Merry Christmas! And the Sum Total of my Childhood Christmas Pictures

  Some of you may have been wondering why I did five posts on my friend Lori's Christmas pictures. Well, to be honest, she got so much great stuff,and also,there are very few pictures of my childhood Christmases. Apparently my mom only took Christmas pictures on two or three Christmases. Most of those were posed pictures taken after all the presents were opened.  The other thing is, you will have seen the ones with toys in them in previous posts. However, I'm going to go ahead and show you the sum total of all my childhood Christmas pictures. There  aren't many.
  We'll start with Christmas of 1964. I was nearly three at the time, since my birthday is at the beginning of March.
  I'm guessing this is Christmas eve. There are no opened presents under the tree, and our hair isn't curled. Mom used to curl our hair Christmas eve so we had curly hair on Christmas. She was always disappointed that she didn't have curly haired children.

Me on the left. There is one of our inflatable reindeer. It looks to be Rudolph.  My sister and I both had a reindeer. Mom made us pretend to be looking up the cardboard fireplace for Santa Claus. As young as we were we protested because we thought it was stupid to look up a cardboard fireplace for Santa. It didn't even go anywhere!

Christmas morning,1965. My sister got Barbie's New Dreamhouse,(on the left),and I got a set of metal kitchen appliances. I wore the washing machine out. It really agitated and had a hose to drain the water out. There was also a sink, stove, and a refrigerator, plus an extra piece that must be just a cupboard. I remember the fridge and the washing machine best.
 

Plus I think the thing laying on the shelf to the right of my butt is a little wooden rolling pin. I know I have one, but I don't remember if it came with this stuff or something else.

  I also got a set of pink plastic cups with a matching coffee pot, and white dishes, with white cutlery. The pink box in the foreground had my Tiny Thumbelina in it. I don't see her anywhere. She was my second Thumbelina. I had had a white haired one before, one of the larger ones I think. Mom threw her away. I don't remember why. I do remember her laying on top of the trash pile in the woods, where we had to put things that didn't burn because there was no trash pick up in the country in those days. I do remember begging Mom to get her down. Gee, this is getting sad! Moving on! I did get another Thumbelina, my Newborn Thumbelina, which I did a post on HERE. I still have both of the last two. Thumb's pink box was used to keep those dishes in way into the 70's. 
  Ok. Wait a minute. Our hair is curled here! These pictures are print dated March and May of 1965,meaning they were all taken the Christmas before. Maybe some are from a different Christmas and it took Mom a whole year to get them developed? We look the same size though.

This is obviously after the present opening because of the loose paper under the tree. My sister and I had matching sweaters in green and blue. Mom only wore that sweater on Christmas, and still had it when she passed away in 1986.

Here are my sister, and me, with our hair still curled. I'm holding the Christmas elf, or pixie as we called them then, which my sister got me for Christmas that year. He was one of my favourite toys and I played with him a lot. I still have him, and he got his own post HERE.

Here we are in my sister's room.

If you look closely, you'll see that I have Pixie tucked down beside me in the chair. That's my sister's Miss Revlon or maybe a clone doll. She does still have her. The chicken in the basket was actually a pot holder, made by our Grama I think. I have a green one. I didn't realize they were potholders until my sister told me recently! My mom had the red chair reupholstered one year and gave it to my sister's daughter for Christmas. I don't think they still have it though. I do still have the toy phone on my sister's dressser.
  Ok,I think I solved this mystery. Here's another picture of us in my sister's room. I know we got the giant dogs for Easter. (Mine is blue.) Maybe this one is Easter? That would account for the date on the pictures. But I still have Pixie with me. The weird thing is, if this is the same day as the picture above, why did my sister bother to move the phone from the dresser to the bedside table. Wow! Were there originally two of those?  I only remember there being one, and there's only one now. It does have the remain of a battery compartment and some wiring though, so maybe there were two and you could talk to each other?

  That bed had metal head and foot boards and when you accidentally hit your head on the headboard it sounded like a gong. (Trust me.) My mom later revarnished the night stand, which was originally one side of a vanity,(Thus there are two of those nightstands. She cut the middle section out so she could have night stands.) I still use them by my bed.
  I remember this picture being taken. It's Christmas evening. Dad had just arrived. There's Pixie on my lap again. I seem to have been playing with my Tonka camper and the plastic farm animals when Dad got there. Still have both of those too. I always loved that camper because the windows slid open and the door really opened and you could put toys in it.

