Doll-A-Day 2023 #173: Savannah Mini Pal

   Today's doll is the last one of the three I got from Emily at The Toybox Philosopher when she was selling her dolls  before moving. She's the Savannah Mini Pal from Maru and Friends.

She went to the beach on a dreary day. There was sunshine right before I tried to take her pictures, and then as I was taking them, there was a downpour and she had to duck back into her plastic bag and wait for a sunny day to finish her photo shoot.

  She doesn't have her box any more. That was so she could fit in the big box with big Savannah and my Zwergnase, but she has her certificate of authenticity.

  She is the tiny version of regular size Savannah.

She has the same fair complexion and freckles, and bright red hair.

 

The crack in my lens filter really shows up when I photograph too directly in the sunny direction. On this day it wasn't even sunny and the light still hit the crack in such a way that it left a blur through some of my pictures.

 

But not all of them, and some only faintly, like this one.

I need to remove it. It's only a clear filter, meant to protect the real lens. But it's screwed on so tight that I can't get it off. Ken says maybe we should risk it, and just break the glass out, but we're afraid of scratching the real lens. You know. The one that won't focus properly any more!

  Savannah is very pale. That's not unusual, since she's a red head. Ivy is probably at least this pale, if not more so. But if Savannah had been my mom's kid, she would have been told to "Get out and get some sun! You're pasty pale!", like I was told when I was a kid. And I spent all my time outside!

Mom never caught in to the idea that she had a red haired kid. I was most likely going to be pale. But then, she was also disappointed that I didn't have curly hair, and that I wasn't a boy. 

This was third grade. She tried to curl my hair until she gave up. My hair just wasn't having it.

There's no pleasing some people I guess.

  It was getting pretty windy too. This picture reminds me of one from our trip. (But you haven't seen that one yet.)

She looks so beachy, so I thought a picture at the beach would be perfect. It would have been if it had been sunny. which it couldn't stay long enough to get a sunny picture. There was just enough sun to make a glare in the lens crack.

I don't think I've told you how I cracked my lens yet either. That also has to do with our trip. Our cursed trip. I do intend to finish those posts, and now that I have my pictures back, and some things from the house that I bought on the trip, I can finish the trip posts.

This Savannah is one of the first Mini Pals, so she has the soft, squashy limbs. I don't think they use those at all these days. Her arms and legs are very soft and bendy, (without holding the bend.). The most recent ones have a firmer vinyl. When I tried to hold Savannah by just her arm, it bent and she couldn't stand up straight. You may have seen where I reviewed Chad, the first Maru and Friends boy. He was like this. Although the limbs are soft, and bend easily, the dolls still manage to stand okay. And their arms and legs can move outward. If you can balance them in a spread legged position, they can support themselves fine. 

She did need a prop to stand on this uneven ground. Unfortunately, you can spot it at this angle.

  They also have cute Dianna Effner faces and a really nice feature: They can tilt their heads side to side and up and down. This adds a lot to the moods you can get from them. 

  Since her first try at a photo shoot got rained out, Savannah tried again. It was the first day of the Air Quality Alert, but we did it anyway. I got a few dolls quickly photographed. Then we gave up.

   Savannah is wearing her original dress...

WHAT is in the sky?

...white undies, and shoes.

They match her dress.

They have a texture on the bottoms.

  She also originally had a hat. I swear I got the hat with her, but I must have left it in the box. Both attempts at her pictures were rushed due to environmental conditions of one kind or another.

  Our air is almost back to normal now. Give it another day or two and we should be at our usual numbers. On the day I took the second batch of pictures, Ken and I were out and about and got some lunch. The place we got it doesn't do dine in, and we went sort of across the street to the grocery store for drinks. I looked for a nice place to park and eat our lunch in the car-what I call a car picnic-  and behind the store was the most beautiful forest! The grass was mown on the slope up to a line of pine trees, and beyond that in a slight distance, was a wood. I took some pictures on the slope, and then climbed to the top of the slope to take the pictures you saw the last two days, of Hermione and Harry. That's when I found that there was a small soy bean field at the top, and at the back of that was the woods. It was a very small soy bean field. While I was sitting at the top of the slope, I heard a crash, and looked up to see two deer. They had just burst through the trees at the edge of the field, (thus the crash), and they ran along the edge of the field a short distance, and then popped into the woods again, their white tails flashing. With the overcast sunlight of the day, and all the greenery in an unexpected setting, all sort of hidden in a circle of trees, it looked sort of like a fantasy. There I was, sitting there with a camera in my hands, and all I thought of doing was getting Ken's attention so he could see the deer, which he surely couldn't have anyway, from his location in the car at the bottom of the slope. From there it was impossible to even see that there was a soy bean field. It was a beautiful sight though. I'm sure the camera couldn't have captured it anyway.

