Goodwill Girls: My Latest Haul: Journey Girls Meredith and American Girl Saige

  It is with a heavy heart that I inform you of the death of my beloved pear tree. After blooming this Spring, and even growing baby pears, one day we were all sitting out on the patio when one of us looked over and noticed that the poor tree was completely dead. A few years ago I noticed there were ants or something in the tree, hollowing out a portion of the trunk. I think I poured hot water on the spot. In any case, I thought the bugs had gone. Maybe they were the cause, or maybe they were just appreciative of whatever had been killing the tree. I looked at the trunk, and there was a split leading off from the hole where I had seen the bugs.

In another week or so, the split went most of the way along the trunk, and was accompanied by an even more severe split down the other side of the trunk. So it became very important that we take the tree down.

Yes. My yard is weedy and overgrown, okay?!

Once down we saw that the entire tree, including the limbs, had been hollowed out.

  I'll really miss our pear tree. It may not have provided any pears for the last few years, but when it did I canned mass quantities of pears, gave pears away, and made pear cake, pear pancakes, and pear syrup, which we eat on ice cream. If you want to try the recipe for the cake I made out of my pears, you can find it in my post HERE. It's actually an apple cake recipe, but it was great made with pears. The tree also provided beauty in our yard,(Even if it did smell like fish when it was in bloom!)

As it did in the photo for this review of Ashton Drake's Alice, by Dianna Effner.

 I am going to plant another fruit tree, but I am notoriously bad with plants.
I hadn't been to Goodwill, or any thrift store, for ages. I've still only been twice since the virus became a thing. A few weeks ago Ivy, who is doing most of the driving these days to get practice to get her license, and I, dropped Ken off at work. Since we were in the shopping center where Goodwill is, I decided to make a quick scan of the aisles. I had only been there one other time lately, as I said, and found nothing. I did a little better on this day. I found these two girls.  **Update: I forgot to mention that the Journey Girl is Meredith, and a reader  tells me the American girl is Saige, which is one of the AG dolls I would have picked to own!** Further update below.

  The American Girl was wearing these cute homemade monkey pajamas and slippers. But the Journey Girl was wearing a nice homemade Christmas outfit and American Girl boots.

Whoops. Left out the boots.

  I think they've both had haircuts. But if they have, they look really good.

These naked pictures are before I washed them.

I wondered if they had really had haircuts, or just had short hair, because the short hair is curly. At least, it's curly enough to look like a real hairdo, and not just a chop job.

  The test was if the curl would wash out when I washed the dolls. You know I have to wash them. I always have to wash second hand dolls if at all possible. (You can read about how I wash my dolls in my posts HERE and HERE.) These guys were washable, so I washed them.  When they dried, their hair was still curly. So, did they come with short hair? I don't know of any Journey Girl who comes with short hair. As for the American Girl, I thought she might be one of the dolls you can choose with your own attributes. But I researched that, and it looks like they only offered options of skin tone and hair and eye colour, and freckles. All the dolls seem to have come with long hair. Now that they're washed, I can see that they do definitely have haircuts.

They both have a few long hairs that somehow got missed by the scissors. The AG's hair is a little longer on one side. She has tremendous flip though.

Ivy says she looks like Mary Tyler Moore on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Then it occurred to her that with the Journey Girl being blonde, she could be Rose Marie on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Ivy thought I should put little Rose Marie bows in the Journey Girl's hair.

I pointed out to her that no modern kid would have dolls of people from The Dick Van Dyke Show...except her. She would have.
  I have two other American Girls. One is the Samantha I got at a yard salea few years ago.

You can see her Doll-A-Day post HERE.

One is a Kirsten I got at a flea market.

I think I like this AG better than either of those two. I like her reddish hair and her freckles.

  I have a couple of Journey Girls. You might have seen my review of Journey Girl Kelsey HERE.

I also have another one with a haircut. I'm not sure which one she is. I had another Kelsey, but I'm not sure if I still have her. She might have gone on Ebay with her post-mate, Lotus Kayumi. You might have seen their post HERE.
  These two girls are most certainly staying though. I love their faces. Despite the haircuts, they don't seem to have had much play. They have very tight limbs, and no scuffing.

  **FURTHER UPDATE** For those of you who are curious as to how much these ladies cost me: They were priced at $3.99 each, but I got the Old People discount! I only paid $7 something for the both of them, including tax!
  Soon we'll be going review crazy. I have three sponsored reviews, plus one amazing gift I recently received. I'll be going to Lori's before the end of the month to help her move. If you're wondering why I haven't done that yet, it's because the original sale of her house fell through. She had to cancel her house purchase, since no one was buying her house. Then her house sold again. Of course, by that time, the house she was originally buying was no longer available. So she had to find another house. She's not really happy with it, but she didn't have much of a choice. Hopefully she can make it into what she will be happy with. At least she'll be closer to where she works.
  I'll see you all soon!