Never Look A Gift Baby Beans in the Mouth

  First of all, I put loads of new things on the sales page in the last couple of days Most of them are dolls you will have seen here on the blog. So, if something caught your eye in a post, and you thought,"I'd like to have that." Now's your chance. Check out the sales page and see if your favourite is there. You can find the link in the upper right of the page,or use THIS LINK.
  The title of this post is a reference to the old saying,"Never look a gift horse in the mouth." What does that mean? When someone is buying a horse,one of the things they do is look at the horse's teeth to see how old it is. (Don't ask me how you tell from the teeth. I don't remember.) So what the saying means is, if someone gives you a give, don't be picky,because it was free. The saying doesn't really have any meaning in this case, because I am in no way scrutinizing my gift. I just thought it was a cool title! Anyway! I received a nice surprise in the mail the other day. I got a little package from reader Treesa.
 

She even hand made the little notecard.

She gifted me,for no reason except that she knew I like baby beans dolls, with this tiny girl.

She's a Shoe Baby Beans doll .

She is specifically Ballerina Beans.

Strangely, she is not wearing ballet shoes.

Tutu though.

These dolls were made in 1978.

Don't mind my dirty fingernails. I've been cleaning stuff...well,you'll find out.

They came on a card, in a cardboard shoe. There were several different face sculpts used for the various Shoe baby beans dolls. There was one that looked like a mini version of the regular sized Baby Beans,one with a sort of puckered mouth, and this one's sculpt,which reminds me of the cute Honeyhill Bunch dolls. (You can see one of mine HERE. )

She's only about 4 inches tall.
  That was very nice of Treesa. I now have two 'pay it forward' doll gifts to repay to someone. The other was the wonderful gift I got from a Flickr friend last year. You may have seen that doll on her Doll-A-Day post HERE.
  My poor yard. I mowed my grass the other night,so that's good. On the other hand, all those flowers that were there last week are now gone! The only thing left of those is the yellow ones that might be weeds. They're still going strong. But, the iris' are gone, and a couple of days of rain after I photographed those blooming spirea bushes,(That's what they are! Thanks to reader Lady Anne for that ID!), I went out to find them turning brown. There were still some white flowers,but there were so many brown ones that it was no longer photogenic.
  The new blooms on the yard are my peonies. That bush is going crazy this year. 

It has never been so big. Between that and the yellow things,I still have quite a few flowers in the yard.

 

Yeah I know. Lots of tall grass too. But how do I cut so close to the yellow flowers without cutting them too? I probably did cut some of them.

The pear tree has baby pears.
 

Not that they'll make it to adulthood with the squirrels around.

My amaryllis are way behind,because they got sat out so late. 

The hostas won't be bloomed until later this summer. But the sweet peas have a good start.

Gotta do something about that mildew on the side of the house.

The Asian lily, or whatever it is,doesn't look like it's going anywhere this year, but we'll see. On the other hand: my roses! They have buds! 

I was afraid they were going nowhere this year,but we have buds!

 

I'm hoping they bloom before Emma's birthday,as they usually do, because she loves sugared rose petals. Often I make them and put them on her birthday cake,but this year she wants a Battenburg cake for her birthday.

This one isn't mine. This is what it's supposed to look like. I found this with a recipe online. Mine will hopefully look almost this good.

 I think she was inspired by the mini Battenburgs I made for her tea party a few years ago.
  As I said, I have been washing things. I'll explain that in an upcoming post.