Children need toys to develop in a natural and healthy way... both mentally and physically.  Doll play, manipulatives, building toys, sports related toys- all of the different types of play that these toys encourage- make up the world of children and help facilitate their growth.

Don't get rid of toys all together.  Just be more deliberate in your choices. Have a vision for your child's environment!

* Here are some things that we have read that, though not talking about this specific topic, go hand in hand with the Philosophy.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo

and also this guy, Mr. Money Mustache :)

Mr. Money Mustache Blog



 

In the Beginning...

The Story…

In the beginning

there was only one doll.

It was made out of

old garments and new dreams.

And it was given to

the very first child.

Imagination, was a very lonely soul.

She had long held the belief that

humans could only misunderstand her

magic and refused to befriend them.

She saw the doll and the child and noticed

that they loved each other, very much.

In wonder, she watched them.  She saw that,

together, they shared stories and spun visions.

Being quite surprised, and very moved, she

decided that she would share her magic

with the world of people.

As the child grew and all humanity

embraced Imagination’s creative spirit,

Imagination issued a decree:

Imagination,

The Maker of Dreams,

The Birther of Visions,

The Hand of Creativity,

Does decree,

From this Day, until your Last Day,

All generations of Humankind

SHALL have imaginary friends,

                                                    The RagdOlly People!

Every single RagdOlly person or creature

holds a key to a magical world....

Every single human being, regardless of age,

                                      has the power to bring these worlds to life

Questions...

Playfulness and humor are as valuable as creativity. No?  Perhaps they are the sisters of creativity even?

  

The Man that Asks the Questions...

We're so smart... so very smart.  We can figure out how to do things by ourselves.  We can envision things and then make them appear, prototype after prototype.  We teach our children, think for play, and puzzle through each day, figuring out how to do all that we do better and more efficiently.  We are so smart, but we are not the smartest.  The smartest guys look around and simply know what questions they should ask.  It is amazing to be bright enough to come up with intelligent answers to intriguing questions.  Think about it though, isn't the real genius the man that asks the questions?
-Eppie 

The Funny Things That We Name the Ones We Love AND Some Exciting News!!!

 Hi, there! Eppie and I think and talk a lot about play and the importance of love in the form of button eyes and fabric bodies. 

Recently we were discussing the interesting names that kids give to the precious stuffies and toys in their lives.  

I had a doll named Baby.  Baby was a rag doll based on a Raggedy Ann pattern complete with blue and white dress and fluffy, white apron. She was made for me by my baby sitter, Mrs. Smith. (She actually made me 3 of them over the course of my childhood, as I tended to love Baby to death... repeatedly.) I slept with this doll for many years, she went with me everywhere and was my best friend. 

Eppie's mother made dolls for her and her sisters. Her's was a cute cotton rag doll named Hannah. Hannah had big, blue embroidered circle eyes and a sweet embroidered mouth. She was the perfect size for a 5 year old's hugs. Her mom also made her a few outfits for Hannah and the other sisters' dolls.

While Baby and Hannah are pretty standard names, children can come up with some very interesting ones. Dorian has Captain Funny Face, Army and Sandstorm. Silas' favorite is Bob the Banana (who is actually a monkey) and Pizza and Pizza, Jr. the Ploppets. Anyka has Squeaky the pterodactyl and Cloudy the little handmade cloud that Loreal Brown made. Amora's fave is a blanket named Kiki. We have a Scottish friend who had a opossum in his tree that he called Jennifa in his awesome accent and so when someone gave Mia a possum, she named it Jennifa.

Eppie and I asked my oldest daughter, Mia, to tell us a bit about her favorite stuffie. Here is what she had to say in essay form. (Gotta get those English credits somehow :))

There Once Was A Cow from Khol's

Buying a toy for a child is a tricky thing to do. Will they like it? Will they really play with it? Or is this just another of the many toys to be tossed to the bottom of the toy box? Children tend to become attached to some of the least suspecting of toys. In my life, I have grown up loving the strangest of ‘toys.’ When I was about eight years old I came to love a refrigerator box, which I went on to name Boxy. I practically lived in this box, until it began to decompose in my bedroom floor. 

