So random, July/August '26

I bought too dang many dolls during May and June, and I hit July running too.  July 5th.  Carola (from June) poses with one of July's first newbies.  The newbie's name is Ilse (pronounced "ill-seh").

Here's a full-body shot of Ilse.  She is a Revalo doll from Gebruder Ohlhaver, thus another German girl like Liesel and Ethel.  She's smaller than Liesel,and I suspect her wig may be original. 

I think I got her for a steal because she's not one of the big-name dolls.  Not a Kestner, not an Armand Marseille, y'all get the point.  She's got a sweet face, with lovely gray eyes...

...but if I don't position her just so, she can look kinda vacant.  She shares that problem with Queen Elfriede. 

Also July 5th.  This is Daisy.

Daisy is one of those ily 4EVER dolls, and she's inspired by...well, by Daisy Duck!  My mom likes Daisy Duck, and Donald Duck too, for that matter.  Their tempers match sometimes, LOL.  I have a further incentive for liking this doll; besides the hippie dress, she's got gray eyes.  Hey, just like Ilse!

Okay, Daisy's eyes are more bluish-gray, but my point stands.  I love dolls with gray eyes, and I love finding a doll of color with eyes that AREN'T brown.  Mind y'all, I like brown eyes, but not all Afro-American people have brown eyes.  Thus I like it when I find a doll of color who doesn't have brown eyes.

July 6.  Elias and Joyita Emilia get comfy on my pillow.  Cleopatra Chantale and Andrea Doria are partly visible behind them. 

Later that same day a package arrived, containing a Jesmar dress for Joyita Emilia.

I owe Candela Laura one too.  I feel like any Jesmar I own should have at least one Jesmar outfit.  I've since covered Joy's elastics with bows, by the way, as Kirari-chan was partially held in her package with white cotton ribbons.

Oh yes, Kirari-chan!  July 8th.  Kirari-chan is the orange-haired poppet, and her companion is a Famosa Expressions doll that I hadn't yet named.  I was leaning towards "Angelica," per my mother's suggestion.

Most Cabbage Patch enthusiasts picture Cabbies with butterfly eyes when they think of Tsukuda, but Tsukuda made other toys too.  Kirari-chan is one of those.  She's a hair-and-makeup doll, and she has a couple'a interesting features that make her worthy of a review.  I'll get to that...someday.  As for the Famosa doll, y'all may remember that I'm fond of Famosa dolls (examples here and here), and I'm also always on the lookout for dolls with "comical expressions."  Famosa Expressions dolls are new critters to me, but I like 'em a lot.  Squeeze their tummies and their expressions change a little.

Kinda like Tiny Cheerful Tearful, or full-sized Cheerful Tearful, take your pick.  I kinda wish I could lock her mouth shut, because I like that goofy grin.

July 14th.  This one is Whoopsie.  I may choose a different pet name for her.

Whoopsie is an Ideal doll and a squeeze toy.  Squeeze her and she makes an obnoxious squeaking sound, and her pigtails pop up.  I just like her cute little face.  I also like that she's semi-local; Horseshoe Bend, Arkansas is not exactly a hop, skip, and a jump away from Malden, but it's closer to Malden than Fayetteville!  

Another new arrival for July 14th is Georgette, a Clodrey doll.

I'd heard of Clodrey from Crissy and Beth (they produced a version of Crissy and a very pretty dresser doll), but I'd only heard of them until I popped the name into Google.  Georgette is a "Coucou" doll, which I think may be a named line like the Revalo dolls are.  I largely bought her for her outfit, which reminds me of my favorite vintage Barbie dress, "Fancy Free."  But Georgette has a pretty face too.  Notice that her eyes follow the camera.  Georgette trusts no one!

I must say, the French dolls are a lot more serious than the Italian dolls I own!  I prefer the exuberant Italian dolls, but obviously the placid French dolls are welcome in my group too.  And there are always exceptions to the "French dolls are serious" rule.  Right, Praline?

Right, Sheena?

Sheena arrived on the 20th.  She is also a Clodrey doll, and she belongs to a wave called "Funky."  The Funky dolls were more punky than funky...or maybe they were both!  Anyway, I don't know of too many punk dolls that were/are geared towards kids, but here's this one at least.

We jump back now, to July 18th.  My cats (particularly Tommy and Chessie) had developed a sudden interest in knocking my dolls from hell to breakfast.  That morning Carla Jennifer (Cabbage Patch Preemie, left) and Mikey (Magic Nursery baby) were my latest victims. 

