Travelog for: Honey the Hippo

Honey is super excited to start her journey as the first of her siblings to become a Toy Voyager. There haven't been any offers yet at her post, but she plans on looking around some more today and selecting someone to begin her journey to. Right now she is at home and made sweet iced tea today. She also had a photo shoot with some tasty cookies so she could show everyone at Toy Voyagers what she's all about. She is super excited to begin her adventures to trying tasty treats and meeting new people all over the world.

While my brother Einstein Pig is off to Michigan I'm going to sunny California to visit proptartknits. I'm super excited to be going to such a fun place for the summer and can't wait to try my hand at cooking some of the local cuisine - especially the local sweets. Einstein may love learning, but for me nothing beats cooking and candymaking.

Hi! I made it to California safe and sound! It is very sunny here and also very pretty - there are PALM TREES! My host mom, AJ, is really nice and has promised to get me to the beach so I can see the pacific ocean! I think I might turn into one of those California Girls the Beach Boys and Katy Perry sing about!




Here I am when I first arrived! I'm not even out of my envelope yet!





I was a little shy at first...





But everyone had very happy faces and I was happy so come out and say hi!





This is AJ, my host mom. She was very excited to see me! I have a host dad, too, named Todd, but I haven't gotten my picture taken with him yet! But they also have my host puppy. His name is Toby. This is him and I meeting for the first time:





I am excited for my adventures to start! AJ has already taken me with her to work and I must say I was very popular there. AJ works for a professional theater and right now her shop is full of interns who love me! She builds props to go onstage, and so do all of her interns. You should see the stuff they do! Here are some photos of the room she works in:








I might have to start posing with the things - today I helped AJ build a big bouquet of flowers!


While I was at the shop, I met Jango, who is one of AJ's Voyagers. On this day he was getting his ID tag made at work and then he went to Germany!





One of AJ's interns started me off right as a California girl - big sunglasses and a peace sign!





I miss you, Mom, but I am in good and safe hands here. AND... there are LOTS of toys in the house to play with!

Lots of love,
Honey

Hi mom! I know I haven't updated in a REALLLLLLY long time, but AJ has been super-duper busy at work trying to open a brand new show by Stephen Schwartz (I didn't know who he was, but apparently he wrote Wicked and Godspell and a bunch of other musicals). So now I will write you an entry a day to show you what we've been up to. Since I mentioned the play, we will start with that!

The show is called My Fairytale, and it is about Hans Christian Andersen and how he became a storyteller and writer. Here I am taking a sneak peek of the stage, though we had to sneak in all ninja-like:



Here I am with the paint crew helping to paint a GIANT canvas that covers the stage floor at the beginning of the show. Andersen gets pulled into the world of his characters, this floor gets pulled up and the one you see in the photo is revealed.



But AJ works on Props, so I helped out there the most. One of the neat things in the show is a barnyard scene where the actors wear big animal puppets on their bodies, like this rooster:



...and some are carried, like these baby chicks. This one is called Clarence. Can you find me?



There I am!


CLarence was very nice to me and didn't peck at me or anything! There is also a floppy dog puppet that takes two people to maneuver, and on the actor's feet they wear fun spats over their shoes that match the fabric on the dog. I sewed the buttons on all by myself!



Finally, the characters in the play have to go through a spooky forest. The forest is actors wearing these HUGE tree backpacks covered in fabric that matched the writing on the stage. They were so big I almost got lost in them!



Here's a closer shot of me with them. I helped tie fabric onto the "branches," which were actually fabric covered PVC pipes!



So working on that show was pretty exhausing, but we have done lots of other things, too! Tomorrow, I will tell you all about our trip to Pismo Beach! I got to see the ocean!

Lots of love,
Honey