Never Look A Gift Baby Beans in the Mouth

  First of all, I put loads of new things on the sales page in the last couple of days Most of them are dolls you will have seen here on the blog. So, if something caught your eye in a post, and you thought,"I'd like to have that." Now's your chance. Check out the sales page and see if your favourite is there. You can find the link in the upper right of the page,or use THIS LINK.
  The title of this post is a reference to the old saying,"Never look a gift horse in the mouth." What does that mean? When someone is buying a horse,one of the things they do is look at the horse's teeth to see how old it is. (Don't ask me how you tell from the teeth. I don't remember.) So what the saying means is, if someone gives you a give, don't be picky,because it was free. The saying doesn't really have any meaning in this case, because I am in no way scrutinizing my gift. I just thought it was a cool title! Anyway! I received a nice surprise in the mail the other day. I got a little package from reader Treesa.
 

She even hand made the little notecard.

She gifted me,for no reason except that she knew I like baby beans dolls, with this tiny girl.

She's a Shoe Baby Beans doll .

She is specifically Ballerina Beans.

Strangely, she is not wearing ballet shoes.

Tutu though.

These dolls were made in 1978.

Don't mind my dirty fingernails. I've been cleaning stuff...well,you'll find out.

They came on a card, in a cardboard shoe. There were several different face sculpts used for the various Shoe baby beans dolls. There was one that looked like a mini version of the regular sized Baby Beans,one with a sort of puckered mouth, and this one's sculpt,which reminds me of the cute Honeyhill Bunch dolls. (You can see one of mine HERE. )

She's only about 4 inches tall.
  That was very nice of Treesa. I now have two 'pay it forward' doll gifts to repay to someone. The other was the wonderful gift I got from a Flickr friend last year. You may have seen that doll on her Doll-A-Day post HERE.
  My poor yard. I mowed my grass the other night,so that's good. On the other hand, all those flowers that were there last week are now gone! The only thing left of those is the yellow ones that might be weeds. They're still going strong. But, the iris' are gone, and a couple of days of rain after I photographed those blooming spirea bushes,(That's what they are! Thanks to reader Lady Anne for that ID!), I went out to find them turning brown. There were still some white flowers,but there were so many brown ones that it was no longer photogenic.
  The new blooms on the yard are my peonies. That bush is going crazy this year. 

It has never been so big. Between that and the yellow things,I still have quite a few flowers in the yard.

 

Yeah I know. Lots of tall grass too. But how do I cut so close to the yellow flowers without cutting them too? I probably did cut some of them.

The pear tree has baby pears.
 

Not that they'll make it to adulthood with the squirrels around.

My amaryllis are way behind,because they got sat out so late. 

The hostas won't be bloomed until later this summer. But the sweet peas have a good start.

Gotta do something about that mildew on the side of the house.

The Asian lily, or whatever it is,doesn't look like it's going anywhere this year, but we'll see. On the other hand: my roses! They have buds! 

I was afraid they were going nowhere this year,but we have buds!

 

I'm hoping they bloom before Emma's birthday,as they usually do, because she loves sugared rose petals. Often I make them and put them on her birthday cake,but this year she wants a Battenburg cake for her birthday.

This one isn't mine. This is what it's supposed to look like. I found this with a recipe online. Mine will hopefully look almost this good.

 I think she was inspired by the mini Battenburgs I made for her tea party a few years ago.
  As I said, I have been washing things. I'll explain that in an upcoming post.