  That's today's doll. Don't forget to check out the Doll Book of the Month too.

Finally, Savannah!

   Okay. I know I still need to show you the stuff I got at the toy show, And the stuff I got at the doll show. But of course my computer has died again. My cursor stuck, and in the end all I could do was turn the computer off and try to restart it. Then it wouldn't come back on. That was at least a week ago, and I still can't get it back on. I need to leave it for about a week and then try. That seems to work. But I am impatient. So, no computer, plus I have been selling things, so there has been rooting round in boxes and tubs. I have also done some leaf raking, with some help from Fuzz. The leaf sucker truck came by today, so it's a good thing I had almost all my leaves down by the curb. My other big project has been trying to take advantage of the last warm days of the year, (It's been in the 70's the last few days!), to work on my windows. I have scraped off old paint, popped out old dry putty, reputtied and repainted. I've done both of the leaded glass windows in the living room, our big triple window in the dining room, (which I shouldn't have had to do because I just did it  couple of years ago, but there you are.), and one basement window. Fuzzy and Ken helped a bit. I've been having trouble with my hip, and pretty much the whole leg on my left side. I think I must have another pinched nerve. It doesn't seem to be the sciatica though, because this pain is down the outside of my hip and leg. My knee has been bad too. I have been limping around for weeks. Standing on the ladder aggravates the stiffness and pain, and I am a lot more paranoid about going up on high ladders than I used to be. (I used to climb the 16 foot ladder at work, carrying huge TVs, and lift them over my head to stack them 3 TVs high on the upper 'flex' above the shelves. There's no way I'd do that these days, even if I still could!) So Ken and Fuzz finished the scraping and painting of the very tops of the windows for me, and Ken caulked them. I still have one more basement window and the front porch window sill to do. If I had cooperating weather I would do the basement windows on the other side of the house. As for the upper windows, they desperately need redone, but there's no way I'm getting up there. I don't feel it's safe for Fuzz or Ken either. I'm considering just doing the bottom half of the window in Emma's old room from inside the house, if the weather holds out. The other thing I've been using days on is 'Fun Day'. Since our anniversary in September, Ken and I have been using at least one of his days off every week to go have a 'Fun Day'. Ken loves to travel, and he didn't get to go anywhere this year. I went all the way to Georgia, but Ken has been stuck here. So we just drive off, in a different direction each time, and stop somewhere pretty and have a car picnic, or get some take out or ice cream. We have eaten a few places that have an outdoor patio too. We started out enjoying the beautiful Fall colours in September. It really has been gorgeous in Ohio. 

A lot of the leaves are still hanging in there,(or rather, out there.) This was a few weeks ago.

One night we were leaving a state park after dark, after our car picnic, and we saw a fox, two female deer, and two stags. Another day we saw two buffaloes hanging out in a field with some cows. (They are not native to Ohio, so that was something special.) We have gone to some places on purpose, but some places we just ended up. 

Like Roscoe Village, where Ken hung out with a fake cow. We got there just as everything was closing up, but we did buy some cheese, for our next Fun Day car picnic, at this store.

  I also wanted to share this picture with you. It's a sign at a storage place. They change their sign every now and then. They haven't had this one up for a while. I've been wanting to catch it the next time they used it.

                                              Storage: Because your doll collection creeps people out.  

Now for my real reason for this post. Some of you may have seen recently that Emily from The Toybox Philosopher had popped up again. She was just letting everyone know that she was selling almost all her dolls in preparation for a move. I contacted Emily to ask about a few of my favourites of the dolls she had reviewed over the years. Some were already gone, but I was lucky enough to become the owner of three of the dolls I asked about. (Sort of...) Today we're going to see one of them. It's Savannah from Maru and Friends.

 I didn't want to do any sort of big post on her, because Emily has already done a very thorough review with lots of lovely pictures. I did want to have the chance to do some photos myself though, and show her to you all.

Unfortunately,the first time I tried to photograph her it was getting a bit dark by the time we stopped for our car picnic,  But we did see that fox and those deer on our way out!

    I believe Emily's review of this doll , six years ago, was my first introduction to the Maru and Friends line. It was definitely the first time I had seen Savannah, who is still my favourite. 

I loved this doll, whom Emily had photographed in a special hand knit sweater and matching hat that she ordered from Maru and Friends when she ordered the doll. Today, when I think of Savannah, I always picture her in that sweater. Lucky me, because Emily included the sweater with Savannah!   

