The Story of Tammy and Ken (Not the dolls. Us.)

  Our 24th wedding anniversary is coming up tomorrow, so I thought it would be a nice time to tell the story of how we came to be a couple.The story of our first date is a doosey, so hang in there.

  I think I have mentioned that Ken is from England. His dad was American though, and when Ken's mom died his dad eventually reestablished contact with his high school sweetheart, and ended up moving back to America to marry her, after she was widowed too. Ken came to visit his dad and decided that he liked it here. Just before his 21st birthday he came over again with the idea that, if he could find a job before he was supposed to return to England, he would stay. Otherwise he would go home and forget about living here. As fate would have it, he was hired by a Heck's store in the small town where his dad lived. So, Ken stayed in America. That was 1984, and he hasn't been back since.
  Meanwhile, I lived in another part of the state, but was originally from a place very near his Dad's home town, and not much farther from the place Ken was then living. I was living a bit farther away in 1984 though, having moved to live with my dad when I was 12. In 1984 I was also very into all things British. Almost all the television I watched or music I listened to was British. My favourite comedy, movies, music: it was British, mostly English. I was a total Anglophile.(I attribute it to a harrowing experience I suffered as a child. During the height of The Monkees era, Davy Jones, the band's sole English member, was the most popular. I never liked to go with the popular vote, so I became so sick of him that I rebelled against all things English. I refused to drink tea because, "It's English." (However I still managed to love The Avengers. The English tv show, that is, not the comic book.) One day, to punish me for my anti-Britishism, my sister and cousin chased me and held me down to inflict what they referred to as The English Tea Torture. That is, as opposed to the Chinese water torture. Only, instead of dripping water in slow torturous drops on my forehead, they poured boiling tea on my stomach. Well, it's hard to drop slow careful drops on a writhing 5 year old.)

There must be something to this Tea Torture stuff. My favourite Monkee was Peter, but post Tea Torture I have always had a preference for dark haired men with big brown eyes. That's why I married a blue eyed blonde. Huh?

  I wanted to go to England so badly. I saved my money obsessively for the trip. I finally went in March of 1985, and again in 1986. I even went to Ken's home town, because one of my friends was attending art college there. I lose very few things because I'm kind of obsessive about keeping track of them. But I lost my hat there. I always joke that it sounds like a song from the Beatles parody about 'The Rutles'. Instead of  this:

 ...mine is "I Left My Hat on a Bus in Hull".
   So most people assume that I found Ken in England, but the fact is, he was already here. I've been there twice since he has been there. But the point I was aiming at here is, I think it was destiny that brought us together. So many things had to happen in exactly the right way for us to meet. If he hadn't moved to America. If I hadn't moved to live with my dad. If both of us hadn't gotten jobs with the same chain of stores. If Ken hadn't been moved so many times. If I hadn't come back to work at the Heck's store when I came home from England. I wanted a nice, sweet Yorkshireman, and Ken was sent to me!
  While I toiled at my Heck's, Ken was transferred several times to other locations. As an unmarried guy, and someone for whom work was everything, (This is Ken, so the possible exception would have been food.), he was asked to move to several different stores when they needed someone. He got promotions for doing it, but after awhile he got tired of it. Finally he refused to move unless they gave him something he wanted: to be allowed to take all his vacation weeks at once so he could travel far away to visit someone. The someone was his former girlfriend, whom he still pined for, but who had married someone else. She was getting a divorce so he figured it was time to make his move. So in exchange he agreed to move again. Of course, you're guessing by now that the move was to the store where I worked.

  I remember the night, in July of 1988, that he first came to the store. I was behind the jewelry counter, as usual, across from the service desk, right up front. Somehow I missed him coming in, but the girl at the service desk said, "That guy. I think he was English." Jokingly, I nearly flew over my counter. "Where?!" She didn't know. "What did he look like?" "He was blonde, with a mustache." "Oh. Never  mind." I said, sliding back off the counter. My preference ran to dark hair, brown eyes, and clean shaven.(Fortunately Ken's mustache wasn't blonde. That might have been a deal breaker. I could never stand a blonde mustache. Brings to mind that invisible mustache Martin Mull had when he was young. It's like his mustache is wearing the mustache equivalent of those perception filters from Doctor Who: You know the mustache is there, but you can't quite see it.)

