Where to start with 2020? This was the year that we all want gone and forgotten.

This year has been kind of a strange one for me. I’ve never had so much free time to write as I had this past year but at times it’s been hard to get motivated to set up photo shoots, answer emails or post reader photos. For that I apologise and I’ll try to do better next year.

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A year on from moving day a lot of dolls are still packed in boxes. Naomi could not get here at all during the winter months due to travel restrictions. This meant we were unable to go out and get paint for the rooms we wanted to redecorate before putting all the dolls and toys out. I think that we will probably wait till all her things are here to work out how we are going to make them all fit in. She’s been bringing things up with her each trip since August and we now have most of her fashion doll stuff here, lots of prams, high chairs and cots and loads of teddy bears.

Of course lack of room has not stopped either of us from buying dolls. If anything the pandemic probably made me more self indulgent buying dolls online because I had a little extra cash spare and felt I deserved a treat or two. These three girls were the last dolls I was able to buy at a market before lockdown began.

New Old Dolls

I did get very lucky with vintage dolls though. As I mentioned recently Naomi knows a lady in Oatlands who is selling off a lot of her dolls and she was able to get me several of them as well as some others from a seller at the Oatlands Whole Town Garage Sale in November. She also found me Ideal Baby Crissy who I think is actually from last year but I was not able to get her till July. Ideal Snoozie Thumbelina was found in an antique shop in Ulverstone just before lockdown began.

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A Very New Doll

My other really big purchase this year was my Kid Kreations Sindy doll. I have a post about her just about ready to go. I just need one more photo but here is a sneak peek.

The Boys

Naomi has not had a lot of time for blogging this year, even though she is now retired from work she is busier than ever trying to pack up her belongings to get them up here. As things arrive we are trying to do a few photo shoots of the male fashion dolls. We have some great props to share too in the near future, vehicles, furniture and all sorts of other bits and pieces. She has been enjoying restyling many of her old and new dolls and we’ve featured quite a few of them on Fashion Doll Friday. Look out for another tomorrow.

Thrifty Doll Collecting

In case some of you are wondering what has happened with Thrifty Doll Collecting where I have not posted in a while I think I am probably going to close it down. It was an experiment to see if a blog of that type would attract endorsements. It didn’t but the main problem with it is that it is on WordPress.org and in order to run it I had to pay for a server and other services. On my income that is a bit expensive if the site won’t pay for itself and I am sick of being bombarded with emails from companies offering services that I don’t want. I think that I will probably sell the domain name and either move the site to WordPress.com which won’t cost me as much or just incorporate that type of article back into this blog.

Thank You

Finally a big thank you to all our followers for sticking around this year. Our views are down but our visitors are up which is very gratifying. I hope we’ll be able to tell some more interesting doll stories in 2021.