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.

Doll-A-Day 2017 #361: Holiday Elves

  Here we are, counting down  the days to the new year. Today we're counting down with these guys.

This bunch of elves, or pixies,are in coordinating green and white stripes.

The two have the exact same faces as a pair I have from my childhood.

This one is counting the hours!

I have to admit,in spite of his seeming lack of eyes,this one is my favourite of the group.

He was made in Japan.

This little guy isn't as showy as the others, but he is cute. I have a weakness for elves though.

This pair have the most personality of the bunch.

I won't be long until New Year's Eve. Hopefully I'll have something interesting to show you before then. It has been so cold the last week that I haven't been wanting to take photos outside. It was 2 degrees today,and that's Fahrenheit!

One last photo of these guys,and we're out of here for today.

  Tomorrow will be another doll. I did get a couple for Christmas.

Doll-A-Day 2017 #106: Pink Bunny Pose Doll,Knee Hugger Bunnies, and Happy Easter!

  Happy Easter! Today's doll is this sweet little pink bunny.

She's a Japanese Pose Doll.

She has a loop on her head that would lead one to believe she is for hanging.

I don't think she was really meant to be made to sit though. I think I broke one of her legs. I guess she is to be hung, not sat. That's not very 'posable'.

She measures about 7" tall.

She was in beautiful mint condition when I got her. Then Fuzzy's cats knocked the box she was in down the basement stairs and trampled her in the dust and cat hair.

Still, she survived and cleaned up pretty well.

Pose dolls were very popular in the 60's.I'm guessing that's when this girl is from.

The Easter egg she's posing with is much older. It's probably early 1900's.

This is either really sweet because they're guarding her while she sleeps, or really creepy because they killed her...

 She has a sticker on her back that says 'Napco'. Napco made loads of ceramics in the '60's.

I think that little white thing is where she used to have a tail.

Her friends are bunny versions of the typical knee hugger Christmas elf/pixie,from around the same era as the pose doll.

They have the usual faces and bodies of those Christmas elf/pixie dolls. In fact, I have bunches of the elf versions, but these are the only bunnies I've ever seen.

They're called knee huggers for obvious reasons. These days the most famous knee hugger is The Elf on the Shelf.
They each have a little sticker on their back that says Made in Hong Kong.

As you can see around their collars and their armpits,they are very faded.

See you tomorrow for another doll.

Doll-A-Day 20,and The Dolls of Our Lives...(Well, mine anyway.)

  This is another combined post: Doll-A-Day, and my childhood Barbie dolls. It kind of runs together anyway, although you may wonder what today's doll has to do with Barbie dolls. The doll today is this elf doll I got when I was almost three. I've had him longer than any other doll I still own.

Unless you count this guy.

He's just a little rubber guy with a squeaker---that no longer works---in the bottom.

"Little Friend Bear" was bought for me by my sister when I was born, so he's around the same age as me. He was possibly sitting around in the store for a while, so he may be older than I am. Wow. That's old.
  When I was a baby I liked chewing on him.

What's that? You say you bought this for me? Nnuummmm...

  I really liked chewing on him.

Yeah, hold that thought Grama.I just have to...ummm nnmmm...

No, I mean I REALLY liked chewing on him.

Geez, I'm really getting into it here.

    But I guess he's not actually a 'doll', so we'll use this guy. He was given to me one Christmas by,again,my sister. (Didn't realize she figured so prominently in this doll thing.) He's one of those old fashioned Christmas elves, like The Elf on the Shelf. His name is Pixie Brennan. 

"They could have used me." "Save it kid. Your time will come."

 He's what's referred to as a Knee Hugger Elf, because they always have their legs drawn up and their arms around them. His hands would have been sewn together originally, so he could hold his knees. As you can see in the photo below, they were sewn together. Undoubtedly my sister cut them apart for me. She was very big on giving the toys 'freedom'. That's why a lot of our plastic farm animals were cut off their stands and consequently couldn't stand up. Ah, 'What price freedom?'

It says May 1965, but I think this is probably Christmas, 1964. That means I got him when I was just short of three years old.By the way, that's a Sheri Lewis Golden Book under the TV.Still have that too.

Me and Pixie hanging out in my sister's room. Pixie and the Golden Book aren't the only things I still have. I still have that toy phone and I still use that bedside table.

     I played with Pixie a lot, as you can see from his current pictures.And that white thing is not underwear. It serves the same purpose as the striped bandage on his leg, (And the scotch tape on his toe.): It's covering holes.

How about a little cheesecake?

He's a bit worse for wear, but I wouldn't take anything for him. 
 

Pixie, secure in his place in my life.

He traveled with me. On one trip to Grama's she made him a hat and a pair of pajamas.

I don't know why they're both pink. Maybe Grama thought he was a girl.

  The hat was easy to get on and off. 

Not so the pajamas. Those things were like a second skin.
  Pixie is about a foot tall when he's all stretched out.He has no maker's mark on him. He probably had one of those little paper stickers that was lost ages ago. He is just a cheap dime store elf, something my sister could have afforded to buy me when she was 8 years old.And what does he have to do with Barbie dolls? Well...
  