Here we are the next year in our next house. I loved this place. It's my favourite place I have ever lived. Our hair is in curlers in preparation for Christmas morning. That's why we have things on our heads. Mine is a hand me down nightcap. It is white, with small red stars. I still have it, and my kids occasionally wore it too.

My mom wanted a fireplace so badly, that one year she left this cardboard one up all year! It had an electric light behind the cardboard fire, with a metal wheel that sat on top of the bulb. The warmth from the light made the wheel spin, which was supposed to give the effect of flickering fire light. The light and wheel are the only parts of the fireplace left, and are in my attic somewhere, as is the spinning wheel planter on the mantel. My kids sang Christmas carols from that carol book my sister is holding. That's my bald baby picture on the wall behind the tree.
  Ok! Christmas morning. I'm working on getting into my new doctor's kit, probably to eat the candy pills! Those were a really bad idea and aren't made these days. I got a metal ironing board, a metal wash tub, a metal and wooden wash board, (because I am THAT OLD!),wooden clothes pins, and an umbrella style clothes line. I have said this before, but my sister took it apart and stole the bits that held the line up to turn into finger cymbals. Say, why did I need the washboard and stuff when I got a washing machine the year before?

You will have recently seen this picture in my post on the Barbie Suzy Goose Regal Bed. (If not, you can see it HERE.) That's it there in the middle of the floor. That's Tearie Dearie by Ideal laying on the bed. Her pink cradle/bath tub is in the left foreground. And that's my  great Remco Tiger Cat jeep. I played that to death. I still have the doctor kit and the contents,(except for the candy pills!),the Regal bed, Tearie Dearie and her cradle.my clothes pins and washboard, and the radiator from my jeep! You can't see them here, but I got clothes for Tearie Dearie too, as well as a little white haired doll and some clothes for her. 

 I'm holding the white haired doll. I think she was a cheap generic doll. Notice all the shipping boxes. I think Mom did most of her shopping by catalog. I know that's how we picked out what we wanted. In fact, before I could write I used to just cut out the pictures of what I wanted from the catalog and glue them to a piece of paper. As you can see, my sister got a red doctor kit just like mine. Later I used it as a case for my Sesame Street finger puppets. I don't think they're still in there though, because Emma used to play with them when she was little. The guitar next to my sister was something I think Mom really wanted for herself. She's the one who played it most. She always wanted to play guitar, so she bought one for my sister! She taught herself to play "Uncloudy Day", which she would play standing on the register,(heating vent), for the acoustics! When I was about 9 she kept asking me, "Wouldn't you like to have one of those little organs?" This was when the small electric 'chord organs' were popular. I kept hemming and hawing, until I realized she wanted it. Mom and Dad never got presents from anybody except me and my sister, and we bought those at the Five and Ten or made them. So I told her yes. We both played it until it wore out.    
White haired girl can be seen in Tearie Dearie's bed with her in the picture below.

  Emma played with the white haired doll for a while when she was little, but the doll had gotten brittle with age and her legs fell off! Side note: See that multiple corner on the wall by the telephone niche? One day I woke up from my nap to find that my sister was already home from school and was in the kitchen,(The room beyond the corners). I was so excited that I jumped off the couch, which was sort of the direction this photo was taken from, and went running for the kitchen, calling her name. Well you might notice that the rug stops just at the corner of this chair. After that there was wood floor, and then a section of linoleum that was printed with small bricks. The linoleum continued on into the kitchen. I did not take naps in my shoes, therefore I was only wearing socks. I think you can see where this is going. Once I ran out of carpet and hit the linoleum, my butt hit the floor and I slid on it straight into that multiple corner, which I hit with my head. The walls were plaster, but I swear those edges were steel enforced. I have an invisible dent in my forehead I can feel to this day, that I'm sure is because of that corner. Second side note: That's the recliner I hid behind when Chris Jennings turned into a werewolf on "Dark Shadows".
  Here's a rarity. It's a picture of my mom and dad on Christmas.

