All the Small Things

We've visited some of the World's Largest things, so today I figured it was about time for some of the Smallest things at the Miniature Museum of Greater St Louis. This one is right by my house, at the corner of Gravois and Delor, so I was saving it for a rainy winter day. Since we haven't seen a break in cloud cover in what? about 10 days now? today was a great day to immerse ourselves in some dollhouses.





I'm not sure what I expected here, but it sure wasn't this. There are at least a dozen giant dollhouses full of crazy detail, plus various collections and dioramas in cases throughout. I'm sorry that I'm going to lose about 50% of my audience right now, but DUDE, this place is a little girl's dream come true.





I wish there had been a little more room between cases to get some pictures of this Haunted House. It is super cool.



Here's a saloon. I feel like there should be a tiny Al Swearengen on the balcony.





This one was our favorite. It's a whole city block, complete with elevator, utility poles, sewer maintenance man under the street (you can see one end of the "sewer" at the bottom middle of the first picture.) There's a little story with it that points out all the things going on. Look for the flying kite in the second picture!





In addition to the standard dollhouses, they have a replica of Bevo Mill and one of the Old Cathedral.







Here are some of the smaller dioramas:


"Hacienda Chapel"


"Rock N Roll" - yes that is Guns N Roses surrounded by brass instruments. I loved their use of French Horn on Welcome to the Jungle.


French Armory


I knew I could convince Suze to come with me because she loves tiny food. She's telling me all the things that are in this kitchen.

There are TONS of fantastic examples of ways to create miniature scenes when you don't have enough room for a giant project. Here's where I geek out: I have always wanted to build one of those crazy huge dollhouse kits. I know I should start small, but that's just not the type of person I am.



If you are like me and have always wanted to do a project like this, they have most everything you could need in the gift shop. Furniture is just the beginning. They have tiny food, tiny wallpaper, even tiny tool buckets for your tiny tools.





The Miniature Museum is definitely worth checking out. We enjoyed it so much that when we realized we had seen everything, we went back and looked at everything again. Admission is only $5, and they are open Wednesday through Saturday, 11-4, and 1-4 on Sunday. They even lend you a tiny flashlight so you can catch every detail!

Living With the Land

One of the more interesting things at Epcot is the Living With the Land boat tour of the experimental greenhouses. Here you can see all kinds of ways to grow fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers without soil. What really surprised me is that a lot of the restaurants in Epcot, particularly the ones in The Land complex, use the produce from these greenhouses!









Growing fruits and vegetables on a trellis like this gives the plants more air, which reduces disease and pest problems. This is one idea you can try at home pretty easily!









Examples of aeroponics. Water and nutrients are applied directly to the roots.









Plants for space research! How cool is that? Ideally, some day the astronauts on the Space Station will be able to grow their own food.

Since I wasn't taking notes, I had intended to do some reading up to supplement these pictures. I quickly realized that I would be getting most of my information about the Epcot Experimental Greenhouse from this post at Inhabitat, particularly because Jill had a chance to do the Behind the Seeds tour, and I did not. So instead I invite you to head over there for more pictures and detailed information about the pros and cons of what Disney is doing here. It's very interesting!

Disney World Endurance Weekend

I did the Disney World Half Marathon this morning, and by "this morning" I mean that we had to be on the bus to Epcot at 4 am.



The first few pictures are from the Expo last night, held at the Disney Wide World of Sports Complex.





It was about 35 degrees in Orlando this morning, and freezing rain started around 5am. I overheard quite a few Southerners who were convinced that they had frostbite on such unlikely locations as their calves. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty miserable, but I had to giggle a little bit at the idea of getting frostbite in above-freezing temperatures.



The real question is, where did an Orlando cop find a hat like that?



Above: A little pre-race Cupid Shuffle for Jill. Below, the view from Corral G. The race started at 5:40, but there were about 20,000 people, so I didn't actually cross the start line until 6:18. So remember that when you see photos of the official clock!















Note about character pictures: I don't know any of these people. I just wasn't going to kill my time waiting in line for my own picture. There was a looong line to get your picture taken with Jack Sparrow.





















And that's all she wrote. My time was 3:21:14, all walking (and blogging) so I'm pretty happy with that. For competitive runners, you should know this is a very "touristy" kind of race - it's very fun and scenic, but it's also very bottlenecked in spots and you're not going to get your best time.

The endurance weekend includes the Up! Family 5K, the half marathon, and the full marathon. If you do the half and full marathon (Saturday and Sunday, respectively) it's called the Goofy Challenge and you get THREE medals. You can also get 3 medals by doing the WDW Half Marathon and the Disneyland Half Marathon (September) in the same year. If you want to do any of the marathons in 2011, signup starts Monday and fills up quickly!