Good thing Tommy and Chessie haven't been able to reach my porcelain kids.  If that were the case then war might be declared. 

July 19th.  I put my resident ponytail Barbies together. 

The brunette is, of course, Mama's #3, and the blonde is the #4 that Treesa sent me in June.  As far as I know, Barbie wasn't a redhead until the sixth wave of ponytails came out, but if I can find one of them then the color trifecta will be complete.  Note, by the way, that Mama's Barbie is wearing "Fancy Free."

It's not a dead ringer for Georgette's dress, but the colors are bang-on.

July 21st.  It was balls soup hot, as my sister would say.  Temperature was 96 at 2:30 p.m., and the heat index was 120.  

Ayla and Lady waited patiently, for a new friend of their own.

Why they are relevant will become obvious later.  For now we go to July 26th, approximately 8:15 p.m.  It had been ridiculously hot all day (heat index of 118), and it was still stifling by nightfall.  I put Yuka in her bathing suit...

...but to quote one of my favorite library patrons, it was too damn hot.

July 27th it was STILL too damn hot!  Our A/C spent much of the night flashing an Error 34 reading and thus didn't cool the house like it normally would.  Mama and I slept poorly and woke up grouchy, and some of my dolls here appeared to feel the same way.

From left, they are Wendy, Chou chou, Mika, Nora, and Mali.  Mali and Nora retained a bit of optimism, as they knew Wednesday would bring cooler temperatures.  As for Wendy, she's ready for fall.

Wendy doesn't have her hat yet, but she's gonna be a witch this Halloween. 

Hot temperatures make me think of hot, neon colors, and my new Cry Baby fits the bill there.  This is Charlie, and she arrived on the 27th as well.

Sigh, every time I look up Cry Babies for the sake of reference, I find one I can't live without.  Charlie pairs a deep skintone with bright, splashy colors (just like Whoopsie does), but her eyes are green.  That's a nice change, as Ayla and Lady both have blue eyes.  

August 26th.  Yes, I spent August doing something else.  Paid almost ZERO attention to my dolls, but the Cry Baby Trio did manage to get my attention.

Rub-a-dub-dub, three kids in a tub!  Even though Charlie, Ayla, and Lady look a lot alike I still enjoy having 'em along for the ride of life.  Or the walk of life, take your pick.  Sometimes life crawls and sometimes it blitzes, so I guess both the ride and the walk are applicable terms.

August 28th.  I'd just told Mika that it was gonna get hot again. 

I know, sweetie, I'm not excited either.  Seriously, the first week of September is looking to be miserably hot.  At that stage NWS was showing temperatures in the high nineties clean through to the following Thursday (September 3rd), and neither Ryan Hall nor Max Velocity nor our own local weatherman had any words of comfort.  BUT...we'll make it through.  Mama and I have weathered hot summers with ZERO A/C at all, so we can survive one with a malfunctioning A/C.

And that's the past two months in a nutshell.  My promised focus on nail polish has come to pass, and I've become more obsessed with that than with my doll's, thus why August was so lean.  I'll try to do better in the weeks and months ahead.  The medication my neurologist prescribed is an anti-spasm med and has done wonders for my pain, so I may be able to complete some reviews soon...but no promises.  I love y'all, though. 

Cheers,

RagingMoon1987 

So random, January/February '26

Another winter is almost behind us!  Winter is a part of God's natural cycle, but that's hard to appreciate when the cold makes one's joints ache.  I understand Daddy a little better now, as he was always cranky during winter.  Not mean, mind y'all, just grumpier than usual, and he'd always say "I'm not mad at y'all, I just hurt."  It sucks, and I'm glad it's almost over for another year.  Indeed, except for that bad cold snap in January it's been a pretty chill winter for the Bootheel.  That said, the ants aren't out yet.  They never come out until after the last freeze.

'Nuff chatter, let's get down to business.  On January 3rd I was able to get this lovely little trio together for a picture.

Y'all know how I like odd groupings, and these three are it.  The one in pink white is an obvious Li'l Miss doll, Li'l Miss Candi Stripes.  I'll be unoriginal and call her just "Candi," cutesy spelling and all.  I knew that she had stripey hair, but I had no idea that her clothes changed color too!!!

I know, I know, I said Li'l Miss Magic Hair was my favorite of the Li'l Miss dolls, but I ended up liking Candi's smiling eyes better.  I remember Treesa being surprised by teeth on a doll once, and I too was surprised to see that Candi has teeth showing.