  The sweater set actually came from Maru and Friends, but was made by NovoDesign. The sweaters were available in six colours/styles, and were hand knitted of baby mohair, by women in South Africa, as part of a 'special job creation program'. You can see the whole line of sweaters and matching hats,  (No longer available, from what I understand.), HERE. 

     She has one of those adorable Dianna Effner faces.

  Dianna Effner sculpted all the Maru and Friends dolls but one. I wonder who will sculpt the new dolls.

  And of course, she's a redhead. We have to stick together!

   As you can  see from the first two pictures, Savannah also brought her original outfit with her. The current version of Savannah has the same beige shirt and shorts with gingham accents and matching hat, beige knee socks with pink pom pom tassels,and brown boots. My Savannah is missing the tassels from her socks because Emily removed them because they clashed with the sweater. 

She borrowed Maru's skirt for the photos in the sweater.

She did send them though, in Savannah's purse.

   Speaking of that purse, what the current Savannah doesn't come with any more, is her brown faux leather purse. (I keep thinking it's a canteen, because it looks like one, and her original outfit looks like  an explorer outfit.)

 

 I'm so happy to finally own a Savannah. She's been on my list for several years now. 

Emily made her so affordable, and was so nice. I also love that I own the first Savannah I ever saw, the one that made me fall in love with the doll. Thanks Emily!

A Review of Maru and Friends Dolls---NOT!

 UPDATE: As of April 6th I have received Maru. Full review coming soon.(Thank you, Maritza.) I still don't know why I got no response at all from the company.The package was shipped a few days after this post appeared.I don't like to think Maritza felt blackmailed. I was only telling what happened to me.I told her when I would be giving up in case she wanted to respond, not to force her to do anything.

  Regular readers may know that I have had various Maru and Friends dolls, (Especially Savannah), on my Christmas list for the last two years.

Savannah

I love the faces on the Maru dolls.All of the dolls except one are sculpted by Dianna Effner, so they have those beautiful children's faces.

Maru

The one doll not sculpted by Effner is Valentina.

Valentina.She's supposed to be Maru's little sister, but she looks older and unrelated. 

 She's sculpted by Maya Bill. She's not as cute and sweet looking as the Effner sculpted dolls, but she has an interesting face, and I like her.
   I still don't own one of these dolls though, and now I may not. But I came very close recently.
  This SHOULD have been a review of a Maru and Friends doll. I recently decided to try to help keep the blog up to date and interesting by asking a variety of doll companies if they would be interested in providing products for review on the blog. One of the companies I contacted was Maru and Friends. I messaged them on their Facebook page.Less than 2 hours after messaging them I received this reply:

Welcome to the world of Maru. Yes... we would love to obtain a review from you. Send me all your contact information and I will get a doll right out to you. Thanks so much! maritza

  I was excited, So I immediately sent them my mailing address, offered to send them links to previous reviews, and told them that, if they were checking out the blog, my most recent post was not about dolls,due to my bird's death. And I waited for the doll to arrive.
  And I waited.By February 22  I still hadn't received anything.Did they need my blog stats? They hadn't asked for them, but when I had contacted A Girl For All Time for the same purpose I was asked for my blog stats.To make sure, I sent them this Facebook message:

Hi, Just following up on our last messages to see if there is anything else you need from me. If there is, please let me know. I'm looking forward to receiving your doll! Thanks again. Tammy

 I know that at some point I sent them an email through their website asking them to let me know when the doll had been shipped so I could watch for it's delivery, because we often get mail delivered to our side steps where we don't look for it. The steps are basically on the sidewalk, so anybody walking by could just carry a package off. In addition,if things get delivered there on a rainy day and we don't notice it,they can be damaged.(Like today when our photo book from Shutterfly got delivered out there in the rain.) No response to that either.
  By March 16th I had received neither a doll, nor a message from Maru and Friends on Facebook or by email. So I sent them one more Facebook message and one more message on their web page, both telling them that if I hadn't heard from them by March 30th, (A full two weeks after my previous message.), I would assume they were not sending a doll and I would post what should have been my review without the doll to review.
  At this point you may be thinking, 'they have every right not to send a doll', which is true.If they had never answered me at all, or if they had answered and declined to provide anything for review, I would have been fine with that.Even if they had contacted me and said they had checked out the blog and had changed their minds about sending a doll,I would have been a bit hurt and offended, but that would be their prerogative. But they committed to sending a doll. Then they reneged on their offer, and didn't even respond to messages. If this is what their communication is like,and if they don't carry through on their word, I'm not sure I'd even want to order a doll from them now, How are they on responding to customer problems or complaints? Do they ignore the messages, or do their message links just not work? Either way they aren't going to have very good customer service.
  And that's my story.Pretty disappointing, isn't it?