And the winner is....

Not us, big surprise!

Peep Show IV: The Finalists

Mad props to this year's winners and finalists for the huge talent and skill displayed.  It's only inspiration for next year......

The Peep Your Peep Could Smell Like

The Pioneer Press did a "Peeps in Motion" contest this year.  Great, another contest for us to suck at.

We do love this entry, though.

Another diorama that dares to rob us of our prize

We can't link to this awesome diorama on Flickr, but you can see it here.  It's called "Teddy Wins!" and if you live anywhere near DC and give two shakes about baseball, you know what it's about.  Why the crap didn't we think of it?  Sigh.

Also stealing our prizes this year:

The Dupont Circle Snowball Fight organizers (rabble rousers!) have some photos of the Best Snowpocalypse Diorama Ever posted on their Facebook page.  There's a tiny version of the U Street snowball fight, seen above, as well as the Dupont Circle snowball fight:

I

I hope you'll excuse me....I have to go find Jess and Doug so we can all hide under the covers until this embarrassment is over.

Obviously this year's winner

Doug came across this entry the day after we submitted ours, and we were shocked. First, the skill here is impressive. The details are striking, the costumes are cute, and it's a great DC scene to re-create.

But second, HOLY CRAP this thing has its own FACEBOOK FAN GROUP. There are 3,300 fans for this thing.

You want to know how many people are fans of our diorama?

Like, 5. On a good day.

Seriously, you need to look at the photos from this monstrosity of awesomeness. Go to the Facebook group right now. Pay attention to the stained-glass window, because it's gonna blow your crafting-addled mind.

A Diorama That We Might Beat

While a lovely attempt to recreate the antics of MTV's Jersey Shore, I kind of have a feeling we rank higher than this diorama.  Score one for us.

Our Entry Description

As requested by the only member of my family who knows what a "blog" is, here is the text of our entry that was emailed to the Washington Post.  Doug is a pretty clever writer if I may say so myself:

We have titled our Peeps Diorama "Peep Flu!" in honor of the Swine Flu Extravaganza of 2009.  The diorama depicts the frenzied scene inside and outside a vaccine clinic.  Outside the clinic, hordes of anxious Peeps await their turn to receive the Peep Flu vaccine.  Among those waiting are pregnant mothers, seeking to protect their unborn children from the evils of Peep Flu, hypochondriac townspeople sporting face masks, and and a handful of other vaccine-seekers.  A television crew interviews a nurse in the parking lot, while inside, doctors and nurses tend to patients.    

Our team of diorama artists consists of all veteran diorama builders, who have joined forces to fight the Peep Flu. We will be chronicling the journey for our friends and blog enthusiasts everywhere - www.peepsonparade.blogspot.com

Happy Peeping!

Lisa, Jessica, and Doug

Peeps News Update

From the Latest Word in Denver comes this update on a story of "Peeps prejudice," previously seen on the Colbert Report.

You really must investigate this for yourself.

The Finished Product!

Judas wanted to help us photograph our diorama for our Washington Post entry.  Thanks, Judas.

 Capturing the moment for posterity...and because Doug took better entry photos than I did.

 

There it is!  Our little Peep baby....they grow up so fast!


Don't forget, the Washington Post is holding Peeps Happy Hour tomorrow (March 23), so if you want to see some great dioramas (read: not ours), go!  (And take some photos, since I can't be there!)

On Hold

Final product photos are coming soon...promise!!  Someone just moved into a new office today and decided to spring clean her house all weekend....yes.  Patience, my darlings.

Saturday Marathon, Part III

Time for a little interior design magic, shall we?

What do you see when you walk into the doctor's office, minute-clinic, or emergency room?  About 8,000 of these posters to tell you to cover your darn mouth.  So I 'shopped up a couple (bilingual!) posters to remind our Peep friends to cover their little Peep coughs.

Our tiny nurse hats were constructed from index cards.  Simple and easy and darn cute if I may opine.  Doug had his heart set on a vomiting Peep, so here it is.  The bucket is made out of clay, and we used some leftover hot glue trash to stick in the bucket...just for fun.  I know, you're amused.  So were we.

Here's an overhead view of the clinic interior.  On the blue table, you'll see tiny reproductions of the cough posters.  Jessica cut them out and made it look like there were stacks of pamphlets on the table.

It might be hard to see in this photo, but we made tiny syringes for the nurses and doctors.  We took pieces of paper clips and spun some hot glue around them to make it look like the barrel of the syringe.  

Here are some of the snacks Doug brought up after his dinner break as we finished the diorama:

Mmm, beans and booze.  (I added the umbrella).

Okay, that's it, go away for now.  Next I'll show you some overall photos of the finished product.  And then maybe we'll judge some of this year's contestants on our own!