Being an early nineties doll often means having big bangs, and this is what Candi looked like when I pulled her out of her box.  Thus why her bangs are currently bound with an elastic.

Interestingly, Candi didn't come with shoes.  I think she's the only Li'l Miss doll that didn't.  That's fine and dandy for summer and for the beachy clothes that Candi is wearing, but during a Midwestern winter it looks uncomfortable.  I can probably find some shoes somewhere, though.  Candi is probably used to it anyway, as she hails from a place in Kansas called Rossville.  Rossville's latitude is higher than Malden's is.  Not much, but enuff to make winters a smidge harsher.  Add to that the fact that the temperatures here in Malden wildly fluctuated during late December and early January.  On the 3rd it was cold and overcast, and by the 7th it was sixty degrees and threatening rain.  ANYWAY, the tall girl in the middle is Selene, and she's a Famosa doll.  Her city of origin is Scottsdale, Arizona.  Unlike Rossville, I've heard of Scottsdale.  With eyes like this, Selene LOOKS like she should be from Roswell, New Mexico.

NGL, I like Famosa dolls almost as much as I do Furga dolls.  Like Furga, Famosa dolls are proving to be quite diverse.  My Selene isn't wearing her original clothes, but she's unique enuff without 'em and she looks nice in white so I'll not worry about original clothes for now.  Selene is Nancy's friend, and she's...well, an alien of some stripe!  Her eyes once glowed green, just like Emerald the Enchanting Witch's eyes did.

I don't think they glow anymore, but they do sparkle.  I also love Selene's hair; it's this unusual silver blue color.

The last little doll is Italian, but is NOT a Furga doll.  She has just as much personality, but this one is from Italocremona.  I've chosen to call her "Cassandra," and her former home is Totowa, New Jersey.

Cass has some sass!  Here it's possible to see that, at least in Cassandra's case, Italocremona eyes are more realistic than Furga eyes.

On the evening of January 4th I took Candi outside to see if her color-change feature still worked.  Her instructions imply that she'll stop working over time, especially if she's exposed to extreme temperatures..  It was forty-one degrees outside that evening, so I crippled out with her.

Forty-one degrees...the weather we had not long after that made forty-one degrees look like a heat wave.  Anyway, the color change began before I even had the door shut.  As y'all can see, Candi's clothes and hair have turned pink and orange as they should.  Her lips also shifted; inside they were bubblegum pink, but when exposed to cool temps they turn fuchsia. 

I wonder how warm she'll have to be before her clothes turn white again.  Casa Pizarro is comfortably warm, but Candi's clothes remained pink and orange when I brought her inside, and they didn't change until I touched her.  I'll have to wait until summer, I guess!

January 10th.  Candela Laura pops in.

My phone's battery was too low for a flash, but I took the picture anyway.  Candela Laura looks the same regardless of the lighting.

January 11th.  These dolls are all standing on top of my great-grandfather's bookcase.  There's about thirty-five years worth of doll history in that lineup.

Okay.  The pink bunch consists of Alexis (Pretty Crazy Curls), Flower Magic Mary, Surprise Hat Susie, and Twist 'n' Style Tiffany.  Then there's Billie, Mosi, Dell, Zelia, and Camille.  Crystabella rounds out the bunch.  The black thing behind Tiffany and Billie is Grandpa's old globe, long out of date but still fascinating.  I think this bunch is interesting, by the way, as one YouTuber I ran into notes that dolls this size were at one time kinda unique.  They weren't American Girls, and they weren't Barbie, and in the nineties dolls didn't come in this size unless they were glitzy toddler dolls.  Note that my four glitzy toddler dolls do vary in size a bit; Alexis is the tallest and Tiffany is the shortest.  Please forgive the dust and the terrible angle; the bookshelf is six feet tall, and I'm both five-seven and standing slumped.

I haven't yet thrown Candi into the mix (there's no more room on the top of the bookcase), and I haven't thrown in my other two new fourteen-inchers either for the same reason.  January 16th.  Kenya is on the left, and Philly girl Olivia is on the right.  Olivia is an I'm a Wow doll, the smaller counterpart to the I'm a Girly dolls.

Bet y'all forgot I had an I'm a Girly, LOL!  Robyn is still around, but Olivia is not analogous to her, not in appearance, anyway.  She's got blue hair like I like, plus highlights that change color in the sun.  As for Kenya, she's cute.  I'll be reviewing her...someday.  I've had zero energy lately.