That flowered couch actually has a cover on it. When a spot would wear out, my mom,  grew up during the depression, would snip a piece of fabric from the back of the cover, neatly patch that hole with a piece of plain green fabric, and use the piece she had cut out to patch the front!
  Below is another picture of my sister with me. It's another of Mom's posing ideas. We're supposed to be reading a Christmas book or singing carols or something. This may actually be after Christmas, when mom left the fireplace up all year. Notice my clown slippers. I think I only had one pair like that, but I had two or three pairs with duck heads on them, and one pair with white kitten heads. I don't know for sure about the duck heads, but I know for certain I still have the kitten heads off of those! I was always a sentimental pack rat, even as a kid. As proof of that fact, I'll tell you this story. During first grade I used an old lunch box of my sister's. On the last day of school, instead of me riding the bus home, Dad picked me up, which became a tradition. Part of the way home I realized I had left my lunch box behind. I insisted we go back to get it. Dad said not to worry about it, that he'd just buy me a new one for the next year. But, at seven years old, I was thinking, "But that was my first lunch box! I want to keep it!" When I just kept on Dad went back and we got it. These days I use that metal 'states of the U.S.A.' lunchbox to store family mementos, like my grandfather's pocket watch, one of my dad's dog tags, and my grandmother's locket.

My mom made the magazine rack to my right. She kept looking at the 'baby cradle book rack' in the catalog and wanted one really badly. Finally she decided to make herself one. She drew a template and cut out the pieces, sanded them, and put it together. This is before she stained it. It's dark brown now, and at the moment has records in it.

  Here were are on Christmas,1968. That's my Newborn Thumbelina In my hand. I saw her in the store and wanted her so much. You can see my post on her HERE. She was made by Ideal. She has a pullstring which activates movement that was supposed to look like she was squirming like a real baby.

 
  And that's the last of my childhood Christmas photographs.  Everybody have a good Christmas, or whatever it is you celebrate. See you soon.

The Most Unbelieveable Deal: Barbie's New Dream House

    Ok.A couple of Fridays ago I dropped Ken off at work and headed to check out the thrift stores, which are on that side of town. I went to our local Salvation Army, which is both a donation center and a store. They have had some great vintage dolls this summer, so I'm prepared for almost anything lately, but not what I found that day. I found a couple of dolls, but nothing too amazing. I came out and was putting my bag in the van, when I looked over to the front of the store where the donation door is. I got really excited because I saw what I knew was a vintage cardboard Barbie structure in a box. I just couldn't tell which one it was. I went up to have a look and freaked. It was Barbie's second house, the New Dream House.

Barbie's New Dream House from 1964. The rooms could be configured in different ways.

We had one of these as a kid. Well, I say 'we'. My sister got it for Christmas one year.

My sister and her New Dream House on the left. I'm on the right, and much more concerned with that new washing machine.I've already opened my new dish set, (in the foreground), and obviously my Tiny Thumbelina, because that's her pink box next to the dishes. Into the '70s the dishes were kept in that Thumbelina box.