The Saturday Marathon, Part II

I'm all covered in plague, but here are some more photos from the Saturday marathon:

Finally, around dinnertime, we started placing Peeps into the diorama.  We started with the outside scene, where I was pleased that we could use Peeps Christmas trees as shrubbery for the clinic.  Everyone needs some greenery, you know.  Roughage.

Of course we were still working on the living room floor like total idiots.  Hot glue gun + people + cat + marshmallows = DISASTER.

This little clinic sign came off a prescription that Jessica had so conveniently picked up from the CVS.  Here you can see one of the Peeps wearing its little mask that I made.  We superglued the masks on, because hot glue would have been too bulky and obvious.  The pink bunny in the foreground is one of the pregnant Peeps that Jessica made.  She's about to go to med school, we should have known she would have come up with that idea.

Oh look, we finally moved over to um.....THE TABLE.

Just when we were almost finished with construction, Jess got her very first hot glue gun burn.  Congratulations, Jessica.  

That's all I can muster for now.  Soon I'll put up some pictures of the really awesome interior of the diorama, and some overall shots of our finished product that the Washington Post doesn't want. Ahem.

Temporary Hiatus

Your girl blogger is under the weather.  Posting will resume when I Lazarus myself back to life.  Please send Peeps and Alka-Seltzer cold and sinus.

The Saturday Marathon

The three of us finally reunited on Saturday in the late afternoon. I got my next burn in a matter of minutes.

Doug wasn't far behind, although in this picture I'm pretty sure he was just stuffing his face...again:

I'm not sure why we managed to make this choice--I'm going to blame it on the Olympics--but instead of working at the table like normal people, we ended up on the living room floor with the hot glue gun plugged in behind the DVD player. It was not a great creative space.

One of the hardest tasks we faced was clothing. When we came up with the theme for this year's diorama, I was excited that we wouldn't have to make any clothing for the Peeps. But Jessica and Doug wanted doctor coats, and I knew it would look cute if we did it right.

Harder than I thought, that's for sure.

Here is a list of things that we can make next year using the same doctor coat design:

1. Priest Peeps

2. Vampire Peeps

3. Cold Old Person Peeps

4. Ghost Peeps

So it needed a little work. We thought about that for a while, during which time Doug made a parking lot for the clinic out of black nail polish and White Out. I think Jessica was making some clay furniture. I was obviously hanging out, taking pictures, and eating. When I wasn't eating, I was in charge of Mod-Podging all the clay furniture we made, with a little help from the hair dryer to move the process along.

Before we knew it, we had quite the cast of Peeps characters lined up to survey my questionable taste in movies. Below you see our news reporter (Doug calls her Chicks McPeep) complete with painted Q-Tip microphone and big ol' necklace; a PTV camera operator; a pregnant Peep (they received priority for their vaccinations, you know!); and two doctors in ill-fitting jackets that were the best thing we could come up with. The stethoscopes were made out of paper clips and Play Dough. And a whole ton of super glue.

Now all that's left is to put them into the diorama! Right?

Maybe not. Stay tuned for the next part of the marathon.

Please Stand By

Unfortunately I slacked over the weekend and now it's Monday, and I don't have my photos, and omg whoops.  So here are some Peep-related links to keep you occupied until tomorrow, when I promise to update all about our Saturday build-a-thon:

The Pioneer-Press 2006 contest, aka "entries we could actually beat.

Some Peep art that you can feel free to purchase for any of our walls.

Peeptastic Old Navy shirts for girls, or overgrown women like me who will stuff themselves into little girls' tees

And another.....

On the Second and Third Days of Peeps Week, my Diorama Gave to Me...

When I woke up on Wednesday morning, I found that the Play Dough tile floor that I had worked so hard to create had dried and crack-a-lacked.

All my hard work, for naught. (This picture was taken Tuesday night, and does not show the crackage.)

The "we're doomed" e-mails to Jess and Doug started around 9:30 a.m. I had seen Jessica that morning, but she had not yet pried her eyes open enough to take a good look, and I think she was running late for the bus. We didn't exactly discuss logistics over breakfast. We don't discuss anything over breakfast. We don't talk to each other before noon.

We all worked a long day on Wednesday, so we didn't make any progress on the diorama. But, Doug made it to the store to get more Play Dough and some fresh Peeps.

After work on Thursday, I stopped by Target to look for Play Dough, since I wasn't sure if Doug had gathered any supplies. The Target by me was in the middle of renovations, which made clay of any kind impossible to find. I walked over to the fabric store, where they had no-bake clay. I also picked up Mod Podge, the best adhesive ever made and quite possibly the equivalent of crack for crafters.

We stole Doug's stash of supplies from his roommate and got down to work. Our goal was to replace the floor inside the clinic, and we were pretty proud of ourselves when we were finished:

Jessica places clay (and a few Play Dough) tiles inside the clinic.

