More Cool Thrift Store Finds: Miss Ginger and Mattel Modern Furniture

  Happy Halloween!

  It's that time of year again. I'm once more locked in that struggle with the yard waste guys. I have been really good about getting my leaves raked this year. Since my shoulder has been so bad I knew I could never rake them all at once, so I have been raking them a little at a time. That means I have only spent about half an hour every Tuesday while I'm here alone because Ken's at work and Ivy's at play practice and stage crew, instead of a whole day spent breaking my back, (and my shoulder). So of course, I fill three cans with leaves and the branches Ken and I cut this week, and the yard waste guys don't come.I think they only come when they feel like it. I can't have my trash can tied up all winter, plus I still have two more piles of leaves in my yard. (I didn't dare load up all my leaves and fill all my trash cans, because the chance of the yard waste guys not coming was too great.) I didn't want to put all my leaves in the tree line, like they actually tell you you can do, because there have been too many years they never came and sucked them up. Then all my grass there dies, and the rotted leaves make the ground all lumpy and hard to mow with my little non-motorized mower.

  I am still pretty proud of the two Fall/Halloween photo stories I did a couple of years ago, so if you haven't seen them yet you can check them out
HERE

"The  World Family at the Pumpkin Patch"

and HERE

"The Halloween Party"

  I found some cool things at Salvation Army the other day. First was this Miss Ginger doll.

Miss Ginger was made by Cosmopolitan. There were other incarnations of Ginger,including a childlike doll that competed with Vogue's Ginny, a taller version of my doll that competed with Miss Revlon,and an 8" version called Little Miss Ginger, similar to Little Miss Nancy Ann. This version is 10 1/2" tall and premiered in 1957.  She's in pretty nice condition.She could do with restringing because she's a little loose, but at least she's still together.I'm not sure exactly what to do with her hair.Is it supposed to be one of those bun things?

Anybody know? I know there were Miss Ginger's with ponytails. But this isn't supposed to be a ponytail, is it? One thing's for sure: it's not meant to be worn down!

That's not a case of empty plugs. It's rooted that way. By the way, she's marked 'Ginger' on the back of her head, just below her hair.

Her dress is too big for her. I'm not sure if it's homemade.I love the belt. It's sewn on in the front, which is why it didn't get lost.I think these are her original shoes though.When I bought her she was only wearing one shoe. I'll tell you where the other shoe came from in a minute.

I also got a bag containing this Mattel Modern Furniture!

There is supposed to be a cushion in the chair.

This other unidentified piece was in the bag too.

The Mattel Modern Furniture is really hard to find and really expensive.

It was actually made a year before Barbie, in 1958.

It's hard to see, but that's a Mattel logo.

The boxes it originally came in said it was for dolls 10" to 10 1/2" tall, like Miss Ginger and Little Miss Revlon.

Miss Ginger and the Little Miss Revlon I found at Goodwill recently.

And it is perfectly sized for them. People still use it for Barbie though, and it works well for her too. It's popular with collectors, especially now that Mid Century design is having a resurgence.

The other Modern Furniture included a couple of different styles of couch, lamps, a stereo cabinet/credenza, dining table and chairs,a bedroom set with bed, clothes rack,and dresser with mirror.

And where did I get the other shoe for Miss Ginger? It was in the middle drawer of this piece of furniture!

 Along with the little plastic guy, who was obviously originally driving something.

His steering wheel was in the drawer too. Must have been some accident.

  So this must have been Miss Ginger's furniture. I went back yesterday to see if any more of the furniture had shown up. If it had it had sold the day before,when I didn't go back. I'm wondering if the Little Miss Revlon and Barbie and Midge I found at Goodwill the last couple of weeks are another case of someone donating half their stuff to Goodwill and half to Salvation Army. That has very obviously happened before. (Like with the zillion Crissy dolls both had at the same time.)

52 in this Goodwill batch. Salvation Army had 42.

You can read the posts about that HERE and HERE.

  I hope everybody has a safe and fun Halloween.This is the first year I have been in the position of handing out candy on Halloween, with no kids Trick or Treating, and I totally didn't think about it until the Trick or Treaters went by! Now I feel guilty! Next year I'll be ready. It's hard getting out of the idea, 'I won't be home on Halloween. I'll be out taking the kids Trick or Treating.' Sniff!

More Recent Acquisitions: Little Miss Revlon

    The girls went off today to get haircuts before we go on our trip. Ivy had about a foot of hair cut off! I hated to see it go, but it's her hair. Besides, it will grow back.
  Ken and I headed out of town to a small town nearby that was having it's "Corn Festival". Ken loves corn and spends his life in an eternal search for yellow corn, since, around here at least, we are told 'everybody' wants white corn these days. (Well, it was white corn a couple of years ago. Now we're being told that 'everybody' prefers bicolor corn. I think 'everybody prefers' whatever they're trying to sell at the time. They like to push the white or bicolor corn because they can get 2 or  3 harvests of it a season, compared to one harvest of yellow corn, since yellow takes longer to ripen.)
  Well, it was the most corn-free corn festival you could imagine.To paraphrase a Monty Python sketch, it was certainly uncontaminated by corn. To quote my dad, it was "the nighest no-festival I ever did see". There was roasted corn, which was white corn, and that was the only corn there. There wasn't even anything else made of corn. Just so he could say he'd had something with corn Ken and I went in a little folksy restaurant downtown where he got a bowl of corn chowder. It did have yellow corn in it, even if it did most certainly come out of a can. At least I do have several ears growing on the corn I planted for Ken this year.
  I want to welcome our latest follower, To TylkoJa. (I hope I got that right!) She has several blogs, which you can check out by clicking on her name in the followers list.
  Well, I haven't had much luck at Salvation Army for a while, but I spotted this Little Miss Revlon there  recently.

She's in her original box...

...and has her booklet.

I'll show you more of the booklet in a minute.

Her outfit is called Gay Stripe Dress (9121) I believe. There were apparently several variations of the fabric for this dress, but I'm pretty sure this is it.

Here it is in her booklet:

She's wearing a pair of clone shoes I think. They are way softer than the white shoes in the box, which I think are her originals. There is also another clone pair in the box.

She has her Miss Revlon purse too.

Someone had the forethought to stuff it with tissue paper to prevent it splitting.

She has beautiful blonde hair.

She does have some green ear.

She has another, bigger problem as well...

She needs restrung. That's not a big problem though. My friend Connie does alot of doll restringing and has kindly offered to restring Little Miss Revlon.
Also in the box was this doll sized glove.

The strange thing is, I got another single glove like this at a doll auction a couple of years ago! Ivy recognized it immediately when I showed it to her, and she was as excited as I was. It's so cute!
  For those of you interested in Little Miss Revlon and her fashions, here's the rest of the booklet.

 And here's the back cover:

  We'll be going to England soon, but I have a few more posts ready and in the plans for before we go.