Martin Mull and his amazing invisible mustache. You have to look very closely, but it is there.

   Ken was introduced to everyone that night except me. I did get to talk to him briefly when I went to the office to get my check. I asked for another girl's check too, since she had asked me to get hers for her. Ken was the one in the office, handing out the checks. When he gave me both of them, I  said, "Oh boy! I get two!" I can still remember Ken hanging out of the cash office doorway and  joking, "Yes, but one's a credit and one's a debit!" He smiled and he had my favourite kind of teeth. (My sister calls them 'bunny teeth'.)  I was unprepared for that. Blonde, okay. But he has bunny teeth! I joked back that "I might level out."

  Since it was Friday and I had the weekend off, I didn't see him again until Monday. When the store opened Monday morning the first thing that happened was someone telling me, "The new guy is coming up to put the door on your counter.", (That was something that was supposed to have been done weeks before.) So Ken arrived at my jewelry counter. We talked while we worked and he seemed nice, but when he finished putting the door on, a very meaningful moment happened. He decided to "see if it works" by swinging the door. When he did, it cracked me right in the knee. That could have been the end of any possibilities, right there. But I guess we're both weird. Instead of getting mad, or figuring this guy was a clutzy loser, I joked, "Now let me test it. Put your head right here." He laughed. And that is probably where we started. If I had gotten mad, or he had gotten mad when I said that, (He was my superior, after all.), that would have been it. But we shared an admittedly odd sense of humour and, I suppose, a matched temperament. (To an extent. In those days it was practically impossible to make Ken mad. I however have always had what I grudgingly would call a 'redhead temper'. I only use the biggoted  phrase because I did read somewhere that the same genes which give us red hair also give us bad tempers. That also allows me to claim that I can't help it...)
  So we became friends over the next few months. Because I was familiar with the accents, and because my friend Jenny, (She's the one who was attending art college in Hull.), has a heavier Yorkshire accent than Ken could ever hope to have, I had no trouble understanding him, as most of the employees did. Because of my infatuation with all things British I got most of his references and he got most of mine. That kind of confused him sometimes, as he didn't know my 'history'. Ken has crazy curly hair, made crazier by his insistence on making it lay down, rather than, as I like to say, 'embracing his curliness'. One day some bigwigs were in the store and Ken ran by, desperately trying to flatten his hair. "How's my hair?" he quickly asked. "Is your last name Dodd?" I asked. He gave a stunned look. I never found out if it was at the thought that he had Ken Dodd's hair, or that I knew who Ken Dodd is.

British comedian Ken Dodd, And yes, those are his real teeth.

   Nowdays, when the mustache and hair get a bit too long Ken sort of resembles Einstein.

My husband the genius. No wait. This is Einstein

    He still planned to visit the old girlfriend and, in fact, ask her to marry him. But he was beginning to feel guilty for having some feelings for me in the meantime. (He told me this later.) I was beginning to like Ken very much too. When he returned from his trip he looked so sad. She had turned him down, saying there was 'no spark'. I knew none of this at the time, only that he had gone to visit his 'girlfriend'. One night soon after his return we were closing the store together.(Managers were required to have an employee follow them to the bank.) Just the two of us in the whole place. I remember standing on a cart while he turned everything off in the stock room, and he asked me out. I was 26, but I'd never been on a date. I had been asked a few times, but never by anyone I would have been tempted to go out with.(The first person to ever ask me out was a guy I worked with. It was nearly midnight on New Year's Eve, 1984, and he had asked everybody in the store out at various times, except for me and a middle aged lady named Helen. Helen wasn't there that night...  This set a precedent for the type of offers I got.) I never really wanted to 'date'. I wanted there to only ever be one person. I wouldn't have gone out with anybody unless I already knew I had some feelings for them. The idea of just dating for the sake of dating didn't appeal to me. But when Ken asked me I said yes. (Although I did ask him about that girlfriend thing.) My dad told me later, "I knew you were going to marry Ken." "Why?" "Because you went out with him."

