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.