Mystery in the Briarberry Woods

   I am still alive. I've been cleaning away soot and trying to get our things unpacked from moving back from Emma's. You accumulate a lot of things in a year, and especially if you are bringing things from before the year started. I had brought a lot of things to Emma's to clean up, or save from the unheated house, and also art supplies for the various things I made while I was there. 

  I feel I am never going to get done with this, and I am feeling daunted by it. I don't know where to start. I got this fortune in my cookie the other week.

I should be, but can I?! I kept it to inspire me, but I think I need more fortunes...

  We also took a couple of days off this week to celebrate Ken's birthday. One of the things he wanted to do for his birthday was go to a bin store, because he hadn't been to one for a long time. We had a few things we needed, including some of that plastic stuff to put on the bathroom window, since the window that came from Lowe's was supposed to be frosted, and wasn't. This might not be such a big problem, if the window wasn't IN the bathtub. Anyway, so that was on our list, along with dog poo bags for my sister, and squeezable treats for her cats. Also, I wanted wallpaper, because we'll have need for a lot of that. So those were all on my list, AND WE FOUND ALL OF THEM! What are the odds of that?!  Okay. The universe let me down a little bit, because the wallpaper was ugly, but it was there! 

Today we are  still getting snow, after a pretty full day of snow yesterday. But it's warm in here now, and we know our boys are not freezing. All three spend a lot of time with us. At night they fight and drive me crazy though.

  Anyway, as I was packing up Ivy's kid books I came across a lot of doll booklets or catalogs. She has some really old American Girl catalogs, a My Twinn catalog, and some booklets that came with dolls. If anybody is interested in seeing the My Twinn and American Girl catalogs, let me know. I can photograph the pages and do a post on those. Today I am showing you a Briarberry booklet. I could have done it as a Doll Book of the Month Club post, but it goes with all the other doll booklets I found in Ivy's room, so here we are.

  Does anybody remember Briarberry? Briarberry was a line from Fisher Price in the 1990's. The line included plush, jointed bears and other animals, old fashioned looking furniture, carded fashions,  and a tea party set, etc. I always thought the bears were cute, and the furniture was really nice. The clothes were nice quality. Some of the dresses and things were made of a heavy velvety velour, as were the cushions to the kitchen chairs. The bears were soft plush, with jointed heads, arms, and legs, and plastic faces with flocking. Through the years I've had, (mostly through second hand finds), the armoire, the canopy bed, the couch/bed, the table and chairs, the tea set, the stove and accessories, and a boatload of the bears of various sizes. I'm pretty sure I sold most of the stuff, but I know I still have a canopy bed in the box, and maybe an armoire, and I came cross some bears in our stuff just the other day. There are probably more somewhere. I don't think I've ever found any of the non bear animals in the wild. They came out later, and maybe they didn't make as many of them. There was a lamb and a bunny, and a dog and a cat.

  Ivy had a Briarberry storybook magazine in her stuff. I don't remember where it came from. I don't know if it was a promotional thing handed out somewhere, but Ivy didn't have any of the Briarberry stuff except a couple of the outfits I got on clearance that she used on baby dolls. So I don't know where she would have gotten it. Maybe it was an insert ion a magazine. Possibly it was an insert in Good Housekeeping or something, because Ken's stepmom used to get that. Anybody else have one of these?

  I'm going to start by showing you the back cover, because there's some information on it. For one thing, the baby bears and the Briarberry Friends, which were the non bear dolls, were introduced in December of 1999.

  There was a website.

  Now for the story. Here's the front cover.

The story is fully illustrated with photo scenes with the toys. 

There's that stove.

  The last page is a big two age spread, so the wording is shown smaller and harder to read. So I have shown it in full, and in individual pictures of the pages.

  The story manages to showcase all the dolls and some of the accessories. Of course, it also shows a bunch of things that weren't available.

  I hope everybody enjoyed this. I have a few more booklets to show you, of other dolls available about the same time as the Briarberries. We'll see those soon. Also, there's a doll show next weekend! I need the fun, but definitely not more dolls. I'll go anyway, and try to show you some dolls, but I promise I'll ask before I photograph them!