October Instagram Challenge Day 10: Monster

If I ever wished that I owned a Monster High doll, today was definitely that day. I came up with the idea of having some of the Ever After High girls watching the first Monster High reboot video. This involved making a flat screen TV frame, and getting the image color printed. We don't have a color printer yet, so getting the image done required going to a store. I like this image, but if you lived during the 70s in the US, the paneling is sort of giving me "rumpus room" vibes. :)

Merry Christmas and Christmas Memories

Everybody seems to be putting up Christmas posts, and since I know a lot of you will soon be too busy to be looking at blogs until later next week, I want to wish all my readers Merry Christmas as well. I'm planning a 12 Days of Christmas series that will start on Christmas Day, as long as I get enough of a head start on photographing it. So for this post, I was inspired to post a Christmas past post of myself, since Tam has her own series going, although the pictures are currently from her friend's Christmases.

This is me on Christmas Day, 1972, at the age of four. In the photo, you can see my Dressy Bessy doll to my right, although she looks kind of funny, with her legs tucked underneath her. I also got the Fisher-Price garage, and the box to the left of Bessy contains what I believe was a scale. It had numbers of different weights, and you could balance the scale by putting, for example, 5 on one side, and 3 and 2 on the other.

I have a picture of Dressy Bessy on my Pinterest, from an eBay auction that must have ended ages ago. There were other styles of Bessy made over the years, but this one looks like the one that I had.

Here's a picture of my mom from the same day, holding my youngest sister on her lap, and holding my middle sister's Dapper Dan which she received that year, in front of my middle sister. 

Dressy Bessy and Dapper Dan were designed to help kids learn how to button a button, tie a bow, buckle a buckle, snap a snap, and use a zipper. They were made by Playskool, which made a lot of cool toys for younger kids back in the day. I think this was the same Christmas that we received a set of Playskool wooden blocks in different shapes and colors. I remember having hours of fun building things with those blocks.

The pictures are blurry, because I screen saved these from the Super 8 videos that my father took. There's quite a bit of video out there from when we were young, not so much from when we were older. And of course I, as the eldest child, got the lion's share of screen time. I did, after all, have two whole years to myself before my middle sister was born, and then there were another two before my youngest.

And about that afghan on the couch behind my mother, I also have a picture of a similar afghan on my Pinterest, with the caption "Almost everyone had an afghan like this." We certainly did, made by my mother herself.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

In Which I Review a Lottie Outfit and Lottie's Horse, Without Owning a Lottie Doll

When I ordered my Madame Alexander Travel Friend dolls from zulily, there were also some Lottie items available. I didn't really want to be ordering yet another small doll at the same time I ordered the MA dolls, and the MA ones seemed more appealing to me. However, I thought the pony might work with dolls that I already have, and I ordered an outfit because, why not? I chose the blue velvet party dress.

Wow, that Lottie is a small girl! Would you like to see what doll I found that could wear her outfit?

Return of Sindy

Terri Gold shared the information that Robert Tonner recently mentioned bringing back the Sindy line of dolls. I remember wanting Sindy merchandise when I was young; according to Wikipedia, Sindy debuted in the United States in 1978. I would have been ten. I'm not sure if it was the dolls that appealed to me so much as the fantastic furniture and accessories, although I don't know how much of that was sold here. I vaguely remember a commercial that showed a nightlight, so that probably means Sindy's bedroom set was available here, at least. I'm surprised that I never received any Sindy items as a child, since Sindy was created to be a more wholesome alternative to Barbie, and my mother seemed pretty hesitant about us getting Barbie dolls, if my childhood memories are to be believed. On the other hand, we did have the controversial Growing Up Ginger doll, which could become taller and also grow small breasts. I thought the doll was fun because she could represent two different ages in my doll play. I suppose I must have only been eight or nine, but I think I had already learned from my own observation that older girls, and women, had figures different from my own.

But anyway, Sindy. What would you like to see? Right now it looks like Tonner is only reproducing the doll, but I'd be thrilled if some of the furniture and accessories were reproduced as well. If you have 1/6 scale dolls, this stuff is *great.* What 1/6" scale doll, for example, could not use these lovely dining room pieces? I know my dolls would adore their own horse and buggy!

I also have a fondness for the historically inspired Sindy clothes like these, but I imagine groovier fashions will be more likely to be reproduced. It will be interesting to see what original stuff Tonner comes up with.