  Being an assistant manager Ken wasn't supposed to 'fraternize' with the employees. (Even though a previous assistant had married one of the employees.) So for our date we had to leave town, so as not to be seen together. The day was overcast, but we started to the Big City to the zoo. (Ken figured that because I'm a vegetarian I must like animals. Not necessarily, but in this case he was right, although zoos have a tendency to make me cry.) When it began to rain half way there we started trying to think of somewhere else to go. Suddenly Ken said, "Have you ever been to Canada?" I hadn't, but I thought it was too far away to go to in a day. "Can we?" Ken assured me that it wasn't all that far, so I said yes, I'd like to go. (Why not? Well, I'll tell you why not...)
  We made it to Canada. In those days they didn't check your passport, which I would have been prepared for  anyway. I didn't drive, but I traveled, so I always carried my passport. Ken had been to Canada before and they had never asked to see his passport. 

  We looked around and had dinner at a terrible Chinese restaurant. It was called The House of Lee, but the sign was hard to read and it looked like 'The House of Noise', so we still refer to it that way. It started to get late so we decided we should head back to Ohio. When we tried to go through we were asked for our passports. I had mine, but Ken didn't. We were detained. Ken tried to tell them that he was an American citizen since birth because his father was American and had registered him in England. (Ken has dual citizenship since he was born in England to an English mother and an American father. If we ever get them their papers, our kids have it too, since Ken can pass on his British citizenship to them because they had the reverse situation to him. And strangely enough, if we bothered to get the paperwork, I have, in a sense, become English. Technically that is.) He tried to show them his Ohio driver's license, which only received the response, "Anybody can get one of those." They finally threatened to put him in jail if he didn't stop arguing with them. He calmed down a bit then, not wanting to leave me stranded in Canada alone. In the end Ken had to call his father and ask him to bring his passport to Canada so he could get home. His dad wasn't too pleased and said he wouldn't bring it until the next morning. That put me in the awkward position of having to call my Dad (I still lived at home.), and tell him that I wouldn't be coming home from my first date that night because I was trapped in Canada. I saved both our hotel receipts to prove we had separate rooms. Canada took us back with no problem. (We actually had trouble reentering the United States on subsequent trips, even with Ken's passport. As soon as they heard his Yorkshire accent there was a problem. Eventually I took to doing all the talking other than Ken's response to "What is your citizenship, sir?", which was limited to "U.S." I figured nobody could detect an accent in that.)
  Being trapped in Canada meant we spent more time together than we would have on a normal date. Once again, my reaction to Ken's international equivalent of banging my knee with a door wasn't anger or even 'This guy is cursed.'. I wouldn't even let him pay for my hotel room because, "It was an adventure." Ken was an underdog, and I always had a thing for Underdog. I just didn't realize I was

 Sweet Polly Purebred.

Just a quick note from Ken Tam I love you (my sweet polly pure bred).

This is The Stuff I Do

I do actually make things.Here are some of my older dolls.They have wooden heads and felt covered wire armatures.Mama Doll sold to a lady who then ordered Papa Doll. I hope she is taking good care of him because he is one of my favourites that I've made.He is about 2 and a half  inches tall, has pockets in his waistcoat and a watch chain made of thread, and spats!Their arms and legs are poseable. Her shawl is removeable.

This lady is polymer clay with jointed legs. Her hat is removeable. She's about 3 inches tall.She's going to be up for sale soon.

 

I make furniture as well as dolls. The chair and it's matching couch, as well as the little lady posing here, will all be for sale soon. She stands just over 2 inches tall and has poseable arms and legs. 

This is one of the newest dolls I've made. He has a polymer clay head, wire armature,sculpted felt hands, and cloth clothes. I made him a pocket watch,and pince nez glasses. I also made the buttons on his vest.

All the better to see you with.

