Breakfast at Tiffany's

This past Sunday, I attended a Ladies' Luncheon with a friend who I have known since college. It was given by an Irish-American club on the east side of Cleveland, and my friend has attended several events there. The theme was Breakfast at Tiffany's. There were several gift "baskets" given away in a raffle, and I won one! The theme of my basket was Paint and Sip. Does your country have anything like this? Where I live in Ohio, there are one-night art classes hosted by local organizations, as well as small local businesses that offer you the chance to paint a ceramic item, or paint on canvas, or similar creative things. For adult only evenings, you can craft and also partake of alcohol, and these evenings are called Paint and Sips. I just found out there's a local business where you can get refreshments from a charcuterie board to jello shots at your Paint and Sip evening. This gift basket was a bunch of items for you to have your own Paint and Sip time.

Here's a picture of the table centerpiece, and me dressed in my best Breakfast at Tiffany's outfit.

And here are the items that I won. The paint brushes are awful quality, but I can still use them for something, I'm sure. Everything else is pretty nice, even if all the art items are from the $1.25 store.

The Paint, part one

The Paint, part two

The Sip

You might notice in the last picture that there is a gift card to a store called Meijer. It's like a Walmart, a giant store that offers groceries, housewares, clothes, and lot of items in between. Our local Meijer is actually bigger than our Walmart, but the Meijer closest to me is lacking in one distinct feature: the toy department. Still, I wanted to buy something doll related with my gift card, and I picked out a Calico Critters house.

I already have a couple of Critters animals, and my Cu-Poche dolls and mini Pullip will also like this house. The card didn't entirely cover the price of the house, but it paid for most of it.

To really make this doll-related, I'm going to share a couple of pictures of a Breakfast at Tiffany's outfit that I made for a 16" Gene doll, around 15 years ago. 

I sewed the dress, gloves and wrap, and Mr. BTEG helped with the bakery items. I made this for someone online who was looking for someone to sew the costume for her. She saw these photos first, before she officially bought the outfit. I saw many years later that she had it up for sale. I hope she got a lot of enjoyment out of it while she owned it.

I was going to post about my luncheon experience on Instagram, when I realized that Instagram won't let you post vertical photos, and they get cropped to the point where a lot of the stuff you wanted to show is cropped out. Ugh. I'd rather be able to share these pictures with you guys, anyway.

Has anyone else won a raffle? Was it something you wanted? This raffle was the kind where you could put as many tickets as you wanted towards winning a specific basket, so you would only win something that you were interested in. Have you ever attended at themed event?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

These dolls are Holly and Poppy O'Hair, from Ever After High. With a last name like O'Hair, they are obviously Irish! :)

Happy Pi Day!

 I agree with Barbie that math is hard, but I do love some pie!

Hinamatsuri

This post is coming a day late, but yesterday was Hinamatsuri, or Girl's Day, in Japan. An important part of the festival is a display of dolls and doll-sized accessories. The emperor and empress sit at the top of any Hinamatsuri doll set. I bought the set above from Re-ment. I had a hard time putting everything together, and tried to use poster stickies to help keep stuff in place. It wasn't until I looked at the pictures that I realized that the emperor and his wife were tipping slightly as a result. Oh well. I still think it turned out cute. I saw that Re-ment also makes a Hello Kitty themed Hinamatsuri set. I've seen Peanuts themed ones as well.

I sewed the dress that our little Japanese girl is wearing. The hardest part was sewing the sleeves. I think I would sew them first next time, before I sewed the sides of the dress.

And Then There Were Two

Yes, I picked up another Rainbow High doll. Well, technically this doll is part of the Shadow High line. Shadow High is Rainbow High's rival school, and the first dolls in this series varied in skin tones and clothing from mostly all white to mostly all black, with shades of gray in between. Shanelle Onyx is the doll who is mostly all black, except for a white streak in her hair, and she's the doll we're looking at today.

This is the way she came, fresh out of the box. I like her outfit for the most part. Her lace socks and strappy heels with black fur looked cool in the YouTube show, but they look a little odd in real life.

Fortunately, she comes with a change of clothes and shoes. I like her second outfit too. There is no slit or clasp on either of her pairs of shoes, so they have to be worked on and off. I don't like that her clothes mostly fit *very* tightly, meaning you have to really pull the sides together so the Velcro can meet. With the black belt that comes with Shanelle's dress, I feel like I'm not getting it closed all the way; I can't get all the Velcro covered by the other end of the belt. At least her hands can come off, similar to the way Monster High/Ever After High dolls' hands could. It makes it a lot easier to put on things like the jacket with ruffled sleeves in the second picture below.

I like her makeup. Her hair is silky soft, with only a little crunch on the end of some of her hair at the bottom of her ponytail.

Her body has some marks and scratches, but those don't bother me for some reason. Also, these dolls have an "unrealistic" knee hinge, which again, doesn't bother me, but I thought I'd show those of you who don't have one of these dolls. 

These dolls have their own names, with personalities and story lines you get to see in the show on YouTube, but the dolls seem mainly designed to display the clothes. As with Mila's dress, for example, Shanelle can't sit down in the black and silver houndstooth skirt. Of course, lots of kids just hold their dolls in the air and make them "talk." This also reminds me that the dolls do come with color-coordinated stands, and a comb. I talked with Dana about whether these clothes would fit curvy Barbies, and the answer is: no. I have a picture of a curvy Barbie/Shadow High doll under the fold.

I Have Gone to the Dark Side

My first new doll for 2023 is from ...Rainbow High. I've been looking at these dolls a lot; they are everywhere. It's only been the latest series, though, that have induced me to actually buy one. The fact that this doll was on sale for $15.00 absolutely did not hurt, either. Meet Mila Berrymore.

I'm not going to do a proper review with this doll. For one thing, there are pictures all over the Internet of these dolls. For another, in the outfit that she is wearing, she can't sit down, and can barely lift her arms. However, I wanted to see in her second outfit, the one she is wearing now, so much, that I took her first outfit off right out of the box, and put her in this one. Yes, with most of the Rainbow High doll series, the dolls come with a complete second outfit, including shoes. It looks like the newest Rainbow High line that will be released soon, will only have one outfit, but lots of accessories.

Her boots are gorgeous, but they are *work* to put on. There's no slit, zipper, nothing. You just have to slowly work the boots up her legs.

Her hair is mostly soft, except for the ends, which are crunchy. It has some lovely shades in it. And dang, her eyelashes are long!

Her head doesn't have a lot of range of movement. Also, it seems to be tilted back a little too far, and it doesn't go forward.

Here's her second outfit. RH are the same height as Barbie, but with their larger heads, and bigger proportioned, curvy bodies, Rainbow High dolls can use heavier fabrics, and include a lot more details.

To me, the dress that she is wearing, looks like something that would work in a Riverdance production. I don't like her name very much, so I want to change it to something Irish, but I haven't found anything that really seems right to me yet.

I do have my eye on some other dolls from the line, but at the moment the next dolls that I would like to get are from Shadow High. It's a rival high school to Rainbow High, and the dolls are mostly in blacks, whites and grays, including skin tone. It may sound weird, but they look cute to me. I will share any new ones that I buy, of course. 

Since this doll is new, I'm also adding her to my collection tally. I haven't done a My Collection post in almost a year!

Total dolls: 83

Happy Lunar New Year!

Year of the Rabbit is the Dancer's year!