More on Gender Neutral Play

  We've recently talked about dolls, and gender, and similar subjects. Well here's another connected subject: gender neutral toys, and gender conformity in play. The other day I  read an article  called, "You Can Give a Boy a Doll, But You Can't Make Him Play With It,The logistical and ethical problems with trying to make toys gender-neutral". It mostly concerned Sweden's efforts to make all toy makers and stores advertise their products equally to boys and girls,and the efforts of certain Swedish groups to change the manner of play in schools, (Not allowing children to play with the stereotypical toys of their gender). I have a lot to say about this, but what it mainly boils down to is: let them play how they want!
  The idea of allowing kids to play with whatever toy they want,letting boys play with dolls and girls with cars,is one thing. It's great. But to take the further step of actually preventing kids from playing with toys because they are the gender stereotype is also wrong. One school in Sweden actually got rid of toy cars because: "boys "gender-coded" them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys". Another school even got rid of free playtime because "when children play freely 'stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented." For heaven's sake! If a girl wants to play with dolls, or a boy wants to play with cars,that's just as okay as a girl playing with cars and a boy playing with dolls. It should be a child's choice. Not allowing a child to play as they like, with the toys they prefer is bound to cause problems that will be the subject of future articles!
  According to the article,"Boys and girls are different...They are different, and nothing short of radical and sustained behavior modification could significantly change their elemental play preferences.". In other words,even when given non gender stereotyped toys to play with,boys and girls still often tend to play with them in the way they would have played with the stereotypical ones.  Examples from the article include boys catapulting carriages and a girl putting a toy train to bed. This is obviously not always the case. Girls obviously often play with typically 'male' toys, and boys play in toy kitchens and take fatherly care of dolls. When I was a kid I had dolls, cars, a train,and all sorts of toys. I took motherly care of my dolls, but when I got outside with my tractor and manure spreader, I  farmed, and when I took my cars out I made roads in the dirt and drove my cars around. My cars were dirty and my dolls were so played with that their hair wore off. When I bought a  Chatty Cathy and Chatty Baby from a lady at a yard sale a few years ago, they were mint, because, as she and her mother explained, she preferred her cars and trucks. I played with both, and I played with them the way each sex would stereotypically play with them. Keep in mind that I grew up with only my sister to play with, and knew no other kids but my sister, and a couple of sets of cousins until I started school. I played as easily with my boy cousins as I did with my girl cousins...maybe easier. At least, I played with them more, because my only two female cousins we played with were older, and chose to play with my sister instead of me. My sister didn't play much at all. Not only is she six years older than I am, but she never really 'played' to begin with. So I had no concept of how I was 'supposed' to play as a girl, or what I was and wasn't 'supposed' to play with. The story in the article, about a little girl being given a train, and putting it to bed like a doll, doesn't mirror my story. When I was a kid I wanted a train, with loads of track that I could run all around the house, and under beds, like in the movies. What I got was a nice Marx train with such a tiny oval track that the train nearly met itself coming and going. I was very disappointed. My point is, I didn't play with my 'boy' toys the way a girl is 'supposed to'. So there goes the theory that no matter what you give a kid they will still always play as their gender might suggest.  
  It's not to be attributed to their broad mindedness that my parents bought me both 'girl' and 'boy' toys. I'm sure my mom would have been happy if I had been a girly girl who was happy to wear dresses and play only with 'girl' toys. My dad encouraged my 'Tomboy' behavior, probably because he could relate to it better. I'm not sure why Mom went with it. She always made it very clear that she had wanted a boy, but she wanted her girls to be curly haired beauties with ladylike manners. She took little interest in our toys once we had them. (I can still reel off the names of most of my kid's toys, but I don't think Mom ever even knew any of mine. I'm sure Dad didn't. He just referred to any doll or stuffed animal as 'them Damn monkeys'.) Maybe she just didn't care what we played with. When I had kids I bought them what they wanted when they were old enough to ask for particular toys. (Before that I started them off with dolls, building toys like Duplos,and the usual puzzles and activity toys that encourage learning.) Thus they all had cars, dolls, Legos, etc.,(and LOADS of books),to the extent that they were interested in them.
  The article is interesting. You can read it by going to the link above. I have to say, I really feel sorry for those Swedish kids.

I Did It Again! Another New Project!

  Okay. I've done it again. I started another thing before finishing the ones I already have started. But I'm going to see this one through to the finish right now,even if I don't like how it's turning out. The reason I started something new is, I came across my peachy felt the other day, which is perfect for a skin tone, and I got inspired to make a doll.

He's about 4 or 5 inches tall.

  It's not everybody's skin tone, but it reminds me of an old Tiny Town doll,or the limbs of a Baps doll. If you aren't familiar with Tiny Town dolls you can go to my post on mine HERE. If you aren't familiar with Baps dolls, you can see my Baps doll HERE, and the beautiful ones I saw at a doll show HERE.  Now that I found this felt, the other thing I can do is repair my Baps girl's arms. Then maybe I'll take a whack at her face. (That sounds mean, doesn't it?)
  As for this new guy, I started with a wire armature. Actually, to be honest, I started like I usually do, about 4 steps into the process. I started by making his head.
 