As a kid I owned one Barbie and one Ken. 

The only real Ken clothing I own is Night Scene, which is actually for the Mod Era Ken body, but it fits this guy too.He just decided to dress down today. My Barbie is wearing my only real Barbie fashion, Dancing Stripes, which is also Mod Era. There's a reason for her wig. Read on...

Don't get too chummy Ken. She's married you know.

  The opinion seemed to be that I didn't need any more dolls since I had my sister's dolls to play with. My sister had a Polly,(All that remains is her head. She fell apart and her head was bequeathed to a headless doll purse...purse doll.), a Fashion Queen Barbie, a crew cut Ken, a Midge,a Francie, Glamour Misty, Tressy, and the twin blonde swirl Barbie to mine. I can remember the day our dad brought those swirls home from work with him. They were our birthday presents and I got to see them first because my sister was at school. (She is six years older than I am but our birthdays are 9 days apart.) The thing I didn't get to do first was name her. Being the older sibling my sister had dibs on all the doll names. Thus, she had GI Joe and I had GI John. She had Penny Brite and I had Penelope. She had Barbie, and I had....Barbita? (Pronounce Bar-bee-ta.) Pretty awful, but I was only 4 or 5.  My Ken somehow managed to sneak in as 'Ken'. Probably because my sister's dolls suffered from some sort of identity problem. They weren't always the same 'people'. Her GI Joe was sometimes Joe, married to Fashion Queen and sitting around the Dreamhouse in his underwear. Sorry, HER underwear. (Our dad didn't sit around the house in his underwear---or Mom's, thank goodness, and in the era of Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver, who knows where she got the idea that guys did that.) But sometimes Joe wore Fashion Queen's brunette page boy wig and was Sonny to Francie's Cher. Of course, Francie wasn't always Francie either. Sometimes she was Cher, and sometimes she was 'That Girl' Marlo Thomas and Ken was her boyfriend 'Donald'.  I may have been boring and had dolls that knew who they were and who they were married to, but then I grew up and married ONE guy. Nuff said. 
  Barbita was married to Pixie Brennan,who was the Richest Man in  the World, but also,sadly, a vinegar-aholic.Talk about pickling your insides. (I guess the miniature gallon jug of vinegar was the only thing I could get out of the 'gumball' machine, and it had to belong to somebody.) I think they must have been my childhood equivalent of my 'World family'.(The dolls in my photo stories,who have a million kids.) Practically every kid doll I got became their adopted child. They have a very big family.

The happy couple. "Is that vinegar I smell on your breath?"

  My sister's swirl Barbie  was, like Mary Poppins,"Practically perfect in every way". Barbita on the other hand... Suffice to say that the swirl hairdo was not the easiest to maintain for a young child. For one thing, it wasn't long before that swoop of bangs started to stray. The more I tried to push it into place, the worse it got. Then there was that ponytail and the smooth sides. Once they got snagged there was no way to fix it without taking the whole thing down. For one thing, I'm not sure that occurred to me. For another, that rubber band got all tangled up in the hair.  What did occur to me was that the hair needed to be held in place, and hey, wasn't that what glue was for? That didn't work for very long though, and soon more glue was needed. Eventually poor Barbita's head was a mass of snarled hair and glue. My sister, ever willing to help (and find any excuse to use those little razor blades that came in the pencil sharpener), shaved Barbita's head for me. The up side was, she could now wear those cool Fashion Queen wigs I coveted so much. The down side was, my sister still needed some practice with the razor blade before she could shave a head without taking off the tops of ears and the tips of noses with the hair. It wasn't too bad, and not noticeable from a distance, but how could she shave off the ears and still leave so much hair stubble on the head? (I think I have figured that out now. The same way years later she could convince me to buy a pair of pants by saying,"They make you look skinny.", and then after I've bought them and am wearing them in public, say, "Those pants make you look huge.") Barbita won out in the end though. She still looks great in a wig. But Barbie... She spent some time in the attic and came back out into the light of day a bit worse for the wear. But her right eyelash and chin were delicious. (I assume. I didn't eat them myself.) Ironically, that hair? Still perfect.

Hi Barbita. Nice "hair".

   

Well thanks Barbie. I was afraid the colour was a little too...'mousey'... 

Barbie: Sob! Barbita: Yesss! 

I can't bear it!

I touched up the colour on the eyelash, but there's not much I can do about the chin.

The irony of it all. By the way, she's wearing a clone dress that originally had a bolero jacket that matched the skirt part. That must have gone with the Dreamhouse and Fashion Queen.You'll understand if you keep reading.(I wonder about FQ. The only other things missing are another bolero jacket and a faux leather skirt.Not much of a wardrobe.)

My Ken is a Bendleg kind of guy. He has a brunette crew cut and blushy cheeks. 