January 22nd.  One of my favorite YouTubers had dropped a new video, and I was about to share a soda pop with Rubia Emilia. 

Swengle Studios and pineapple Fanta for the win!  Swengle Studios specializes in tornadoes, but he does other odd meteorological phenomena too, and he dumbs it down for idjit galoots like me.  For the record, I've since changed Rubia's first name to "Joyita."  That sticks with my old shipwreck theme, and I never really liked the name "Rubia."  So Joyita Emilia she is.

January 25th.  It was bitterly cold outside by then, I was recovering from the other type of cold, and Cotton Candy Mia wanted to show off her new hair bow.

We wear hair bows in Casa Pizarro.  Hair bows are cool.  LOL, this one was a freebie; it accompanied two larger bows that Mama got for me.

January 30th.  Random pic of Joyita Emilia. 

Joyita had her new pacifier by then, as well as an outfit change, but I was still waiting for the shoes.

February 4th.  A tale of two Sindy dolls.

Crimp and Style Sindy is on the left, and the wary brunette on the right is the late-model Pedigree that y'all met on Valentine's Day, before I put her in the pink dress.

February 6th.  Bella (one of my dogs) took five years off my life when she got her head caught in the bars of the dog kennel, and Uncle Man-Child didn't help when he told me Bella wasn't moving.  She ended up being fine.  This lovely young lady then turned up in the mail.

She's a chimera, a 2025 Barbie Basics head on what appears to be a Shani body.  These Basics are supposed to have Made to Move bodies.  Still, whoever rebodied this doll took the time to match a head to a body, because both parts are very pale.  "Amy" will be this doll's name, for reasons that might be obvious to some of y'all.

February 11th.  It was unseasonably warm after that cold snap, and I had spring fever.  Ayla Diamond thus fell victim to an early spring redress.

Etsy shop is MiniMediMo.  I'm with Miss Emily, by the way; these little babies need to be made with open eyes!  I'd hoped the Valentine's Day wave would have some awake and alert little ones, but no dice.

February 14th.  It was cool and rainy, perfect for cuddling dollies.  Enter Sandy Eden. 

Sandy is a bean-butt baby, my second.  Mama told me that she'd ordered a cute outfit for a bean-butt girl, but I didn't have a girl...or so I thought.  I forgot that Taniyah Yasmin can wear bean-butt clothes too.

February 17th.  I had my Baby Alive dolls (numbering four by then) on the couch, and Lily took a liking to them. 

Lily likes my dolls for some reason.  Doesn't matter who I've got scattered about.  She rubs them and purrs, like she's marking them as her own.  Maybe she likes them because they smell like me.  I dunno. 

February 18th.  My new dolls of the day struck a pose.  Better Now Bella is on the left, and her friend Ingrid Jessica is a Hasbro-era bean-butt baby. 

They're both Hasbro, come to think of it!

February 22nd.  Two of the Philadelphia bunch get acquainted. 

Treesa sent me both of these, albeit in different packages.  Alexandria Florida is the Cabbie, and Lina is the Magic Nursery baby.  They don't have much in common, but they're cute, and deeply appreciated gifts.  Indeed, I have several Magic Nursery dolls, but Lina remains my favorite.

February 24th, another sitting down image, since that's about all I can do nowadays.  These two are Gary Collier and Autumn Leah, and apologies for our unkempt bed.  Mama and I both hit the sack not long after I took this picture.

Mama isn't Gary Collier's biggest fan, but she likes Autumn Leah okay.  When she saw Gary from a more flattering angle she warmed to him.  He'd fallen backwards when she first saw him, see, and since Gary's mouth is a little open he looks kinda, sorta, really DEAD when his head lolls back.  

February 25th.  This is literally a spur-of-the-moment picture, caught when I was riding to work.

Shelley is the blonde and Sindy is the aforementioned brunette.  The blue expanse behind them is my knee, sheathed in its usual denim.  Seriously, I live in blue jeans, practically.  Sindy has already been redressed, by the way, but I won't show that until mid-March.

Same day, different dolls.  I was inspired by this image to pair up my matching two dolls.  

I've got two Magic Nursery babies and like 'em both, but I was piddle-pooting around with Lina around then, so she and Pineberry got to sit together.

That rings down the curtain on another winter, for the most part.  I know some of y'all are still dealing with snow and I don't envy you in the slightest, but for me it's time to shake out my T-shirts and make sure my flashlight has batteries when severe storms come to call.  No more sandals because my ankles need some support, but that's life, and my doll kids can wear sandals.