The week before last, I actually had something all planned but then on my way home from taking the Giant Baby to daycare, I decided to stop by the local op-shops and see what dolls they had. Unfortunately the answer to that was very few. One shop had a bunch of Bratz with no feet, another had a handful of Barbies that were frankly beyond rescue and the others had nothing. On the other hand I found a copy of the works of Shakespeare for the Giant Husband and a big ride-on Thomas the Tank Engine for the Giant Baby for two dollars!
Once I got it home I immediately took off again to buy nail polish to patch up Thomas's paintwork. Nail polish is probably not ideal for plastics but since Thomas is hard plastic it won't wreck him outright and as we can't keep it inside, we needed something hard wearing. Any wheeled toys that come inside, the baby immediately hauls on top of our television cabinet to drive them back and forth. The last thing I need is a Giant Thomas the Tank Engine chugging through my TV! Most of last week was devoted to cleaning Thomas up and repainting him. It was worth it though. He looks great and the kid loves him!
This week I was busy running up some simple dancing skirts for daycare's dress up box. Nothing fancy, just a rectangle of tulle, folded double with a casing for an elastic waistband along the fold. I think I did twelve altogether.
Both days I fully intended to post something when I was done but ran out of time.
What else has been distracting me?
One of my obsessions is genealogy and lately I've been putting some effort into my family tree. Two weeks ago, I discovered that the state of Victoria have their historical birth, marriage and death indexes online for free now. I haven't looked at their site for years, so don't know how long it's been like that. Last time I looked you had to pay a dollar for every page of results you viewed and they had less information in them than they do now. You still have to pay for certificates but the indexes still offer quite a lot of info. But I know that kind of thing bores most people to tears so I won't yammer on about it.
A few weeks ago I realised I finally had enough money in my "Doll Savings" to buy something! This is the first time this has happened since the baby was born, I kept dipping into it to buy clothes and toys for him. Now he's got more clothes and toys than he'll ever need. Anyway, I knew I was either going to get Willa from the Wellie Wishers or a Maru mini pal from Maru and friends. If you'd asked me ahead of time, I would have said I would choose Willa. Except I didn't. When I was actually given the choice my sensible brain made one of it's rare appearances to point out that since Willa looks like a toy, I would probably get tired of her pretty quickly and so I ordered Maru instead. I picked her up from the post office this morning. Interestingly she has taken longer to get to my house from Melbourne airport, than she took to get to Melbourne from Miami! I chose Maru over the other characters because of her shoes. I wasn't sure if I would have any shoes to fit her and if I wanted to redress her, Maru's black Mary-Janes were going to be more versatile than the other characters shoes. I've only had a quick look with one pair in each size so far but MSD shoes are going to be way too big. The pair of YOSD shoes I tried fit her but they were quite snug so hopefully largish YOSD shoes should be ok. I find it weird that she came wearing a white t-shirt under her dress and with tissue paper around her arms and neck. I realise this is so her dress doesn't stain her but surely if she has to be wrapped in tissue to wear the dress, that's a sign that that may not be the best dress for her to be wearing? Oh, well. I love her anyway, so much that I'm already making nefarious plans to find a way to get the other dolls. I really like Jamie. Her colouring reminds me of the Giant Baby, but she's not available as a mini doll yet.
I also finally found a signature Maddie Hatter doll. Years ago I had a collection of Monster High and Ever After High dolls. During a clean out, I had a fit of generosity and gave them all to one of our nieces. Later I got a seventeen inch Frankie Stein and Maddie Hatter. Then I got a standard Frankie to go with the big one. But I couldn't find a Maddie anywhere! This one is a reissue with no earrings or ring and I'm pretty sure the first release had a different handbag, but it's good enough for me. I wish I could get the 28 inch Maddie as well but no toy shops here seem to have even heard of it and international postage on something that size would be too much to be worth it.
I got Barbies for mother's day. A curvy one, a tall one and a petite one. Then today our supermarket was selling off their old toy stock and the Fashionistas were six dollars, so I got two more. Now I need to find time for body swapping! I haven't bought a Barbie in about ten years and I swear the packages were easier to open then! These ones couldn't have been harder if they were welded into sheet metal tubes! I was happy to see there seems to be less product in their hair now but a few of them have hair that feels weirdly greasy and sticky at the same time, that left weird wet patches on their boxes. I'm guessing that I'm finally encountering glue-head syndrome. I'd be more upset if I wasn't already planning to rip their heads off.
Being an old cynic, I had assumed that the curvy Barbie was just going to be the Happy Family Grandma body with a Barbie head. One of the first things I did was compare them and I'm pleased to see that it's not.
I'm also working on a (probably hopeless) plan to bully myself into doing more stuff, rather than just planning to do stuff. Hopefully it works once I've finished planning it out but not really ready to decide how likely it is to work yet. For now, it's time for me to stop procrastinating and pull the heads off some Barbies.
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