He's just under 4 inches tall. Somehow he came out shorter than I'd intended, making him a very short old fellow for dollhouses.He'll go up for sale soon. Ebay or Etsy, that is the question.

These Raggedy dolls I made sold on Etsy. They measure just over 2 inches tall. They have all cloth clothes and rooted hair.

These little ladies will be going on Etsy or Ebay soon. I'm still deciding which. My earlier wooden head dolls had better sales on Etsy.These are polymer clay, with cloth clothes and moveable arms and legs. They're supposed to look like old fashioned China dolls.

They even have tiny underthings.

Here's the back view. I'm pretty proud of how the hair came out on these.

The back of lady #2. The shawl is removable.

And here she is from the front.

This gives you the idea of how small these ladies are. They make lovely dolls for little dollhouse girls.

Lady #3. I think she is a Civil War era lady.

And the side/back. I made the tiny stands too, out of necessity. There was no way to display them at shows without some way of making them stand up. My website for these dolls and furniture needs work and updated pictures, (All the dolls pictured have been sold.), but if you want to see more of what I have made,the site is Tamsykens.com, and there is a slideshow you can click on in the bottom right corner. I'll no doubt be talking about it on here when I  get these dolls and the furniture listed for sale.

Auction Fever (Well, auction nausea anyway.)

  I wrote this last night, but then was too tired to take the pictures, so it's outdated by a day.
  Well, here I am again at the end of another auction day. I'm absolutely exhausted from watching other people win stuff. Ok, I did win a few things, which is the reason for my other malady: auction blahs. When I spend money I get nauseated! I am going to have to move some of this stuff to justify going, or else I'll just have to crawl into a hole and die.(Which is entirely out of the question.)
  There were some beautiful Stacey dolls today, none of which I won. There was a really nice Todd with blushy cheeks, which I also did not win. None of the Skippers absolutely bowled me over, but there was a very pretty brunette Skooter: which also did not come home with me. Ditto the Father of the Bride Elizabeth Taylor. (Crossed fingers on my absentee bid for Elizabeth as Cleopatra tomorrow.) I almost did better at Goodwill on the way home from visiting my Dad last night.

  I swear this isn't my fault. The computer's acting weird. Not even my computer illiteracy is to blame for this one.

 I got this bunch of dolls, including a vintage Allan,with shoes,this Tangled doll in all her original stuff, Maxie,and these other more boring ladies, all for $3!

  Today I did score a Gene I've been wanting though!Creme De Cassis is mine at last.

   Thanks Ken for the early anniversary present!
   I also got a great Skipper/Barbie case.

  I have been needing some more cases to keep my stuff in. Missed out on the Ken and Midge cases though.
  Nice graphics on this Barbie and Skipper electric drawing set.

  I love dolls of real people that really look like them. Even people I don't especially like. (That's why I have two different Frank Sinatra dolls and a Clark Gable.)

I loved all the little guitars on the other Elvis'...Elvis's....Elvi...but this was the only one I could afford.

  Now here's my question. If Barbie loves Frankie AND Elvis, when is she going to love The Beatles?! Now that one I would buy new! (Well, probably not, because it would be 5 dolls and cost a fortune. But I would stalk it until it became affordable.) If they could make a set of Beatles dolls with head sculpts as good as the Frank Sinatra and Elvis dolls they've done that would be amazing! And they have to be next. (And where does it stop? I don't see anybody else that is on a popularity par with those guys.For the 70's, Barbie loves...? Kiss? The Bay City Rollers? The Bee Gees? See, it just doesn't work. For one thing, I don't think Mattel would let her love Kiss.
  Ken (Husband, not the doll.)loves Coca Cola stuff. He never buys himself anything though. It took me saying that I really like this Coke Barbie for him to make a winning bid.