I should have started with the wire armature. I made his head by bunching part of the felt  into a head shape,and stuffing it with polyfil. I tied thread tightly around the neck so it would stay a head shape. It felt pretty creepy strangling this guy with thread,especially after I had made and felted the body, and had to re-tie the neck! I felt like there was somebody somewhere who looked like this guy,being inexplicably strangled by an invisible force. 

Ad you can see,I made him a nose,ears,and, much to Ivy's dismay, lips. I might remove the lips when I try painting the face. They might look weird painted. Ivy thinks I just need to remove them. PERIOD.

Voo Doo dolls aside, I spent some time twisting wire to make him a one piece body and limb contraption. I then started the process of covering his torso with felt. With a torso there was something to attach his head to. I trimmed the excess felt that had been gathered around his neck to form the head. It was thickly bunched, so I  had to cut a lot of it out. Next I moved on to his arms,and shaped his hands. I glued the felt with Fabri-Tac,which stays pretty soft and rubbery for a while. That allowed me to use scissors to snip at the glued felt,which by then had merged with the glue and become a somewhat moldable single entity, to shape and reshape the body,including snipping shoulders and shaping the torso and arms..

 That's also how I made his hands. With the hands I glued the felt, and then snipped in fingers with scissors. After the fingers were cut in, I squeezed and shaped them with my fingers,adding more Fabri-tac as needed to make them moldable.

  

    This is how I always make the hands on the miniature felt covered dolls I make. Like THIS ONE,THIS ONE, and THIS ONE, and especially THIS ONE. Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't tell you this. If anybody can make one for themselves, they will never buy one from me,and I might want to do that again some day.
  Then I covered his legs.
 

I know his stomach area looks awful. But don't worry. That will be under his clothes and not be noticeable. The only thing that matters is how he looks in his clothes.

    One thing to keep in mind is that it has to be done as you go. The glued felt eventually gets tougher. By the next day the felt was too hard to snip very easily,or squeeze into shape.

  He's now in the process of having his clothes made. Ivy chastised me for gluing the clothes I was making for one of my almost finished dolls just last week. So this time I'm actually attempting to sew the tiny clothes wherever possible. When I get the clothes finished I'll show you. Then we'll see what he looks like with a face in another  post. But I promise we'll get there!
  As you can see, when I took these pictures, my lilacs were still blooming. I have been trying to get this post up for days, but I was having trouble with the memory card from my camera. I couldn't get the pictures onto my computer. I finally got it to work, but I think I'm going to need a new memory card. Luckily Ken already has some ordered,because we have that wedding to photograph in a few weeks.
  By now my lilacs are just about gone. The dogwood tree's blooms have all dropped. 

The walk at the side of our house,(Actually it's the back. It's hard to explain.), is covered with lilacs that have dropped already. We've had some really hard rains, so some of them were beaten off, I think.

The iris's are fading.
 

I have since pulled those tings in the back on the left. The other stuff is my daffodils. The flowers finish and wither, but the greenery lingers on. (It just gets flabby!) My white fencing has seen better days. It needs replacing or at least reshaping. I have some plastic fencing I'll probably replace it with. It has been either cold or rainy or both all Spring,so I haven't done much yard work. You know, I have a roll of the full sized vintage fencing made in a similar style to this one,(I found it ion the ceiling of our garage when we moved here almost 25 years ago.),  and it's still in great shape! They don't make 'em like they used to!  

  When I took these pictures my yard was full of flowers: lilacs,iris',and whatever these are:

The stuff in the front is red clover. It started years ago and I left it to grow for our rabbit,Jerome,who enjoyed it. Now I leave it for the bees. They need it.

  They might be weeds, but if so,they're nice ones. Does anybody know what they are? I also have a lot of this stuff this year.

Does it look familiar to anybody? Ken says he found in online and it's dark nettle. I found it as something else. It's a weed, I think, but it grows purple flowers and has nice leaves with a purple tint.
  These bushes have started to flower.

The grass is badly trimmed, but the little plant on front of the bushes on the left are wild violets. They grow where they want and refuse to grow where they are moved,so,I left them. they have medium purple flowers.

I like them for doll photo shoots because the flowers are small. You'll have seen them before,for example,in the MOTHER'S DAY POST featuring Dolly World and her daughters...

