Today marks the tenth anniversary of this blog. I never imagined when I started that I’d still be doing it ten years later.
When I began it was because I wanted to share photos of my dolls and connect with other doll collectors. I have found that there is a whole community of doll collectors online which has given me a great deal of pleasure over the years. Living where I live it’s not possible for me to go to doll shows very often, especially since Covid. There will only be one doll show in Tasmania this year as far as I know, the one in Hobart. I will be going down there for that and hopefully nothing will go wrong this year.
When I first started to collect dolls, about 25 years ago now, I didn’t talk about it much. I would never have spoken about it to friends or workmates in case they thought it was silly. Now I know that there are many others who are just like me and love their dolls. I’m not shy about talking about it anymore. Maybe that’s just me becoming more confident and not caring as much what people think about me but I think that it is also because I’ve met so many other collectors through this blog and through other online doll groups.
This has been a pretty quiet year for the blog. My main pastime has been working through the crates of dolls from Naomi’s friend. I have enjoyed learning about them and that’s still a work in progress. It’s been nearly a year now and it’s time that some of them went to new homes. We can’t keep them all, there is no room. Some of my own dolls have been boxed for three years because I don’t know where to put them.
I haven’t been posting very frequently this past year and I want to try to get back into a routine. I have several half written posts just waiting for photos so I must finish those. I’ve just got a new camera that I hope will work better in the poor light in parts of our house and I have seen some studio lights which would work better than the ones I had. I just need to save up for them. I’d also like to get back to diversifying more and posting about paper dolls, we have a whole cupboard full of them, and dolls houses. Our dolls houses are now all set up in Naomi’s Toy Room downstairs.
I still love doing this blog but I guess I haven’t been very motivated these past few months. Maybe it’s normal to have a slump after doing it for so long but I feel like I have been letting you all down and I need to do better.
As always I want to thank our readers for sticking with us for all this time. Anyone who says they don’t care whether their blog is read or not is kidding themself. Our readers are important to me and I love reading your comments. Thank you and let’s look forward to our eleventh year.
Dolls, Dolls, Dolls 
Congratulations on your 10th anniversary!! It’s always a pleasure to read your posts, but you shouldn’t feel pressured to do a specific number of posts. I think the previous pandemic years have left all of us at least a little fatigued and unmotivated.
Lovely to see so many of your dolls and bears. Naomi’s row of dollhouses looks like a realistic street. Looking forward to your future posts.
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Thanks Elizabeth.
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Congratulations!
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Congratulations! Life just gets in the way sometimes of the things we want to do. I would love to respond more to your postings but don’t have time however I love looking & reading. So long as You are Enjoying your passion as much as we do with whatever you get the chance to post. Keep up with what you can do! All the best from Sharon, VICTOR HARBOR SA
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Happy Anniversary! Covid has restricted our lives so much since 2020 and continues to disrupt our lives. It has caused weariness to the point of less joy in life. You haven’t let me down, life happens, we need breaks from time to time. I enjoy your blog because: you’re in my age group, it combines love of several things-dolls, information on them, love of crochet and knitting( your knitting projects inspire me to make more for dolls), collecting dolls, and support when family/friends don’t like my hobby and interfere; inspire creativity for dolls. Basically it’s great to be in contact with someone who supports and helps with this hobby. When ever you can write/film for this blog I am enjoying it. We should all realize that there is much to do in daily life + this, so when you are available to do this blog, I enjoy it and thankful for it! Thank you for doing it!!
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Thank you Helen, that’s very kind. It is nice to be in a community where nobody thinks your hobby is odd. I really appreciate all our readers.
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I agree with everything Helen has said above. It is great to be in touch with people who share the hobby. I am lucky as my family are supportive and my work colleagues are always interested in my photo shoots. I don’t care anymore what people think but when I first started collecting, I didn’t tell many people. Keep up the excellent blog, we all love it. I always look forward to Fashion Doll Friday and the stories with Vivienne, Jan and co.
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Hi I really look forward to your Friday blog, thank you and well done. You mention diversity.. I’d love to see more on your Australian dolls (particularly Pedigree) and your dolls houses. Looking forward to more fun on Fridays, thanks again Chris Martin
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I will certainly try to do that. My Netta and Metti dolls are still packed away and high on my list to find shelf space for. I can certainly plan a shoot for my Australian and British Pedigree dolls. I have a Sindy one planned comparing the two Kid Kreations Sindy doll I have. Naomi has arranged the dolls houses in the new toy room now so I can photograph them again as I haven’t done that in a long time. Thank you for the input.
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Happy Anniversary!Loved all the pics. Have been puttinyg doll groups in suitcases lately to temp. storage in attic. Need to puta bed or big chair in doll room then donate a few/duplicate dolls to the op shop. M y tin house tabs broke so part of house is atop bookcase and someis on shelf w/ books below.my griffander common house which is nano figure size (aprox 1:48 scale) will go to the living room(maybe).
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I need to remember where I put the swing tags so I can tag all the identified dolls.
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happy bloganniversary!
I agree that some people don’t understand how us grown ladies can enjoy dolls ^^ I have a little girl who lives opposite, almost 6 years old. She often comes round to visit and I let her play with a few of my dolls. She thinks it’s sort of strange, but nice, that the grey-haired lady opposite has so many interesting play things and that I don’t mind her playing with a select few.
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That’s nice. Maybe she will go on to be a doll collector herself one day because of you.
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