We had already lost out on a whole box full of Coke Barbies, the Coca Cola soda fountain, (So Cool!!),and Coca Cola Ken. (I said, of all things, we should have a Coca Cola Ken. Other than Ken that is. Actually, Ken can't be Coca Cola Ken anymore, because he drank SOOO much pop that he now has mild diabetes. He used to drink almost nothing but pop, and he's a thirsty guy, so that was A LOT of pop. The guy could drink a whole 2 litre bottle in seconds, and frequently did. Drinking a highly caffinated beverage probably added to his thirst, which made him drink more pop, which made him thirstier...well, you get the idea. These days he is a good boy, (well, a better boy.) who drinks mostly water.
  I got a few stray pieces of vintage stuff, including the rare Sears exclusive Red Fantastic, which is actually not red.

  After finding the Tammy house, last weekend---remember I said I'd never seen it in person? Well, there it was in tomorrow's auction stuff. And better than mine. It had stuff inside and parts of it looked like they'd never been put together. Oh well. Mine was only $5....
  And because the auctioneer was begging me to take it I bought a Barbie Dreamhouse. Unfortunately not the second one. We had that one as kids and I'd love to have that one. Anybody want a Dreamhouse? 

Nice people, good stuff, and a crazy lady

  People can be really nice. Running into people like the crazy crabby lady I met up with last week can make you forget that. She snapped at me, "I can't take that! I don't have change!" when I tried to pay her for my $4.45 with a $20 bill. She really wouldn't give me change, even though her garage sale was open and lots of people were shopping it. I made arrangements for Ken to come pick my stuff up and pay her later in the day. I really didn't want to trust that he would do it though, since Ken has a problem with getting around to stuff, and there was something I was excited to have found for Emma in the goodies. (Forget it Emma. No spoilers. Wait until Christmas.) As I was leaving, a lady sidled up to me and said," I don't know how she can not have change. She's been running this sale for three days. She has change." I was sort of stunned. I asked a young guy sitting in a chair nearby and texting on his phone if he had change. He turned out to be the lady's son or grandson, I think. He said she would give me change and was surprised when I said she told me she didn't have any. He proceeded to tell the lady she needed to give me change. She freaked out, claiming she couldn't bring out her money until they were set up. "We are set up." he told her, and made her go inside with him to get the money, muttering about "crazy obsessive compulsive woman". I felt a bit awkward.We could hear them shouting at each other inside the house. When they came out I paid, got my stuff and left, with him muttering about having to 'put up with this crazy obsessive compulsive lady ALL day!'.
  But I lost my point. I have run into so many nice people. Maybe that's why she was such a shock to me. This past weekend I arranged another barter. Some nice people let me pick up some of their hickory nuts, and even helped me do it. I'm taking them some of my garlic. (It multiplies like rabbits in my yard.) Another nice lady gave me some tomatoes from her garden when I offered to buy some.It was a nice, friendly weekend. And I got some cool stuff. I found this:

It's Tammy"s Ideal House! And I always thought that was a huge Victorian mansion...

  It's missing all the furniture and stuff from inside, but it's still pretty neat.

And I've never seen one in person before. The lady selling it explained that she had had a lot of people ask her about it, and she'd had to "explain that Tammy was Ideal's answer to Barbie" . Poor Tammy. Nobody remembers her any more!

The back of Tammy's house.

  I also found  a couple pieces of vintage Barbie and Francie clothes,including Francie's Dreamy Duo robe,and a boat load of vintage toys and good stuff.   It seems like some weeks everybody puts out their old things.
  I also got some beautiful mint records for 20 cents each,and something I have wanted for years: a set of Friendly Village dishes, for only $30!
  We're still having yard sales because at the beginning of the summer it rained for nearly three weeks. Everybody is still trying to catch up. I need to be careful spending though, because Thursday is the big Barbie auction. That should be fun, but frustrating. I collect on a budget, so the auction often is out of my price range. Luckily I can deal with fixer upper dolls. I don't insist on mint, because I can't afford to. But I've learned to improve my finds. I've even had comments on how nice my dolls' hair is.(Are?)
  Oh, and good deeds can sometimes be rewarded. A couple of weeks ago I met Donna, whose boyfriend undercharged me. If you read this blog you remember I was driving home when I realized I needed to go back to her house to pay her another $20 and take her a cake recipe. On the way to Donna's to do that Tuesday I found this sat out by someone's driveway with a sign that said 'Free Take'.