Boxy was not the only object the small child version of myself held dear; I also had my action figures, Polly pockets, and most importantly, Cowey. Cowey was my baby. From the moment I saw her on the stand of $5 toys in Kohl’s, I knew I needed her. It took convincing, but after many seven year old puppy eyes, and whiny begging, my mother caved… She bought me a cow. This cow became my best friend. I had her with me when I got up in the mornings and with me when I went to sleep at night. Washing her was unacceptable. When my mother would finally sneak her into the washing machine to “give her a bath,” I almost instantly noticed the disappearance of my beloved toy. 

Actually, Cowey was more than just a toy to me. She had life. She was alive. She was my child. I let her age change as mine did. When I was twelve, still madly in love with this cow, she was the ripe old age of five. She even had a birthday, and I sometimes gave her gifts. After officially a decade of love, this year… I still have her. She has suffered many battle scars, and has faded in "cowlor" (see what I did there?), but she is still going strong. At seventeen, I no longer feel the need to sleep with her. This may be sad for my mother, or other family and friends who knew "Baby Mia" to always have her trusty cow, but, as time passes, my three-year-old sister has shown interest in my cow baby. Though I don’t expect her love to run as deep, I believe Cowey will be loved and cherished for many more generations to come. 


So, tell us, what was (or is) your favorite toy, stuffie or doll?
What is its name? Do you still have it? 

AND we have some exciting news to share! We are taking a little growing step and moving into a studio space in Turnip Green Creative Reuse!! We will be joining the creative family of Turnip Green and Plateone Print Co-op in a very community oriented environment to do our art and design work and have a cool space to meet with clients. We can not wait to invite you in to see it! Stay tuned to info about our open studio grand opening in March...
 
~ XOXO~ Julie

WIN A WINNING FRIEND...

Hi All!  We thought it would be fun to give away two softies attached to this blog topic!  These bunnies are not for sale and are different from our shop bunnies, in that they have SPOTS!  If you would like to have one of these cuties for your very own then simply post a few lines about what softies have meant to you, your siblings, your children, or anybody you know... (shoot, any little thought about a favorite doll or stuffed animal will do, whether a 'real' friend or one from fiction, such as The Velveteen Rabbit or Raggedy Ann!)  Post to our blog or on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ProBohemia and we will enter you into the drawing that will take place at our new studio, Thursday, March 19th (more info coming).

Ok, so this is just two shots of the same guy... but there WILL be two! :)

We will draw two names and both bunnies will be given away that night, one to our online community and one to somebody that is at Turnip Green Creative Reuse, in person that evening, to visit with Josh Wagner (the artist of the night) and to help us celebrate the opening of our studio space.  If you enter online, we will notify you if you are a winner!  If you are present at the time of the drawing and win you will go home with your new friend!  Hey, why not try and win BOTH! :) ...and Liz and Melanee, you are our first drawing names and are perfect examples of how to enter!!!
-The Professional Bohemians

Charles' Observation...

 Bad writers tend to have the self-confidence, while the good ones tend to have self-doubt. ~ Charles Bukowski

My brother is a writer. The kind of writer that can craft a story that makes his reader look really awkward sitting by herself in a quiet coffee shop. Because laughing out loud repeatedly is awkward when one is in public, yet alone.

My husband is a talented and artistic musician, an out-of-the-box kind of guy. He can create beautiful sounds with his guitar and join into a song with almost any instrument or thing lying around.

Both of these artists don't claim artistry. They demur. Because old Charles is so very, very correct.

Just a Sunday morning thought...

XOXO ~ Julie

Children + Devices = Bad Bad Bad (or does it?) ...and how does that make you feel? :-/

Frying their brains... or learning skills?

 When we were little the 'big deal' was television.  Too much TV rotted your brain, right?  What about all those people that grew up to be actors, producers, cinematographers, etc.?  Why was television, arguably, GOOD for some people and just a numbing, zombie making, box of brain death for others? This is what we think, some people were thinking... the whole time they were watching!  They were inspired by the images, music, story lines, SOMETHING.  They were creating later, with the information that they gathered.  Television was a springboard for them, not the end all.

From our experiences with our children, we see that there are different ways that different people 'do' different things.  One kid can watch a TV show and sink into a stupor of unthinking blobness while another kid can watch that exact same show and think about how the lighting bounces off the puppets, how the camera angle makes such a big difference in the 'feel' of the shot, and wonder the whole time how they can replicate the set to produce their own 'movie' of the same quality.  It makes us wonder if the activity (in this case TV watching) is bad for our children, or if there are WAYS to watch TV that are bad for our children.  It makes us wonder if a better question than 'how much screen time' might be 'how is each individual child handling screen time'.