We put down all the tiles, and then smothered that crap with Mod Podge. It seriously got out of hand. But we needed the floor to stick this time, and to maintain its shape.

Unfortunately, every time we start working on a diorama, the living room ends up looking like this:

But we can't give away too many details yet. Stay tuned for more....

Feel the Burn

We started actually constructing our masterpiece on Tuesday, February 23, with the deadline for entries less than a week away. We live on the edge. Jessica was out of town, so Doug and I got down to work.



Doug was in charge of all box-cutting duties, and rightly so. I can't be trusted with that crap. Instead, I just kept reminding him, "Don't cut the table, I love this table." The table is safe.

As we developed the structure of the diorama, I was awarded my first hot-glue burn of the season:



We decided to use the plethora of Play Dough that we had on hand to make a lot of the features for our diorama. Why three 20-somethings have so much Play Dough sitting around is beyond me.



Doug used all of our green options to make the scenery outside of the "clinic," but with limited quantities of each color, it was slow going. In the meantime, I tried to make black and white tiles for the inside of the scene, but I didn't get nearly as far as I wanted.

We completed a few other preliminary things, like using manilla envelopes to line the walls of the scene and covering the outside of the "clinic."

During the wall installation, I was blessed with my second burn of the season:



It didn't help that Doug kept eating the supplies:

And it was around 10:30 p.m., post-burn, when I gave up and threw in the towel for the night. It felt good to have put a dent in our plans.

How do I put this nicely.......

MY HEART, HOW IT BREAKS.


The Post is hosting a happy hour on March 23 to showcase some of this year's entries (and get you mildly buzzed).

The trouble?  This girl has to work that night, and her soul has shattered at the realization.

Hopefully Jess and Doug can fit it into their busy schedules.....

Case of the Mondays

With three 20-somethings working bizarre schedules, it seemed like we'd never get started on this year's diorama.  On Monday, February 22, Jessica was traveling and Doug was working late, so I decided I needed to get started on my own.

I had this brilliant idea that our Peeps would wear masks, SARS style.  But how to make them?  The idea hit me in the car (where all good ideas hit me): dryer sheets and dental floss.

Fast forward a few hours to me, huddled in bed (it was cold), squinting at my needle and mint-flavored thread.  I'm not great with knots, which presented some problems.  I couldn't even muster the strength to take a real photograph, so here is the view from my rudimentary cell phone:

 

After constructing two very delicate masks, I called it a night.  My eyes were killing me, and I was feeling grim about the whole project.

Would we ever get our act together?

Decisions, Decisions

We had lots of good ideas, but we had to pick one that was both totally awesome, and that we could execute without looking like total fools. We ruled out a few from the beginning, like the Twitter Fail Whale. As cute as it would have been to have a whale carried by little Peep chicks in our diorama, we had enough trouble just trying to get Woodstock to fly last year. Getting more than one bird suspended in the air just wasn't going to happen. We ruled out Lady Gaga because we didn't want to have to try putting spandex or pleather on a Peep.

We got down to two ideas: the White House Easter Egg Roll, and Swine Flu, better known as Peep Flu. For the White House scenario, I envisioned a 3D background of the White House, with tiny versions of Michelle Obama's vegetable garden and Bo the dog. Maybe we'd throw in a few Secret Service bunnies. But when I drew out what I saw in my head, it looked like this:


Not so good.

So I drew up Peep Flu, which for the life of me I can't get to rotate:



Doug, who came up with the idea, had a similar drawing to offer:



Doug originally told me his idea while I was shoveling out my driveway from the third snowpocalypse, and he said, "I just think it would be funny if we had Peeps throwing up all over the place." Funny, yes. But would the judges approve of marshmallow vomit? Jessica and I didn't think so. But we agreed that it was an idea that we could execute and have fun with as we built it. We told Doug that if we toned down the marshmallow vomit aspect, this idea would be our best bet.

And so it began.

Making Preparations

When I told you I was a Peep hoarder, I was not even kidding:



On the top shelf of our pantry--the magic shelf that holds Gatorade, stemware, and booze, we have a designated corner for Peeps.

Here's our current inventory:



We keep a wide variety on hand, as you never know what out-of-season Peeps might come in handy at contest time. When this year's diorama is complete, I'll have the green light to feast away on the surplus!


With some suggestions from our friends, the three of us started to brainstorm. We came up with the following ideas:
-Lady Gaga
-The White House Easter Egg Roll
-Swine Flu
-The DC Duck Tour or Segway Tour
-Twitter Fail Whale

You can think about how well all those ideas could be executed, and up next we'll narrow it down for you.

The Dream Team

Here we are, your diorama-building force with whom to be reckoned:

Jessica: the shy scientist better known as Cornbread in the hip-hop world.  Jessica loves to unwind with a nice glass of merlot and an Arrested Development marathon.