  It's bigger than it looked from the car. I may donate it to Goodwill because it's way too big for the space I (don't) have. While we were at Donna's she was having trouble with her computer, which Ken helped her with, and she gifted Ivy with a waffle maker. See what I mean? People can be so nice.

499 and counting

  Wow. Only one more page view (as I write this) and I'll be at 500 views. Who are all these people? Where are all these people? I'm still only at 4 followers though, one that doesn't show up and one that's Emma, my daughter. Please people, feel free to join in. Follow, or leave a comment or question. I'm curious. I know you're out there. I can't hear you breathing, but I can see your page views...

Pies, Cakes,and Beatles,(and a nice lady named Donna.)

  I'm getting behind. I only just got around to posting about last Saturday's doll show and here it is Saturday again already. Of course,yesterday was Yard Sale Friday,so Ken and I went around until I ran us out of money.(Sorry Ken!)I did get some really cool things though, and this week was the second sale of the summer for the sale I like to call The Peanut Butter Pie Sale. It's actually a church yard and bake sale, but I go every year for the peanut butter pie! The best pie ever! My family all know that if they want a piece they have to go with me, because any pie bought by me will be consumed before I get home! (This is where Emma usually says, "How's that diet thing working for you?" It's NOT!) In spite of my not knowing they were also open Thursday, there was pie left when I went Friday. Yes! Ken went, so he even nabbed a piece for himself. I had eaten pear cake for breakfast, so I didn't eat my pie until last night
  One year the lady who makes it every year for the sale gave me the recipe. Thank you lady! I need to get around to trying it out. But here it is if anyone else wants to try. (You can call it whatever you like, but I call it Peanut Butter Pie Sale Pie.)
Slightly more than one cup of peanut butter
1/2 tsp milk
1/2 cup  powdered sugar
12 oz. Cool Whip
1 package cream cheese
Mix all ingredients together and pour into a graham cracker crust.Refrigerate.
  I believe the lady from the sale uses pre-made graham cracker crust, but freshly made is better. Just crush graham crackers, mix with sugar to taste, and enough melted margarine to make  it stick together when pressed into a pan. Let cool before pouring in filling. 


  Anyway,I got this record case for Emma, who has been after another one.

  Her records runneth over, and her cat Otto thinks they are his scratching pad if the stack is left out.Emma has quite a record collection, especially for a 22 year old. Music is her thing though. She even has a radio show called "One Mind Tracks", (as opposed to 'one track minds',because each week she plays songs that all have a theme in common. This week was songs about working or jobs, in honor of Labour Day.). So it's all research Emma. Take them off on your income tax...(Just want to mention here that the spell check told me 'runneth' wasn't a word, but totally missed that I had earlier misspelled 'after' as 'aftre'.)
  I got a bunch of interesting singles. ("Strawberry Children", by The Hobbits, anyone?)  And a Bobby Darin album for Fuzz. (But he still needs a record player...)

  But I passed up "I'll be Your Baby Tonight",by Burl Ives. Ewww! You may remember him as the sweet little Sam the snowman from Rudolph, singing about Silver and Gold and scootching his little snow butt through the snow.

 But he was also this creepy looking guy.

Burl Ives, alias Sam the Snowman.

  Oscar and Golden Globe winner, and he does actually kind of  look like Sam the snowman (or, vice versa), but he always creeped me out. Sorry Burl.
  But I digress...
  I also got this Marina Anchors Lalaloopsey, with her pet.

I don't think the life preserver
is hers, but it works.

  The mini I got a few weeks ago when I made the big modern doll score. I just forgot to put her in that picture. I have been waiting for the Lalaloopsies to hit the yard sales, and the time has come!
 But records were the finds of the day, and I didn't even make it to the sale that advertised that they had records! I got some great records at the Peanut Butter Pie Sale, but the records that top the day's buys are these.

Original releases in beautiful nearly new condition!

