Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle

Hugely dorky post ahead... Click on the photos for larger versions of the images.

Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle is a major attraction at the Museum of Science and Industry and one of my favorite things. I love miniatures! And Dale awesomely took a bunch of photos of the dollhouse for me--it's behind thick plastic in a very dark room so he took photos so I could see things up close! Yay! Every little room has a bunch of little stories!

The chapel organ. To the right of the organ is a candelabra and in the middle is a real diamond--it was in Colleen Moore's mother's engagement ring.

The dining room with King Arthur's Round Table in the center. The plates and tiny silver wear is all made of real gold. The glasses are crystal.

The Drawing Room . . . The floor is rose quartz and jade and the chandelier is made with real diamonds, emeralds, and pearls.

Another shot of the drawing room--see the mural of Cinderella running away painted on the wall to the left of the fireplace?

The Great Hall features many tiny treasures including Knights in shining armor that once belonged to Rudolph Valentino and hard-carved ancient vases.

In the kitchen you'll find Royal Doulton china with the Queen of England's crest on it. Only two sets of this tiny china set were made--one for Colleen Moore and one for the Queen of England's doll house.

The library features tiny furniture for the fairies to lounge on and read. The books are all real and many of them are gifts from prominent authors of the day with mini versions of their books.

The Fairy Prince's Bedroom features Excalibur's sword--and a "bear" rug made with mice teeth!

The Prince's Bathroom is made of alabaster and features real sapphires.

The Princess's Bedroom is spectacular! Sleeping Beauty's bed sits off to the right and the chairs--center of the photo--are made of platinum, diamond, and emerald earrings. The floor is Mother of Pearl.

The Magic Garden features a weeping willow tree that actually weeps.

And that's the Fairy Castle! I'm a dork.

The Glass Experience

Dale and I went to one of our favorite places--the Museum of Science & Industry--for the The Glass Experience. Check out the chandeliers.

The first section of the exhibit involved examples of glass and it's innumerable applications. This is a paperweight that looks like a snowglobe. I LOVE it, especially the little lady standing in the snow.

Eeek! Glass eyeballs!

Rolling Rock glass bottle form.

There was also an art glass exhibit featuring the work of the famous glass blowing artist Dale Chihuly.

There was a sea of huge Chihuly decorative bowls.

There were also artisans on hand working on real stained-glass projects.

Restoring stained glass if a good deal like putting together a glass jigsaw puzzle.

Antique stained glass lamp.

A huge decorative glass piece balances precariously on a tiny stem.

And finally there was a real live glass blowing exhibit. Pretty neat!

Dale was also nice enough to take a ton of photos of the Fairy Castle--but there are so many and I love that miniature house so much that I think that's a separate post!

Star Wars & Museum of Science & Industry

Dale and I decided to get a one-year membership to the Museum of Science & Industry. You may recall we went once last year and had a blast! However, the museum is huge so we didn't see everything. It's also rather pricey if you opt to enjoy the special exhibits. So we got a family membership--come visit, we'll get you in!

Anyway, we went a couple of weeks ago for the first time with our membership and had a great day. We enjoyed the special Star Wars exhibit. You can check out the entire Star Wars gallery by clicking here.

We have photos of tons of Star Wars props and costumes--check it out!

There are also some shots of the real Aurora 7 Space Capsule.

I'm sure we'll be boring you with more photos of that place all year long! But it's such a great place.

Museum of Science & Industry Part 3

The Museum of Science & Insdustry has a massive model train set-up that shows how important rail is to the region and how it connects Chicago to the rest of the country. From the balcony, near the Boeing 727 exhibit, you can see the plane flying over the little city below. Too cute!

At street level the scaled-down Chicago is adorable!

Look at it! It goes on for miles. There are many landmark buildings and it gives a flavor of typical Chicago neighborhoods.

See the blue windows on the left side of the street? Those are meant to represent this building, which I talked about in this post!

Another shot of downtown Chicago! Trains are a very important part of life in Chicago. It sure makes it easier for us to get around.

We live on the Green Line. The trains represented in the Chicago model include the Green and Red Lines!

From the city, the trains spread out to the countryside, showing unusual terrain.

Trains move through the farm land! I LOVE this picture. It looks so charming and tiny!

From the balcony we got a shot of the spectacular bridge that separates the two sections of the model railroad.

Finally, we end up in Seattle! Isn't this cute? I've been to Seattle and it looks just like this! Ha!

Next time we go, I'm setting up the tripod and taking pictures of Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle! That was pretty awesome. Check it out here.

Museum of Science & Industry Part 2

In the Toy Making factory, you can watch a toy--called the Gravitron--as it makes its way from assembly to packaging. You can also have yours customized (we picked the name Monty but don't tell the other cats).

The museum of Science & Industry featured a huge selection of robot toys and a couple of bonuses--like the robot above. It's a Sentinel featured in the Matrix movies. Weird!

This is a model of a submarine launching a missile! Dale loved it because it was in plastic and the missile has cotton wrapped around the base to simulate the foam of the water. It was a neat little model.

The petroleum exhibit had a small room that illustrated the refinery process. Dale though the bubbles were neat!

Another great interactive opportunity! Dale got to ride a segway for the first time. He was super excited though the guide gal was a bit over protective.

Chicago Museum of Science and Industry Part One

We had a pretty fabulous day at the museum today! So fabulous that I'm going to break it up into pieces because I love the pics so much!

First off, I think Body Worlds was really amazing. It was a startling exhibit that I enjoyed but also found disturbing. I was doing really well until there was a man sliced like a loaf of bread. And he had a face that had skin on it! Very unsettling. At any rate, I think if you're curious about the human body at all it's very well worth seeing. Bonus is that the entire thing was created by a totally mad scientist named Gunther who wears a black hat at all times. Very odd.

The museum is a great day-long activity! What a huge place filled with scads of interesting exhibits! One of my favorites is surely the chicken hatchery. Dale took these great shots to show off the exhibit:

There are two pens in the hatchery. The first is where the eggs go when they are 21 days old. This is when the baby chicks finally break on through the shell with their special egg-shell breaking beak! The exhibit helpfully puts one of the eggs under a magnifying glass, as you can see above.

Click on the pic above to get a closer look at a tiny beak poking away at its shell! So bitsy!

There were three new chicks milling about during our visit. It takes the little guys about 10 hours to bust out of the shell so they are tired when they get out. They kind of just hop around lamely squeaking like crazy.

They are very curious right from the start and they poke around, looking for food or momma or something and then they get tired and rest for a bit. Once the chicks have made it through the shell and have chilled out in the cage for a few hours they can graduate to the next phase...

Baby chicks can start to eat grain about 24 hours after they are born. So they are moved to the incubation housing next door where they eat and frolic with the other new chicks until they are moved to a farm or something. The museum hatches birds that were facing extinction and helps boosts the population of three different birdies.

How insanely cute is this little guy? Why does he have to grow up to be an ugly chicken? I swear, I'm eventually going to be vegetarian because animals are just too cute to eat!

Body Worlds 2

We're going to see Body Worlds 2 tomorrow morning and I'm a bit nervous. I've heard that it's really fascinating but I'm a bit squeamish. Not that I can't handle seeing displays of human anatomy but this isn't just a display! These are actual bodies and actual bones and skin and muscles and tissue and eeeeek!

The above picture wigs me out a bit and that's just one thing! Anyway, we're heading to the Museum of Science and Industry for the first time so it's sure to be a full day! Dale's been wanting to go for some time!