  ...or THIS POST, featuring Dolly and a few of her kids...

...or THIS POST on the Dolly Darlings doll,Honey. Nice bush...but does anybody know what it is?

  My peonies are getting there. They have a while to go though.

  They are surrounded by those yellow flowers,and to the right is that Asian lily that I finally identified a couple of years ago.
  So, until that guy gets his clothes on,this is it from here. See you soon.

Flowers and Mother's Day Gifts

  Boy, blogging is weird. The internet is weird. Here I am blogging along quietly,viewership way down since I stopped posting daily,when all of a sudden the views  shoot up to more than seven times what they were the day before! What makes the difference? Why did thousands of people suddenly decide to view the blog? And where the heck are those views going,because they aren't on the most recent posts? (When I was posting every day I was getting big numbers, but they weren't going on the daily posts either. So why did not posting every day make a difference? I know. It has something to do with showing up in searches. But then what happened that day?)
  Anyway, on to other things. My lovely lilacs are in full bloom now.

I keep moving the self starts around. There are more bushes at the back door,and in the side yard.

I'm on my second vase full in the house,and enjoying the wonderful smell. Ivy likes to eat them! 

  I also have loads of iris' this year.

As you can see,I have not tidied my flower beds. So sue me. I did mow the grass today.

 Tuesday night I worked on one of my unfinished things. It's not quite done yet, but it's really close. When it is done I'll show you.
  I also said I'd show you my Mother's day gifts. Well first I should show you one of my birthday gifts that I forget to show you! It arrived a bit after my birthday because Ken ordered it for me and it took a while. I thought I was getting one,(I found it online and put it in my watching!),but when it arrived there were two mini decks of cards.

They had to be punched out and the boxes had to be folded together.

They aren't 52 card decks,so maybe that's why they give you two. I like there to be complete decks,(and mini books should have readable pages.). But mini decks of cards are always unrealistically thick when there are 52 cards,because the cards can't be realistically thin enough to be to scale without being like tissue paper,and nobody wants tissue paper cards.

  So these little guys are thin, but not tissue paper thin. They look good,even if it is hard to close the lids all the way because the cards are so tightly in there.
  For Mother's Day I got some lilac lotion from Ivy. I have said before how much I love the smell of lilacs. They sell lilac lotion at a few places, but the girls always shop for cruelty free,which is harder to find. Emma gave me a Hallmark Princess Leia ornament, and a pretty "Mom,I love you with all my heart" picture frame with a picture of the two of us in it. Ken gave me edibles,including some Tunnock's tea cakes. They are sort of like those marshmallow Wagon Wheel thingies,with coconut,the difference being that the marshmallow in the Tunnock's is vegetarian.  (Your regular marshmallows are made with 'animal skin, connective tissue, and bone',usually hooves and things! Bleh.)
  Emma also gave me these little goodies.

They are various scales. Most of the pieces are 1/6 scale or thereabouts.

  Ken also gave me a non edible gift. He's so crazy. He hates to buy me anything if I know I'm getting it. So if I'm with him and I find something I want as a gift, he'll refuse to get it for me because, "You'll know you're getting it and I can't surprise you." Usually that means I don't get it at all because he can't find it again, or forgets, or can't remember where we saw it or which thing it was. In 2018 I found this doll at Walmart.

Sorry about the dark picture. There was a lighter one,but it was out of focus.
 

Looks like a whole different doll.

I said I wanted her, and when I looked through them, this one had a particular smirky grin. 

There was just a slight difference in her face paint compared to all the others that made her better than all the others. I insisted I wanted that particular one.
 

  There was some back and forth about how he couldn't surprise me if he bought it then,versus  better to not be surprised and get the one I wanted. He finally bought her. But then I didn't get her that Christmas. He said he forgot where he hid her. Then my birthday came. And then Mother's day. Then another Christmas! I still hadn't gotten her. He still claimed he couldn't find her. How even a slob like Ken could lose something that big was...

Although I know for a fact there's still a yard decoration of a girl in the foyer somewhere,(Ken's 'office' is in there.), that he bought for me and hid years ago. I came across it once,but put it back so he could surprise me with it. It's had to be in there at least 10 years now.
  So my birthday came this year, and now Mother's Day,and I finally got her! He won't tell me how long he's known where she was!
  So,that's it for this post. See you soon.