  One of the nicest things about a day out yard saling is sometimes you meet some nice people and have a good 'natter', as my English friend Cheryl says. (That means, 'a talk'. )I got these Beatles albums from a nice lady named Donna. They are in great condition. Donna bought them way back when they were new releases. Donna is a young 70 years old and encouraged me to 'get out and dance'.Maybe I should take Donna's advice. She looks and acts much younger than 70, and looked thin and fit in her shorts and camisole. I should look so good now! (For the record, I have never worn a camisole in my life,haven't worn shorts in 24 years, and, as I told Donna, I wouldn't dance unless I was locked alone in a room where even I couldn't see me.) I jokingly told Donna's husband Mike that THIS is what 70 year old ladies are supposed to look like!

  (I bought these from Donna too.)
  He suggested she would no way go for that! My Grama had a bun and a hairnet. THAT'S what old ladies used to look like!
  I imagine my Mom would have been a bit like Donna if she had lived. She never stopped moving. She was slim, and like Donna, ate plates piled high with food. (Well, she didn't eat the plates, but you know what I mean.)
  I also got these other goodies, and this mixer from Donna for $1!

  It's just like my Mom's, but I don't have the bowl for Mom's, and since I have been known to bend the beaters by stupidly trying to scrape the sides while mixing and getting a utensil caught in them, extra beaters are always handy to have around. Maybe Emma would like to have the mixer:"Just like Mommy's!" (Now she won't want it!)
  I also bought Donna's grandmother's hats.

 They are beautiful and almost like new. Donna said this one...

 ...looks like the ones Miss Kitty wore on Gunsmoke.

  Mike wondered if she meant Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies.                                                    
        

                                     
   I also got this girl, which is one of  Donna's childhood dolls.

  The lady paying up as I got there bought a boatload of vintage toys and dolls. Pooh! Always a minute too  late.
  Anyway, we paid for our goodies, but as we were driving away down the road  it occurred to me that Mike had only charged us $20 for both albums, instead of $20 each. I hadn't gotten Donna's phone number to give her the cake recipe we had been talking about either. (My pear tree actually had pears this year! It's been a while since it grew enough to do anything with. I used to can them, make pear cake, pear pancakes, and pear syrup, plus we ate a lot of fresh pears.The last few years I have been lucky to get 6 a year. So this year I got to make pear cake again.) We turned around and went back to make sure Mike had charged us correctly. Sure enough we owed them another $20. While we were there we started talking about the cake recipe again and Donna gave me a tasting tour of their apple trees. I tasted them all. (The apples, not the trees.) The best were these little yellow ones from a tree Donna planted herself 45 years ago.

  She gave me a bag full so now I have to make pie or something. Ivy likes to bake, so maybe if I peel them she'll bake something. One year Ivy entered an apple cake in the baking contest at the local Apple Festival and she won. It was the very recipe that I'm giving to Donna, which I bake pear cake from. It's actually an an apple cake recipe, but I have been making it with pears for a zillion years because we have a pear tree, not an apple tree.  In case anybody is interested, here it is.
Shenandoah Apple Cake
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Grease and flour 8" round pan or loaf pan
Ingredients:
3 cups chopped apples (or pears),peeled
3 large eggs(see below for variation)
1 cup oil (see below)
2 cups sugar (see below)
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional. I never use them, but black walnuts would probably be very good with this.)
For topping:3 tsp white sugar mixed with 1 tsp cinnamon.
Combine oil and sugar. Add eggs, beating well after each addition.
In separate bowl combine dry ingredients. Add vanilla to egg mixture. Add dry ingredients, apples, and nuts if using them.
Pour into pan and sprinkle top with cinnamon sugar.
Bake for approximately 1 hour or until top is browned and knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Variations:  I always add an extra egg, and an extra slosh of oil. That makes it extra rich and extra moist. I also use 2 cups of packed dark brown sugar instead of white.

  After Donna's we scraped together enough money to share a giant chocolate malted, which are really good from the ice cream place in the little town down the road from Donna's. Then we were broke, so we had to go home!
  I had a very nice day. Ken went with me, which he doesn't do very often. We got some neat stuff. And we made some new friends and had a good time.Plus, that peanut butter pie. Ken's is still in the fridge...