Violently creative?  Or creatively violent?

Do our children really need to be fluent with technology?  Yes.  Won't there be enough people that are computer and device savvy that the world won't need OUR children turning into drones?  Well, the thing is, technology is a language and they will have to 'speak' it well.  (We see that we could be on our own screens far less if we had a better command of technology ourselves.  Ironic, isn't it?)  It makes us think though, that a healthy dose of technological know how is definitely very important for our children's futures.

We spoke with our friend, Loreal, and some good points emerged.  People, we concluded, are individuals.  Rules for one child might not be exactly right for another child.  Life should be lived fluidly and if there are indications that too much internet, device, or digital entertainment time is happening we can simply stop allowing so much...  Maybe instead of spending so much time discussing and thinking about the damage that certain things do to our children's minds we might look at our children, in the moment, and efficiently diagnose the immediate, present situation and respond to that...

Our children can still hold pencils!

Does your child spend time on MineCraft and then build elaborate (or inspired) structures in the living room.  Do they draw box-like creatures on napkins and talk to you about them?  Is there evidence outside of device time that indicates they were thinking while they were staring at the screen?

Some of our children spend time on their screens and then produce all manners of artworks, music, writings and ideas around what they have watched or played.  Some of our children only complain about how bored they are when they are not allowed to play with their device.  Guess which ones we allow to spend more time in front of their screens?

...and are adept agents of espionage!

What do you guys think?  Do you think that we should worry about time constraints if our children are growing, or would they grow MORE without screens?  Also, do children need to be encouraged to be creative and be in the habit of creating FIRST, in order to respond to technological stimuli in a forward thinking, motivated way? What does screen time and the limiting of it mean for adults?  Is it bad for us to be glued to our devices so much, even if we are working?  Do we sometimes make all this more complicated by spending so much time thinking about it?  Would we all get along with less guilt and judgement if we did not have 'emblazoned burned on our hearts' opinions about these things? Thoughts?

-Epp

Please, We're in the Business of Making Friends...

You see, we don't consider ourselves toy makers... as a matter of fact it shook me up when I overheard my nephew once telling somebody that we were 'little dolly makers'. He wasn't saying it in a derogatory way, just saying it.  


The thing is, I have tried to communicate the same things for as long as I can remember... the overall idea, of which we just barely scratch the surface.  That we just barely connect here... I am often a frustrated artist running through the mediums, but I know that I am always looking for life, real life, filled with love and greatness.  I look for friends and I have always made them... with my own hands; drawings, paintings, multitudes of sculptures out of fabric, clay and debris.  My creations are real to me and they speak to me.  I have used them to connect with others like me.  The most boring looking soul at a craft fair can light up in our booth and talk about the life of his childhood sock monkey.  I love that!  


I want to be taken seriously.  I want to be a 'real artist'.  I want people to find life in my music, philosophies, writings... I want to be applauded and understood... and I am baffled as to why I am drawn to compulsively create things that tend to be so weird (and humorous) and perhaps even childish.  
Julie has joined me.  I don't think that she is any more or less of an artist if she makes baby booties, wall size paintings or simply writes a blog post.
Why does what an artist make always define them.  Maybe an artist is 'simply someone that creates art'.  Simply someone that creates...   

  

Love to you all,
Eppie   

People That Other People Talk About...

This is a photo of the egg funeral.  Though this egg never had any articles or fun things written about it, we like this photo, and thought it would be fine to just stick it up here at the top of this article about 'living life to its fullest'. RIP egg.

I've noticed that we do a lot of things that, if they don't accomplish any big thing, we brush away by saying, 'Well, at least it's something we can talk about.'
Thing is, there comes a point when that is not enough.  When having a story to drag out at a party or social gathering about some 'fun' thing that we did last week (because we're awesome cool, kick butt artists :)) is not enough.  
I must be getting old.  I just don't have as much fun in the talking anymore.  I want to be doing things that are so mind blowingly awesome that I don't have time to talk about them.  Is it so wrong to say: I want to be doing things that are so undeniably interesting that other people (people that are better equipped and more gifted than I at putting into word the world around them) take time out of their day and open up space in their writings just to talk about me. Wouldn't the world be a million times more interesting if every one of us woke up in the morning and decided that we wanted to be 'people that other people talk about'?
-Epp

When in Doubt, Be Human

We read a line in a post by Seth Godin, quite a few months ago, that I wrote down on my war room wall: When in doubt, be human.  I don't even remember the exact story he told to explain what he meant by that, but he spoke of how we often try to deal with work related things in ways that might be deemed 'professional' but might lack empathy or compassion or simply 'human-ness'.

