Happy dollies for a happy new year

The new year is likely already here for some of y'all, but for me it's still a half-hour away.  My mom thought it might be a good idea to get some pajamas together and have a pajama party for my dolls, so that's exactly what I'm gonna do.  First, the PJ's; my friends on the Failbook groups liked these pictures quite a bit, so I'm sharing them here.  As usual, my mother supplied a lot of these.  Here's Kailey (left) and Denise...

...Llewellyn (left) and Justine-Marie...

...Kyle (left) and Amanda...

...Doremi (left) and Airy...

...Rita Cheryl (left) and Zoe...

...and Courtney. 

Kyle, Kailey, Llewellyn, and Denise are enjoying one of my favorite New Year's Eve pastimes, Crazy Eights.

Well actually, my family's game of choice was Uno, but Mama tells me the two games are played similarly.  LOL, one year my sister was such a sore loser that Daddy stacked the Uno deck against her and deliberately made her lose!  Great laughter was had at the little turd's expense.  And no worries, as our games weren't usually that snarky.  Ah yes, evenings playing Uno or Rummy or Pop-o-Matic Trouble were always evenings well spent.  Or Pass the Pigs.  Any of y'all ever played that?  Best game ever in my book. 

Rita Cheryl and Airy have decided to pass on the cards and consult the 8-ball, or "insult" it, as Daddy would've joked.

Rita Cheryl:  "Will Doremi and I ever be friends again?"
8-ball:  "Reply hazy, try again."
Rita Cheryl:  "Drat."
Airy:  "That's like the fifth time you've asked that."
Rita Cheryl:  "I'm tired of fighting with her!"

Hate to break it to you, Rita Cheryl, but this is what the 8-ball actually said.

According to the chart, "Reply hazy, try again" is the most ambiguous of the replies, and asking again probably will do no good.  For our readers, the conflict between Doremi and Rita Cheryl is pretty complicated and won't be fixed with a casual conversation at a party.  Doremi is completely oblivious to Rita Cheryl's question anyway, as she's focused instead on her new doll and her new teddy bear, both Christmas gifts.

I solemnly swear that that's the bear that came with the nighttime treats accessory set, and NOT Bitty Bear...or maybe it is.  The two look exactly alike, so maybe they are indeed one and the same.  Dang, I wish Bitty Baby still came with Bitty Bear, or any of those little stuffed animals, for that matter!  As for Doremi's doll, she's an obvious Addy; Doremi is an Addy fan.

Doremi doesn't know yet that I plan on adding Big Addy to the group in the coming year.  Anyway, Justine-Marie and Zoe want to compare notes with Doremi since they too have mini-dolls.  Coordinating mini-dolls, no less!

Denise neglected to bring her little Luciana, but Courtney brought Molly, and her stuffed animals too.  She never thought to introduce Molly to her Popple, her Care Bear, or her unicorn.  LOL, Courtney collects stuffed animals and doesn't care what decade they come from. 

Okay, Courtney's Popple is actually a Puffling, but he's the perfect size for her.

Amanda has eschewed the playthings and focused on reading, as usual.  I've got the books that accompanied Mini Addy, Mini Molly, Mini Cecile, and Mini Luciana.  Amanda has been dipping into all of those, reading a chapter here and a chapter there, kinda like changing TV channels.

Amanda has to wear her brace to bed, hence the roomy pajamas.  As a little rabbit trail, Laura Ingalls Wilder noted that in her day some people slept in their corsets (Laura herself refused to).  I have a friend who has scoliosis and wore a Milwaukee brace during her youth, and she had to sleep flat on her back with a pillow under her knees to keep her hips tilted just so.  Deenie Fenner also had to sleep on her back in her book (minus the pillow), so I can only imagine how uncomfortable sleeping must be for poor Amanda.  I personally HATE sleeping on my back, and I DON'T have a back brace!  But then again, Amanda doesn't have a large chest and I do, so that's also a factor.  Yeah...on a more positive note, we've got grub to get everyone good and sick.  We've got popcorn, pretzels, flower cookies, and pizza, or "azzip," another example of Daddy's fondness for word play.  LOL, he liked saying words backwards!

Courtney and Justine-Marie have decided to dig in, complete with soda and hot chocolate. 

Courtney:  "I'm sorry I don't have my sleepover stuff.  I could've provided some music and some nachos."
Justine-Marie:  "No worries, love, there's always next year."

No need to apologize, Courtney!  I'm the one who supplies all the stuff, and I'm the one who dropped the ball.  Well that, and eBay sellers are charging outrageous prices for that sleepover set.  I didn't have to pay sixty to eighty bucks for the Nighttime Treats set (the set with the bear, the cards, the 8-ball, and some of the snacks), so what gives for Courtney's set???  Oh well, eBay and Etsy have plenty of other odds and ends, so if these kids ever have another party I can be better prepared for it.

