Basic Fun Laugh-A-Lot Bear and a Mini Puzzle

   Just a heads up for anybody who loves mini toys, Care Bears, and cute things in general. I don't care for Care Bears. Maybe I was too old when they came out, but I always thought they were sickening. That didn't stop me from owning a Care Bear cousin, the Lion, Brave Heart. (I only bought him because he reminded me of the long lost toy from my childhood, Larry the Lion, a Mattel Animal Yakker. Nowdays, I still have Brave Heart, but I have three Larrys.) But, I do love mini things, especially mini versions of regular sized things. And of course, who doesn't love cute things? So when I was in Dollar Tree, which. be honest, isn't 'Dollar' any more, and found this tiny Care Bear, I bought it.

  I only know because it says on the box, but it's a She-bear. She's quite small. Tammy World says she's just the right size for her.

  I think she's a bit big though.

Who asked you?

  I'm not used to the recent Care Bears logo, so I wasn't sure she was a real Care Bear. But her tag proves it. She's also by Basic Fun, which has done loads of cool mini toys.

 

  She's a cute little girl, with decal eyes and an embroidered nose and tongue.  

Her box shows her with a couple of little eyelashes, but she doesn't actually have them.

She has a little embroidered heart on her rump.

  She's Laugh-A-Lot Bear. I'm not sure what a sticking out tongue or the grinning sun on her chest have to do with laughing a lot. According to her box, the 'belly badge' on her belly 'describes exactly who she truly is', which apparently is 'a star at giving others the giggles'. 

  The back of the box tells you about all the mini Care Bears you could buy.

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And the side of her box shows her cracking up another Care Bear, just to prove that she is, indeed, hilarious.

  While we're at it, I also found some tiny puzzles at Meijer. There are different themes, including paintings, and classic books. The paintings included Girl With the Pearl Earring, and The Scream. The books included The Wizard of Oz, The Great Gatsby, and the one I bought, Jane Eyre.

  The books ones were extra cool because they have edges that look like book spines, so the whole effect is of a mini book.

  The puzzle is a bit large for Tammy World.

 It's kind of like the giant Planet of the Apes puzzle poster I used to have on my wall when I was about 12. The puzzle pieces were about 10 inches wide, and the whole puzzle was about four feet by three feet when it was put together. 

But this is a 50 piece puzzle, so the box is even more gigantic for Tammy than my Apes puzzle box was for me.

  For those following the tale of our car, we sold it, and we have a new ,(to us), van. Someone we have known since our kids went to school and each others birthday parties together alerted us to her brother-in-law's available van, and between her, her brother-in-law, and her cousin who did  work on the car, they fixed the van up for us and sold it to us extra cheaply. We are very lucky to have had their help, because we had about $1000 to spend on a vehicle, which had to get us to all Ken's doctor appointments, and be low enough for me to get the wheel chair in and out of. I'm short, old, and falling apart, so the fact that I can just pop the front wheels of the chair up into the van and just roll it in, is a life saver. This van has a lot of miles, but has had all it's problems recently fixed, (except for the air conditioning), and has lots of nice extras we couldn't even have thought of wanting, like heated seats, a 6 disc  CD player, a cassette player!, and a DVD player and screen! I doubt we'll be spending much time watching DVDs in the back seat, but it's there.

  I also had my birthday recently. I turned 64 earlier this month. I'm having so many aches and pains right now that I feel about 100. My hair is getting a lot of white hairs amongst the regular hair, and the wrinkles are compiling. But I'm in good health. I had my blood work done not too long ago, and all my numbers were perfect. Last year I was checked over literally head to toe: CT scan of my head, scan of my carotid artery, examination of my thyroid, not one, but TWO echo cardiograms of my heart, a mammogram, a pap smear, and x-rays of my feet!  Everything checked was great, except my feet, which were deemed too far past it to even bother operating on. So I can do what I want, but I hobble around doing it.

  I have some dolls to show you soon, and Ken and I are going to the toy show with my sister in a couple of days. Oh, and Raging Moon, we had quite a scare here tonight when there was a tornado spotted nearby and we were under a warning for a while. I panicked and started throwing things in bags to run to the basement with. And then, just as soon, it was all over. Anyway, I'll see you soon.

The Twelve Days of Tammy World, Day Nine: Tammy Shows Off Some Vintage Christmas Stuff

   Tammy finally got out of that Christmas sweater! She wanted something else Christmassy, but she doesn't have all her clothes here. She settled for a cozy sweater that is non-Christmassy. At least it's warm. 

  Today Tammy wanted to show you some vintage Christmas decorations she likes to have up at Christmas.

 The little house just arrived this summer, in a bag of vintage Christmas minis at a yard sale. I think it might be a cake decoration.

It's hollow, but the opening isn't big enough to get a light inside.  At the moment it's lighted by sitting on top of a battery operated tea light.

The other things she wanted to show you are super tiny and old, and not in the best of shape any more. But they are really nice.

The one with the antlers is a reindeer. But is the other one a female reindeer, without antlers, or a sheep? It looks more like a sheep, but if it is, its a sheep as big as a reindeer!

 

They're celluloid, so they are very delicate...and also flammable! Both reindeer have lost one antler, although I have one of the missing ones somewhere.

I love them because they are just like the full size vintage celluloid reindeer I have. Full size, as in, for table decorations that is! Not full size reindeer!

  It looks very cozy with everything lighted. Tammy is sitting in front of an advent calendar sent to us by our friends in Germany. We stayed with them on our trip last year. One of these days I need to get to that part of the trip and actually finish those posts. I'm forgetting things. And I'm so close to finishing! It was the last 4 or 5 days of the trip. I never finished the posts on the last trip, so I swore I was going to finish this time.

