Here we are again, it’s the 9th anniversary of this blog. Not a lot has changed since last year. Many dolls are still in boxes as we’re still trying to get display space sorted out. I have put out a lot of the vintage fashion dolls but now I need to get more shelves put up. I brought the wooden shelves that I used for the dolls and my books with me from Geeveston. I just need someone to put them up for me as we don’t have a drill with a masonry bit. Once the holes are drilled in the right places, we could do the rest. It is pretty hard to get tradespeople when you live in the country and we don’t have partners, kids or grandkids to ask for help.

Of course, it hasn’t stopped us from buying more dolls. Remember how last year I said that I probably wouldn’t buy and more big dolls? Well, a few weeks ago I bought Connie who I showed you after I cleaned her up. She’s still waiting for a dress BTW.

I have bought several fashion dolls as fixer uppers. I get them in Op Shops for under $5. A few I liked enough to keep but others are being dressed and put aside. I may re-donate them or I may sell them to get my money back, so I can buy more dolls to fix up. My last buy was a $2 Rocker Barbie with crazy hair. I’ll show her off in the near future.

I have pre-ordered one of the new playline Sindy dolls. I’m still waiting for her. I quite like these new Sindy dolls. Well, I don’t care for the ones with coloured hair or big hair but there are others that I do like. I’m hoping that the company that makes them will continue to expand the line and hopefully produce better quality fashions than we are seeing from Mattel.

I do wonder what Mattel thinks that kids do with fashion dolls. For my generation it was about having nice outfits to change them into for their different activities. We created our own stories. Now, granted the stories that Naomi and I created were not so much about boyfriends and going on dates because that didn’t really interest us but we did enjoy having nice things for our dolls to wear. Naomi often says that she thinks that playing with fashion dolls was a way that children could learn about how to wear clothes; what pieces looked good together, how some colours suited some complexions and hair colours better than others and what clothing was suitable for particular events. I don’t think that really happens with today’s fashion doll clothing. Not in playline anyway. I think that play is probably more based on props. Hair play is still popular, as are pets and other activity-based items. Nothing wrong with that except when it is too gimmicky, but I do miss the pretty clothing.

Recently we have been showing some of our other vintage girls’ toys and games. We will probably continue to do this from time to time as we have a few other things that we could feature.

I must also get back to photographing paper dolls. Naomi still collects them but postage from the USA is so expensive now that she’s stopped buying repro paper doll sets. There are still birthdays and Christmas though :-).

At the moment I’m also going through some of my favourite Fashion Fever girls. It’s hard to believe that the first ones are coming up for 20 years old in the next year or two. I do use them quite a lot for photography and recently decided that I should tidy them up a bit. Hair gets a bit messy and rubber bands snap and need to be replaced. I had four of them out last week getting a tidy up. Three are ready to go back downstairs and get dressed. Hope and Kylie just needed their hair fixed.

Annette, below, needed her hair fixed but she turned out to be a bigger problem. I thought she just needed a new rubber band. Her hair is quite fine and when I combed it out it seemed very matted underneath so she ended up getting a shampoo and conditioner like the others but then I gave her a very quick dunk in boiling water. Then I noticed that she had a dye stain on the back of her leg. Annette had been wearing a tight black skirt for some weeks and I think that may have been the cause. So, at the moment she is in a very undignified state standing in a sunny window getting treated with Oxy 5. I’ll fix her hair when the treatment is done.

As I mentioned recently, I just renewed my WordPress plan before the new plans came in so I’m now on what is called a legacy plan. Next year when I renew my plan, I will have to move to a new one. I’m waiting to see if WP introduce some kind of intermediate plan as the free one won’t allow me to keep all the photos we currently have stored and the business one is way more expensive than the one I’m on now. After ten years of doing this I’m certainly not going to allow any of my pictures or posts to be deleted so if they don’t come up with something better, I guess I will be moving to a business plan anyway. As many of you know we have two blogs, three if you count Naomi’s bear blog which she’s not currently active in and probably won’t upgrade. I’ve always said that I would not monetize this blog because I don’t like the idea of charging friends and I consider our long-time followers to be friends. I already do Word Ads. I’m not sure how many of you see that. I imagine that most people use an ad blocker like I do. However, Word Ads gives me $100 about every two to three years. It won’t pay for the new plan although it does help. I’m going to give it some thought over the next few months and if I see no other way to keep things going, I may have to ask for your help. However, this is not something you have to worry about right now. If I need it, I’ll ask further down the track.

As this blog enters its tenth year, I do feel quite proud of myself for keeping it going for all this time and I’m so grateful to all of you who have been followers since the early days especially.