I vaguely remember holding him in a car in my Mammaw's driveway, so I may have gotten him on vacation.(The only time we ever went to see my Grandmas was once every summer.We always got spending money before we went on vacation, with which I always bought at least one toy.  I always remembered him as wearing a short blue jacket, and yet I don't remember every seeing it again, and we had TWO red and white striped Ken beach jackets. Years later,as an adult who was starting to learn about Barbie and Family I found that Bendleg Ken did indeed come in a short blue jacket. So what happened to the jacket? I think I have that figured out too. My sister always hounded me until she got her way. (Both I, and later one of my kids, bought a blue haired troll to replace the one that my sister hounded me into trading to an anonymous (to me) schoolfriend of hers for an ugly purple and white striped haired troll.) She may have done the same with the jacket and I don't remember it,or she may have just stolen it. As an adult she admitted to stealing Barbie clothes from our cousin Sis. She who steal's Sis's Barbie underwear is not above sneaking her sister's Ken jacket.
  A (very) few years later when my sister outgrew her dolls, (She never was much for playing anyway.), she gave them all to me, along with the Dreamhouse. A few years after that she conveniently forgot she had given them to me and got them out of storage in Mom's attic and gave the Dreamhouse and Fashion Queen to her first husband's nieces. Another few years and she gave the others to her daughter. (Ok, that one I can see. I let my first daughter play with my Ken too. For about a day, until I found out that at the time he was worth about $200.That was a while back!) However, at one point Unsentimental Niece decided to sell them at her yard sale. I happened to arrive for a visit the evening of the first day of her sale. Somehow they hadn't all sold. Ken though, went the way of the yard sale for $2. (Why had I gone to all the trouble of dividing our dolls when I took mine? Why did I think she would want them back? I could have just walked off with everybody but the long gone Fashion Queen. But no. I'm nice.)I managed to talk my sister out of allowing Francie to be sold because she was worth something. How stupid am I? I should have just bought Francie for what the kid was asking. (But then, remember, I'm nice.) So then my sister had me sell Francie for her. She also sent along Misty and Tressy. I knew there was no way I could tell her Francie went for $5 and just give her the five. Like an idiot I had told her how much Francie might sell for and it was more than I could afford for a doll. So I watched a stranger walk away with Francie and my sister was $45 richer. Misty and Tressy were a different matter. They weren't worth much and eventually my sister had me sell some other dolls a friend had given her daughter when she was little and with  the money passing to her, Misty and Tressy got lost in the mists of time. (I always loved Misty, with her realistic and graceful hands. Tressy is still wearing a necklace my sister made for her/me when I was little.)

Tressy and Misty hang out with Barbita. My sister made the necklace and the dress on Tressy. The satin dress Misty is wearing came from a garage sale, but is old. Home made? Does anybody know? Misty's soft rubber arms allow her graceful hands to be lifted to her face, although she doesn't hold a pose with them.

My GI John was married to my sister's Midge. 
 

John definitely has problems. (Or maybe he just lost his castanets.) One wonders what Midge sees in him. From the look on her face, maybe she wonders too.

They both had red hair (It wasn't my fault. My sister had dibs on the brunette guy too.), like me.Unfortunately, red haired John always looked sort of  droopy eyed and not all there. This impression was intensified by the fact that, as the younger sister, I wasn't very good at keeping my dolls 'nice' either. My sister's Joe always came out of storage looking straightened out and quite normal. My John always seemed to look as if he were trying to scratch some unattainable itch. And fell asleep doing so.My sister tried to perk him up for me by shaving off part of his droopy eyelids with her ever present pencil sharpener razor blade.

It didn't help.

    At this point you may be asking yourself, what happened to Midge? Did Midge get sold too? Can John function alone? Well, Midge was saved, oddly enough, by my sister. Not intentionally, but still. Once,when I was about 6 or 7, (after my sister had given Midge to me), I  had a really bad cold. I was lying miserably on the couch one evening watching Dragnet. My sister had been upstairs for a considerable time.Hmmm. What was she doing? Finally she came down, extremely pleased with herself. She was toting Midge. Or, should I say, the FORMER Midge. The ex-Miss Hadley/Mrs. GI John. My sister proudly proceeded to explain how she had "Made Midge Chinese!"  This was accomplished by cutting Midge's flip into a pixie cut, popping a brunette Fashion Queen wig on her, removing her freckles and most of her lip paint (That part may not have been intentional.), and changing her skin tone with a coloured pencil (These were the politically incorrect days of the 60's, and we were Ohio farm girls who had never seen an Asian person in real life and only had a black and white tv.) I couldn't believe it. "But you gave Midge to me!!" I don't remember what immediately followed, but I know I spent considerable time and cleanser trying to turn Midge back into her old self. In the end she looked a little washed out, but nearly like her old self with the addition of Fashion Queen's red flip wig. Of course, the wig went with Fashion Queen and the Dreamhouse when they were given away. But still, she looked so awful nobody else wanted her or thought she was worth selling.That's what I mean when I say my sister saved her. Somehow she ended up with me.

The crowd. Midge, do something with John, please. Midge is wearing the only Barbie dress my mom ever made for us.

    So  that's the story of my childhood Barbie dolls. I didn't buy another Barbie until I was in my very early thirties. And that time, there was no stopping me...