  So that's it for today. Poor Tammy is missing her family, but I daren't drag a load more dolls into the house, especially since Emma and AJ are moving next month, and, hopefully, so are we. (Into our house, I mean!) They have bought their first house.

  Maybe Tammy can see some of her family for Christmas. We'll see.

  Tomorrow we'll check in with Tammy World again.

The Twelve Days of Tammy World, Day Eight: Tammy Takes a Rest with a New Christmas Lantern

   Tammy decided she had done a lot of  tour guiding this week, and deserved a rest. So she thought today she would slow down, and show you the new Christmas lantern she got recently.

The lantern came from Walmart in a set of three for $2.48.

It's a fairly convincing fake wood, with plastic greenery and a real tiny pine cone inside.

  If you wanted to you could remove the stuff inside, use some paper, or even coloured plastic, inside for glass, and put one of those button lights in there. It would make a pretty lit up lantern. 

  It's a good size for 1/6 scale. I almost didn't grab these, but I'm glad I did.

  Tomorrow Tammy will be up to something else, and yes, she's getting sick of that sweater too.

Doll-A-Day 2023 #196: Another Temu Haul and Articulated Doll!

   Remember what happened with my last Temu purchase? If not, let me recap: I made a Temu purchase. I got an email telling me they thought my order had been lost in transit, so they were refunding my money. If it did show up, I was free to keep the items, and the money. Then it showed up. They were apologetic about it being late, so they gave me $5! So, since my order had ended up being free, plus I got paid $5 for ordering it, I figured it was an opportunity to treat myself. Normally I wouldn't have ordered anything over $3. I have been trying to keep it cheap. But considering the circumstances, I took the chance to buy some higher priced things I had seen and liked. So, for one thing, I bought this little guy.

We'll look at him in more detail in a minute. But first, I want to show you what else I got. Let's start with these.

They even have lenses.

  This pair of glasses was listed as a ring! They do fit on a finger, and stay there. Pinches a bit where the legs end. Maybe it's for smaller fingers.

I thought they would make great glasses for a dollhouse sized doll, or for just laying on a table in a dollhouse. they were 88 cents.

I also got these glasses.

I wanted the black ones, but they were sold out. I'm very impressed by these though. They have clear lenses and real folding legs. 

They were only $1.99. I wasn't sure who they were going to fit though. I hoped they'd be Tammy World's size.  They aren't, but look who they almost fit.

They look great from the front, if a little large, but from the side you can see that they are way too big.

  They fit his head width though, so I don't know who they'll fit.

I have so many dolls without shoes. I bought a pair of black boots. I figured they'd fit somebody. But when they arrived, they weren't a 'they'. They were an 'it'. There was only one. I don't know what happened. It was in a ziplock bag, and the outer shipping bag hadn't been opened. No idea what went on there. But Temu were really good about refunding my $3.48. So now I have that to spend. I don't know if I'll buy the boots again, or something else.

But my favourites, besides those green glasses I guess, were these last two things. First of all, this chess set!

The board is metal and quite heavy. All the little chess pieces are real metal too. It's not magnetic though, which would have been handy with such small pieces.

And no, I don't know how to set up a chess board. I've only played three times, and that was because the condition of buying the Muppet chess set was that I would finally allow Ken to teach me how to play chess, and play it with him. So I have played Ken twice, and Fuzz once. I beat them both. They claim it was a fluke.

The chess set was $5.28, which is more than I like to spend, but hey, it was free plus!

The last item I bought was a whole $7.48, but you get a lot with it and the table is real wood. (And, again, free plus.) It's a Lego table with pieces.

I thought it was going to be plastic. The table is all wood, and the wooden legs fit in the holes.

I was a little disappointed in the Lego trim on the table. It's paper and a bit cheap looking.

And the Legos are upside down.

And my sticker is peeled up.

But you do get quite a bunch of tiny Legos, including four coloured thingies that make up the table top.. 

I remember paying a lot for the little bag of tiny Legos I got at Disneyworld when we went in 2019. Of course, that was Disneyworld. Everything is more expensive there. 

  There are a lot of different colours, and they do hook together well.

 

  The set also comes with a piece that is supposed to act as a shoot to wipe the Legos off the table and into a container. I think it may also double as one of those things to separate your Legos.

In any case, it doesn't work for either, because the holes in the back where you fit it to the Lego bumps, are too small. You can't hook them together. 

  Now to our little model here. He has a sweet little face, and big brown eyes.

And painted hair with molded details.

He posed with a nice bee who was partaking of our blooming leeks.

He's a nice quality for the money. (He was $4.48.) 

He also posed with the tasteless wild strawberries that have proliferated in our yard, while the good ones, that I paid money for, died.

And he can do a lot of posing. He's jointed at the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles.

He's a whole six inches tall.

And his arms and legs can move outward, as well as back and forth.

His joints hold a pose tightly. 

He has no waist joint, but he can do drastic things, like touch his face, the side of his head, or his stomach. The  disappointment is that he can't tilt his head at all, only turn it.

His clothes are a little confusing. His shirt closes in the back with Velcro.

But it's the front of his shirt that's confusing. There's picture, and underneath the picture it says Shiba Inu. Okay. I looked it up. A shiba inu is a breed of dog. But under that, I swear it says, 'tagline goes here'!

  He has white plastic shoes that are molded to look like lace ups.

His shorts have elastic in the waist, but it looks like it might tear loose if his shorts are scooted on and off too much.

By the way, he even has a little belly button.

  I'm considering using my boot money to instead, buy clothes that will fit him, and also a naked, but shoed, doll his size that Ken bought me a while back. I tried to find that doll at the house last week, but I couldn't remember where I put him.

  So I am very happy with what I got from Temu this time. The boot being missing was a disappointment, but they quickly refunded my money. I still recommend Temu.

  See you tomorrow.