Lisa: That's me, the media gossip, sometimes better known as Lisatella.  I've been known to start my evening off with a can of Sparks...sometimes in Peep mid-construction.

Doug: Sells beds at Ikea by day, sings in every choir and chorale in the tri-state area by night.  Every now and then, he wanders up the stairs to our apartment with a martini in a Solo cup.  Classy.

Obviously, this team was designed for success.  Stop laughing.  That means you, mom.  We're three states away, but we know when you're laughing at us.

Doug Joins the Union

Doug and his roommate moved into the apartment below ours last fall, and we immediately had wild fantasies that it would be just like Friends, with everyone hanging out in each other's apartments all the time. That kind of happened. Every now and then, you'll find someone camped out in the other's apartment...usually when there's food around.

It helps that Doug and I hail from the same corner of Pennsylvania, and Jessica spent four years of college in the City of Brotherly Love.  Fate?  Oh, yes.  Destiny.

One night after a little drinking, Doug and I realized that we were both diorama veterans. He had entered the 2008 contest with this offering:


Holy crap, look at those details. The perfectly-placed google eyes! The necklaces! Bald Howie Mandel!

Doug didn't win any awards either, but he's clearly the engineer in our little union. We vowed to collaborate in the next Washington Post contest.  After all, Doug needed to shake off the bitterness of not being chosen as a finalist after he sewed together 18 tiny pearl necklaces.

In the meantime, the Peeps and Company store opened at National Harbor, and I wrote about it for online magazine Too Shy to Stop. The store opened on my birthday. Three cheers for perfectly-timed store openings:



I was the only one of our trio who has had the chance to visit the store so far, but don't worry--I've filled them in on all the sugary details.

It's almost time to get started on our 2010 entry!

But for now, everyone gets cheered up by this Easter Beagle clip....so, enjoy.

Making Our 2009 Diorama -or- Hot Glue Everywhere

Choosing a theme for 2009 was easy. We're huge fans of Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, so we decided to recreate a scene from the end of It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown!



We chose the Easter morning scene (at the very end of this glorious Spanish clip we have decided to share with you) so that we could fit as many characters into the project as we could.

So I went to the thrift store, to awkwardly buy some naked Barbie dolls that would provide the hair for Sally, Lucy, and the rest of the Peanuts girls. Face it, most of those Peanuts guys are pretty bald.

(You're still watching the Spanish video clip, aren't you?  It kind of sucks you in, even when you have no idea what they're talking about, even though you know the plot.)

Jessica and I made several trips to the craft store to get felt, google eyes, and a crap ton of hot glue sticks.

But we were dead set on making the diorama from as much food material as possible--meaning, Peeps. And jellybeans. Jellybeans are amazing, and the make for fantastic diorama-sized colored eggs.

So we spent an entire weekend piecing together this diorama, rushing because I had a date on Sunday, and heaven knows I needed to GET READY. It was a double date, to boot, but Jessica gracefully neglected to point out all the hot glue burns that I ended up sporting on my fingertips.

(P.S., that double date was the first date with my now-boyfriend, who thinks we're crazy for putting so much thought into this year's diorama but appreciates our creativity.)

In the end, our first effort looked like this:






Oh hey Woodstock...how's it hanging there on that carefully-placed piece of fishing line?



We weren't picked as finalists in the Washington Post contest. We were devastated. Okay, only sort of devastated, since we knew our diorama wasn't that fantastic. But we thought our setup was pretty darn cute, and we had a great time making it.

We took it to Easter dinner last year, and it lived on top of my sister's television until she moved at the end of the summer. Snoopy and friends landed in the trash, but they will live on forever in our hearts.


I also made this creepy Peeps centerpiece from the leftover stash. And....I made Peeps place cards too. Our Easter celebration developed diabetes on the spot.

Next, I'll explain how Doug got roped into this thing. Poor Doug.

Meeting My Peep Soulmate

Jessica and I have lived together for almost two years, not counting the summer we spent tucked in a tiny dorm room at the University of Maryland, tripping over each other and trying not to sweat to death. She's also a Peep fan, but I know her obsession has grown exponentially since meeting me.

Here's a quick review of some of our paraphernalia:


Peeps beanie plushies (and my Hello Kitty train case, because I'm turning 8 this year)


Peeps bubbles (for entertaining the cat, we swear)


Peeps rubber duck, my gift to Jessica from the Peeps store at National Harbor


I can't remember who gave me this. It was either from my mother, as a gag gift, or from my ex-husband, as a very serious gift. Either way, I love it. And yes, I've used it.

When the Washington Post announced their 3rd annual Peeps diorama contest, Jessica and I decide we were going to tackle the challenge. Next, I'll tell you about how the challenege pretty much tackled us.