And thus falls the curtain on 2021 in Casa del Luna.  No one died (except for poor little Sally), no one's roof blew away, no one lost their job, though I was certain that I would back in April.  But it's been a good year, not great and not terrible.  I forget how many AG-sized dolls I added to my bunch, but for the first time I bought more of them than I did Barbie!  This coming year I plan on adding Joss and Addy, probably Corinne, and possibly Gwynn and Evette, but we'll see how those plans go.  I think Rita Cheryl has given up on the 8-ball and is now planning on some ZZZ's.

Not a bad idea, really.  Not on a raw, rainy night like tonight.  

Happy New Year, 

RagingMoon1987 

Baby, it's warm outside

Amanda is dressed for the weather we usually have here in the Bootheel this time of year, while Kailey is dressed for the weather we're having right now.  Yes, it really is warm enuff to go barefoot...or it would be if the wind would pipe down.

Seriously, I saw a cricket while I was setting this picture up.  A cricket.  In December.  He was shiny and healthy too, not dull-colored and sluggish like crickets usually are in December.  Christmas of 2010 was like this, and it set the stage for a violent spring.  So...we'll see what happens.

Y'all be safe out there!  Enjoy your family or whoever you're with, and don't get food poisoning.  LOL, that happened to my parents one Christmas!  We had fun anyway.

Merry Christmas,
RagingMoon1987 

Special toys for special children

Okay, story time.  My mother's best friend (Mrs. M) has two daughters that are like older sisters to my sis and me.  The younger of these two daughters (Mrs. W) is happily married, and the couple has adopted three special-needs children, two girls and a boy.  Friend and her husband are white, and the children are black.  I mention race because sometimes Mrs. M and Mrs. W have trouble finding toys and clothes that represent the children properly.  Back last fall, for example, Mrs. M mentioned that the girls were over the moon for Simone Biles because she looked like them, but neither she nor Mrs. W could find a doll for the girls that matched either them or Simone.  So I found these on Etsy.

A ballerina for the older girl, and a bespectacled doll for the younger one, because she wears glasses.  The ballerina has jointed arms and a tulle skirt, so I hope I'm not making a huge mistake by giving her to this little girl.  Don't worry, I got something nice for the boy too.  He likes cars and trucks so Mama helped me find a nice Tonka dump truck.  It's made of metal, and it's a big sucker!  I hope the girls won't mind the fact that his gift is bigger than theirs; sometimes kids have an issue with stuff like that.  All three items cost roughly the same, so if my friend has any trouble with jealousy I can at least tell her that.  Since the truck is made of metal it should stand up to any type of abuse the kids can dish out, kinda like the garbage truck that I had when I was little (I positively LOVED garbage trucks back then). 

Now...as I noted above Mrs. M is my mom's best friend and these children are her grandbabies.  On December 3rd Mr. M, Mrs. M's husband, died.  He'd been in a slow decline for some time and had the beginnings of dementia so he's probably better off, but of course his family still misses him.  A death in the family sucks anytime, but right before the holidays it REALLY sucks.  I had planned to give these children their toys whenever I could since I very rarely see them, but when Mr. M passed away I got a chance to see Mrs. W, and I gave her the gifts early.  I didn't see Mrs. M until the seventeenth, and she informed me that the children were thrilled with their gifts.  They ALL play with the dump truck, to my delight, and the girls pal around with their dolls all day.  It may be something little, giving toys to three bereaved children for Christmas, but knowing that it cheered them up brightened my day too.  The M family has done a lot for my family, so it pleased me to know I gave them a little back.

Now to find out what my own presents are!  All I really want is a nice flashlight since my old one went to Heaven, LOL.  The best present would be getting to see my sister and brother-in-law, but alas, that's not to be...again.  First Uncle will be here in a couple'a days though, so that's something!