 We were laughing today at how different mine and Julie's personalities are.  I tell EVERYTHING.  I am an open book and I ramble, complain, rejoice and inform.  Julie is more private.  She shares, but discretely and only what she wants to share.  The thing is, each of us are 'real' in own way and to force ourselves to be different would be somehow false.  I am learning to shut up and she is learning to speak up as we get to experience more and more business successes.  Best of all though (through this baby business and our relationship with all of you) we are learning what it means to be human.  We thought we would be so much more professional at this point.  We thought we would 'learn how to be successful'... It's funny to us that one of the biggest things that we are learning is, when in doubt, (simply) be human!

-Epp

A Few Words on Focus

As artists, we are convinced it’s all about the art.  As entrepreneurs, we believe it’s all about the ideas… the vision.  As the blossoming businesswomen that we are becoming, we are learning it’s all about how good we are at sales and how efficiently we run our business.

... but perhaps, ultimately, it’s not about the product, or the price points, or even the art or vision; it’s about who we are and maybe, most importantly, how well we can help others communicate who THEY are.

-Epp

Love, Love, Laugh!

It's time for a big giant smooch!!!  Around our houses love is a big deal!  We think it kind of ALL comes down to love, actually...  All the work, all of the thought, all of the communication... It's all to bring us together and teach us how to love.  Creativity, in a practical sense, is mostly important in its application to overcome obstacles that prevent growth. Right?  

But why's it all so serious?  WE like to have FUN!  The Professional Bohemians have this little thing called Think for Play.  It's simply using our brains to think, in a way that is as fun and as playful as possible.  That makes us wonder, Valentine's day is just around the corner... what are some fun ways that you have said, "I love you"?  

  

Creative Ways to Keep a Little One Entertained in the Hospital

If ever there was a time to Think for Play, it is when your child needs you to comfort and distract them from a unfamiliar (potentially scary) situation. Our friends Luke and Sarah are dealing with a time such as this. Their youngest daughter, Lila Grace, has been diagnosed with a Wilm's Tumor and is in Vanderbilt Children's Hospital dealing with I.V.s and other stressful things. We love this family so much (send up a prayer for them, if you have a heart to!) and really can't get little Lila off of our minds, so we used some of this preoccupation to brainstorm some ways to keep a precious little girl or boy a bit more comfortable during trying times away from home.

 Flashlights and shadow play: 

Grab a flashlight, turn down the lights and play! Make hand shadow puppets with your child or cut silhouettes out of paper and shine the light on them to make pictures on the wall. (We found this and other awesome tips here, on the Mother website.)

Doll play: 

Aside from the opportunity to introduce the little one to a needed procedure in a non threatening way, plain old doll play is therapeutic on its own. Doll play reduces stress and bonds parents and children.  

Drawing Games: 

A particularly hilarious game is Toaster Bunny. First, think of two very different items and ask the child to draw a picture of what the two things would look like combined. Then let them make up a combo of oddities for you to draw! This has resulted in some very entertaining drawings.

Scavenger Hunt: 

Make a list of a few things to look for like 'A Blue Couch' or 'A Door With the Number 3' and other things to make the trip through the halls a bit more fun. If you like color scavenger hunts you can adapt this Color Wheel Scavenger Hunt. It was originally designed for hunting through nature, but you can just as easily hunt for color in the hospital :).

Through the years we know that some of you have had to deal with similarly scary situations with your children or grand children and came up with creative ideas to keep them peaceful, help them take their medicine or distract them from uncomfortable procedures. We would welcome your ideas in the comments or on FaceBook and would love to pass them on to Luke and Sarah.

Here is the blog that Luke and Sarah have set up to keep everyone updated on Lila's progress: http://duncanfriends.blogspot.com
Please keep her in your prayers!!