  I loved it. We didn't get to play with it much though. Our mom was obsessed with a clean house,and she considered The Dream House a mess waiting to happen.It spent most of it's life in a closet, and we weren't very often allowed to "have that thing spread out all over the floor."   She lived in constant fear of "What if somebody was to come" and find our house a mess. Having "that thing spread out all over the floor" constituted a mess. (As did blanket houses, and most other forms of play. This is why we mostly played in our rooms or outside. Other than a tiny table and chair against the wall between the living room and "the good room", no one entering the downstairs of our house would have had any clue that children even lived there.) Did I mention that we lived in the middle of nowhere, the nearest neighbors at least a mile down the road in either direction, and nobody ever came? 
  When we got older my sister gave me the house. She forgot about that when we grew up though, and gave it to her first husbands nieces. So it was long gone and I really wanted to replace it. I finally got one off 'an auction site' ast year, and it only has a couple of problems. (You can see it in my post from last October,More Amazing Barbie Stuff Today.)
  I couldn't tell how bad the house at Salvation Army was because it was all apart and piled in a box.I went in right away to ask the clerk if someone was there who could put a price on it for me. She said nobody would be there who could do that until Monday.Of course, this was Salvation Army, so there was always the danger of them pricing it by taping a big tag to it, (And it's cardboard, so we all know what that means, right boys and girls?), or writing the price on it with their stupid black crayon pencil.I then asked if I could go out and take a look at it to see if it was even worth bothering with. She said sure, so I headed out. I stuck my head in the donation loading doorway to tell them what I was up to.I started to look through the box. It was in pieces and has a bit of wear to it.I started taking the bits out to see if I could tell if it was all there. I noticed the patio door was there, and the paper rug. Pretty soon the guy who takes in the donations came out to get to work. He asked me what the thing in the box even was, because it was in so many pieces he couldn't tell. (And he is young, so he had never seen a cardboard doll house before!) I explained that it was a house. He said, "The worst pieces are in the bottom." He said he thought it was a piece of junk. He then said, "Just take it. I was gonna throw it away." I told him I couldn't do that. He said,"Yeah. People do it all the time." (Take stuff they've thrown away, that is.) I still said I couldn't do that because it would be stealing. He kept saying, "Seriously. I'm going to throw it away. It's trash." Finally he said, "I tell you what. I'll put 10 cents on it and I'll take it up front for you." I could tell he really was going to throw it away if I didn't take it, because he didn't want to mess with it. (And I don't think he wanted me spreading the bits out all over the sidewalk to figure out what was there.) In that condition it wasn't sellable really, and he didn't know what to do with it. So I said ok. I went in and told the clerk. When he brought it up he said he had put 20 cents on it.What do you think I said? "Oh! Well you said 10 cents! Forget it!" Yeah right! The clerk looked at it and said, "That's junk. I'm not gonna charge you 20 cents. I'm charging you 10. Actually, it has to end in 9, so I'm charging you 9." It was 10 cents after tax!
  So I'm reeling. I can't get home fast enough. I'm dying to see if this thing will go back together. I'm also dying to see what all is in the bottom of the box to see if the two things I'm missing from my Dream House are down there. (I'm missing the living room lamp and the tv screen with the Larry the Lion Animal Yakker picture on it.)

So I got it home and started trying to get it back together. When I finished it looked like this:

It's all there! The house that is. The ironic thing? This house is missing the exact same two pieces as my house!! Man!

It has all the furniture and everything except that living room lamp and that one tv screen! What are the odds of that?!

The sliding patio door! My favourite part!

 The second house is way harder to find than the first one. You can hardly give the first one away, while the second one commands a high price. One reason is that the second one is so much cooler than the first one. You can watch the commercial for this Dreamhouse HERE. The first Barbie house is just one room. The second house is cleverly designed so that you can rearrange the rooms.

You can see my other New Dreamhouse HERE,and the Dream Kitchen and Dinette HERE. There's a weird connection between this house and the Kitchen and dinette I got!

There's a bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, and a patio, with built in grill and fold up hedges.There's a closet, kitchen cupboards,and an oven, that all open. And best of all, there's that sliding patio door. That was always my favourite part.When we made Emma a doll house I made sure that one of the things it had was a sliding patio door!

The price the kid wrote on the box.

And my final price!

I'm still trying to figure out how I can fix my house's bad flap with this house.The problem? My house has a bad flap on the bedroom side, and this house has a bad flap on the patio side: same piece of cardboard!

 
  The house also contained these two pieces of vintage Barbie clothing:

And some nice homemade clothes:

I love the things you find in old toys like this. Years ago the kid  who owned this house made a mailbox for it's little inhabitants:

I was wondering aloud what the pill bottle was for. Before I could say it Ivy said it for me: maybe it's the newspaper box.

They also made this wedding invitation:

Barbra, 'Mardge', and Scooter McDorm are invited to...

 "You are invited to our wedding tomorrow at 6:30 pm. Sincerly, Barbie and Don" 'Don'? Who's Don?

That has to be my best find this summer! I had to share it, since no one around here was very excited!
UPDATE: In fact, I was missing TWO tv screens, so I did get one of the ones I was missing from this house. Just not the Larry the Lion one! I also have a Beatles card taped to the screen I had, so I added the non Beatles card one from this house to my house.(Kept the Beatles one though!)