Happy Christmas to all,
RagingMoon1987

Throwback Thursday review: Dolly Darlings by Hasbro

"T'was the day before Christmas.
Though it was December, 
Everyone around
Was discussing the weather." 
--semi-original poem, written by Clement Clarke Moore and me

No joke, it feels more like early April than Christmas, and part of my area has the scars to show for it.  It's been almost two weeks now, and my town received NO DAMAGE, but just the same most of the talk around Malden is still "the tornado, the tornado, the latest on the tornado."  The event has been confirmed to be two tornadoes, both rated EF4, both from the same supercell.  The first one tracked eighty miles from Monette, Arkansas to just inside the Tennessee line.  The peak intensity was at Braggadocio, Missouri, a little bitty place that got hit hard in 2006.  Six people died, including one person at Monette's nursing home and a little girl in Braggadocio.  The girl's mother (a friend of one of my friends) is still at Elvis Presley Medical Center with head trauma, and I don't think the doctors are sure how much she'll recover.  The second tornado stretched at least 163 miles from Woodland Mills, Tennessee to Breckenridge County, Kentucky.  Mayfield, Kentucky was hardest hit, with around fifty fatalities, while the communities of Dawson Springs and Bremen each lost eleven.  Eight people died at the candle factory in Mayfield, and the scuttlebutt is that the factory wouldn't let its employees leave when the bad weather approached (the factory denies this, of course).  The path length surpasses the prior second-longest path, measured in Indiana in 1974, but does not break the 219-mile record set by the Tri-State Tornado.  The death toll of seventy-six IS record-breaking, surpassing the 1953 Vicksburg, Mississippi tornado as December's deadliest tornado.  The toll also ties with Kentucky's other deadliest tornado, which hit Louisville in 1890.  Since this was a nighttime event there aren't a lot of images or videos, but Reed Timmer got some spectacular stills and footage of the Monette tornado, and according to KAIT Jeff Piotrowski was on the chase as well.  Even now, two weeks AFTER the tornado, the weather continues to be weird.  See how warm Christmas Day is gonna be???  I won't need a coat!

Geeking out over, I stumbled across these small, somewhat goofy dolls during one of my many eBay browsing sessions.  She's a Dolly Darlings doll.  I solemnly swear that I did NOT steal the idea to review these from Tam this time, but she reviewed Honey and John some years back.  I didn't steal this time, Tam!  I swear to it...though admittedly I did turn to your post for information as I often do.  Tam's pictures are always a trillion times better than mine anyway.  But that said, my doll's name is "Tea Time."

These were oft referred to as hatbox dolls rather than pocketbook dolls (Jan was a pocketbook doll).  The moniker "hatbox doll" was a good one, because the first wave's packaging resembled a hatbox!  Members of the first wave have/had molded hair and included six characters, and each character had a number of accessories.  Later dolls had rooted hair and were packaged either in a box, on a card, or in a "room."  One of them was the Flying Nun, LOL!  I don't guess the Dolly Darlings were terribly successful because they were only out for four years, and I don't think they're terribly collectible either since they can be found on eBay for pretty cheap.  Anyway, Tea Time, or simply "Darling," as I call her, is a small doll, smaller than Mattel Chelsea and way smaller than Mini Molly, whose glasses I neglected to straighten.

Now, hair.  Darling...I don't really like that name either.  Hmmm...she's a tea party-themed doll.  Black, white, oolong, and green teas all come from a plant called Camillia sinensis, so maybe "Camillia" would be a better name...or maybe just "Camilla."  Yeah, that fits her.  Anyway, Camilla is one of the later dolls and thus has rooted hair.  Rooted blonde hair, more specifically.

Had I known that there were red-haired Dolly Darlings I'd have put out more of an effort to find Honey, Tam O'Shanter, Outdoor Sporty or Boy Trap #2, since they all had red hair.  But as with the Rock Flowers I ended up with a blonde.  The hair looks good when it's lying flat...

...but boy, was I in for a surprise when I lifted the hair to look at the root job!  Camilla has hair on the crown of her head...and nowhere else!

The few roots Camilla does have are...meh.  Two rows of widely spaced plugs, though the plugs have plenty of hair.  If I hadn't looked at her hairline I'd never have known how sparse her hair actually is, because it looks good.

These dolls have goofy faces.  Or rather, the girls did.  John, the lone boy, has a big, closed smile, while the girls have these open-mouthed faces with a single tooth painted in.  CraftyDollGal calls the faces cherubic, but I'd compare those chubby cheeks and rounded lips more to a fish.  Here's Camilla's face.

Her paint is all there, which is more than I can say for John.  John had molded eyebrows, but sometimes the poor laddie didn't get any paint for them!  Camilla's eyes are aqua blue and are glancing to the side, like so.  She has light brown eyebrows that are neither molded on nor lacking paint (unlike John, LOL), and slightly darker brown lashes that don't look as harsh as Kleo Kola's did.  She also has a fair amount of grit in there, so time to trot out the toothbrush and the canned air.

The mouth needs cleaning too.  It doesn't help that I don't like these mouths anyway, as the painted tooth reminds me of some of those dumber Cabbage Patch Kid heads.  The paint job isn't terrible, though; Camilla has pink lips and spots of paint to suggest teeth and a tongue.