Doll Show Saturday and Malabar Farm

  So Saturday was the doll show, albeit a very small one. No money was made, but that was expected. It was nice to see my doll friends again though. Since it was such a tiny show and there were almost no customers it was a chance to visit with everybody.(For the big show in October I must insist on making money though!) The room was so tiny we were all able to walk around and see each other's stuff and talk to each other. I got a cute little baby and a Harry Potter I don't recognize.

  Emma was VERY into Harry Potter, (We all loved the books and read all of them as a family.), and had everything there was to do with it, so I'm surprised we somehow missed this guy. I thought he might be the Wizard Sweets Harry, since Emma didn't get him until she was older and she never took him out of the box. I am less familiar with him. But I checked him out today, (Since Emma moved out and left her dolls.) and it's not him. This guy is a good likeness of Daniel Radcliffe, much better than the other ones. (Luckily they got Rupert Grint right the first time, because Mattel only made one Ron.)
  I also did some trading. I got a handful of dolls clothes from my friend Casey and she'll pick a pile of mine at the October show.
  I got one of the best condition vintage Skipper Flower Girl dresses I have ever seen from a lady. I'm going to sell her awesome miniature spinning wheel online for her in exchange.

   (This thing is great! The parts really move and it even has wool on it. I have a couple, but I think hers is the best I've seen.)
  And of course my friend Connie GAVE me more stuff (She does that.),

Anybody know who this kid is? She has a body like a Tiny Teen, and is marked Takara, Made in Japan.

...and restrung the doll I got a few weeks ago, which you might have seen in my Fantastic Finds of the Week post. Since I was thinking about it anyway and everybody was advising that I do it,I removed her silver ringlet wig.  She has cute molded hair underneath.  I thought she would make a cute boy, but they were all for keeping her a girl because they preferred girl dolls. I'll think about it. I need to remove her /his wig glue. Someone recommended Goo Gone, but if anybody knows anything better I'd love to hear it.
  I think I did pretty well. I didn't spend too much, and we made almost what the table cost. It was for a good cause anyway, because the table fees go to preserve the beautiful historic house the show is held in the annex of. (Is that correct grammer?!) The house is great, with lots of old features that it would be a shame to lose if the house were sold and updated, like all the bells in the kitchen that were used to ring to from the upstairs rooms. They're all still on the wall and you feel like someone is going to ring down to the kitchen for breakfast in bed or something any minute.I could move in there right now and live, except for that shag carpeting...

   Speaking of, I could also move in and live quite happily at Malabar Farm, here in Ohio. It was the home of Pulitzer Prize winning author, screenplay writer, and conservationist Louis Bromfield. (He wrote 'The Rains Came', which has been made into a movie several times, including 'Rain' with Joan Crawford.), and is now a State Park. The house has been preserved as it was the last time the family lived there in the 1950's. Much of the decor is much older. Apparently Jimmy Cagney sold vegetables from their farm stand out at the road (which you can still buy vegetables from, although Jimmy is no longer there.) Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were friends of the Bromfields and were actually married in the house, and spent their honeymoon there.

That wall paper is still on the walls.

Ivy and I, who love old movies,had fun coming down the double staircases 'Bogie and Bacall ' came down when they met in the entryway to take their vows. We also stood behind the table where they stood to cut their wedding cake.

This table is still there, and they have a fake wedding cake set up.

  Anyway,go if you ever get a chance,especially if you are a Bogart or Bacall fan. I've been there twice and would go again. It's like a walk back in time. Plus there is a nice farm and animals to see. (And there is a house with a ghost story nearby, (on the property I think). )They also have a walking trail and events throughout the year.It's a beautiful place and a nice day out for the family. Check out their webpage at www.malabarfarm.org  I also have to add that Lauren Bacall, who is now 88 years old, still signs autographs, and with amazing speed. I wrote to her a couple of years ago and she sent back the two pictures I sent in about a week, both with a wonderful signature.

I was going to give one to Emma, but until she cares to take it they are both MINE!

  So that's it.See you soon.