I know of some folks who like these mouths, but I just don't care for them.  I like my dolls smiling...or pouting, like Poppy Parker.

Camilla's body is built like a child's body, with a flat chest and only the suggestion of a waist.  She has five joints:  neck, shoulder, shoulder, hip, hip.

Camilla's neck only rotates, turning from side to side.

I reread a couple of Miss Emily's old blog posts, and both the Hi:Glamm dolls and the City Girls looked up as their heads were turned all the way around.  Just for the heckuvit I checked Camilla's rotation and she looks up too, though not as much as Hi:Glamm Pam did.

Also just for the heckuvit I took Camilla's head off to see how hard it was.  It's not thunderously hard; rebodying is a definite possibility with these dolls, though I don't know what other bodies these heads could take.  I may have to get a teeny-weeny Obitsu body and get back to y'all on that.

Camilla's shoulders only rotate.  She can look like she's marching...

...or like she's conducting an orchestra.

There's an indention around Camilla's waist, and at first glance it looks like a joint.  But...it's not.  I don't know why it's there, unless it's to keep Camilla's panties from sliding down.  More on that later.

Camilla's hips only rotate, and because they're cut at an angle the mobility sucks.  I haven't seen a sitting position this bad since I reviewed the Stilettos.  

Little Spanish dancer, do the splits!  Yeesh, I hate it when dolls have hips like that, though I should probably be glad that such a small doll has hip joints at all.  Anyway, sometimes dolls this small wear low-quality or painted on clothes, but Camilla is dressed in a full little outfit...well, sort of.  Her dress and panties are fabric and are removable.

The interior of the dress is impeccable for any dolly garment, but for something this size it's phenomenal.  There's not a loose end anywhere.

Time has sadly had its way with the bodice of this dress, as there's a tiny rip in the top and some wear around the sleeves.  I didn't show this, but y'all may be able to see that the ribbon around the waist is backed in vinyl.  I assume that was done to extend the life of the ribbon.

The skirt is a little yellowed too, but for delicate material it's held up well.  The hem of the skirt is trimmed with a nice lace edging.  There are two layers to the skirt, and they both have this edging.  I like that; sometimes the underlayer doesn't get the royal treatment like the outer layer does.

Camilla's panties are a little worse for wear, as dolly undergarments sometimes are, but it's still possible to see how well they're sewn and hemmed.  The elastic has relaxed some over the years, so these panties don't always want to stay up!

Since she is so small it's a given that Camilla would have some painted items.  Her gloves are painted on...

...as are her shoes and socks.  All of these items have some chips and scratches, as a doll this age will inevitably have.

I forgot to show this above, but the dress closes in back with one teeny-weeny little snap.  I love it when doll clothes have snaps!

Since Camilla is smaller than Chelsea and Mini Molly clothes sharing is out.  I'll have to dig my Yummi-Land doll out and see if she can share clothes and then get back to y'all on that.  But for now it's time to wrap this up.

BAD
*Hair rooting isn't great for restyling, though that's not a tremendous issue.
*I'm not in love with these dolls' faces, though that's just me.
*Paint is starting to chip, though that's age-related.
*I'm unsure about clothes sharing, but Chelsea and miniature American Girls are too big to share clothes.

GOOD
*Fairly sturdy.  I wouldn't let a small child have Camilla since her head pops off, but she feels pretty robust for such a tiny thing.
*Hair looks nice, despite the goofy root job.  It can only accommodate the style shown, but that's good enuff for Camilla.
*Jointing is pretty good for such a tiny doll.  I don't like the posing of Camilla's hips, but I do like that she's not made of wired rubber like the Liddle Kiddles are.
*A rebody is possible if the body ever gets broken...provided I can find another body to use!
*Shoes won't be getting lost!  On a doll this small that's kinda important.
*While Camilla's clothes are showing some wear, they are incredibly well-sewn.  The wear and tear is pretty minor and can be repaired or concealed.

In other words, Camilla is a decent little doll who suffers from a few symptoms of "Old Dolly Syndrome."  Her clothes need some minor repair (and maybe a washing), and her paint is a little chipped, and her face needs a washing, but she's not bad otherwise.  My main issue with Camilla is her ridiculous face, and some of y'all probably like it!  Hey, we all have our tastes!  In short, these dolls are worth having if any of y'all are dollhouse fans (and I do like dollhouses), but I advise discretion in picking out a character.  Pick one that you truly like, and don't go for the first one you see (like I did).  I will also note that some of these dolls have hats or accessories that can get lost, so keep that in mind if you're a completionist.

Merry Christmas and keep an eye on that weather!

Love, 
RagingMoon1987