Two-Day Trippin: Excelsior!

While in Texas, we stayed at the Excelsior House. My parents took my sister and I once there when we were fairly little -- I was maybe 8 or so. This time, I shared a room with my grandma. We just went to California together in May, so we are pretty good travel buddies.

Mallow, my grandma, and I were in the Jay Gould room. It was by far the coolest room out of the three my family rented, temperature-wise, so everyone wound up congregating in the room. It wasn't until then that my sister's boyfriend informed us that the Jay Gould room in particular is supposed to be incredibly haunted. Hahaha! I'm much more scared of real people than I am of ghosts. Unfortunately there was no spectral activity going on, unless the relative coldness was indicative of spirits.

Sister and her boyfriend were staying next to a room that seemed to be undergoing some kind of renovation or repair. Its door was open, too. We peered inside and the whole thing was dark and draped in plastic sheets and very creepy.

"I really want to go in there and take spooky Blythe pictures," I said.

Sadly, these were the only ones that turned out much, since it was almost totally dark in the room and my lens was like, "Nooo..." But I think Mallow looks like she has lived there for a hundred years and wants someone with play with and stares perpetually out from behind things with one doleful eye. I took her Mary Janes off for the effect.

I had been concerned about bringing a Blythe since sometimes people can be really judgey about them, but I'm glad I brought Mallow just for the sake of getting to take eerie pictures in a plastic-draped room. And I'm glad I brought her, specifically, because she managed to be both ladylike and ghosty.

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Two-Day Trippin': Gladewater

So, my family took a quick trip to Jefferson, Texas. My mom was taken there by her mom as a kid, I was taken there as a kid. Several family trips have already been made! It was a trip purely for nostalgia and family togetherness purposes. I took Mallow with me.

On the way there we stopped in Gladewater, which calls itself the antique capital of East Texas. We only looked in a couple of shops, but I took plenty of pictures! (Way more than I wanted to even edit and post.) One of the first things I saw was a Skipper doll!

I have no need for dishes or glassware (I had to talk myself out of a lot of heart-shaped dishes, knowing I have no use for them) but it's some of the prettiest stuff to look at.

Did I want this pink Pyrex? HECK YES I DID. But it was $120 for the set of four. Heck no.

I'll post again tomorrow. I'm absolutely beat!

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"It's Raining..." Revisited

I believe it was last summer I posted about covering my med bottles with washi tape and Korean stickers (yes, it was!) and nothing has changed... still doing it!

Seriously, it's the best. Not only does it look cheery and detract from the whole -- for lack of a better word -- medical quality of them, but I used to almost always grab the wrong bottle, and now I can very easily tell what's what. One of the medications I take three times a day, so I just need to know what's what without it taking too long.

I have one of those days-of-the-week pillboxes, but honestly, I just use it for travel.

Just yesterday I picked up a refill that came in an unusually tall bottle. "So tall!" I marveled. "I have to cover it in washi tape immediately!" Then I was in the mood to do some more, especially with the new floral fabric tape I got for my birthday, so I dug out some empties.

Only three of these bottles actually have pills in them, so don't fret. The others are old. I used the one with yellow and heart tapes on it last year for the disastrous anti-anxiety med that derailed my life for, like, six months. But that sticker's super cute, so it's hard to hold grudges.

I really have too much washi tape. WAIT, IS THERE SUCH A THING?

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P.I.P.

Wait, it's Sunday again??

About time a girl wore this MINI JIJO dress! I've had it for a good long while and even though I've considered it many times as I'm dressing a girl, for whatever reason I usually pass over it.

Frankly I didn't know it would wind up on Holland, of all my girls, but paired with this pink tutu (also from MINI JIJO) and her own stock shoes, I think it looks cute, if a little atypical of the way I usually dress Holland.

Holland's also wearing University of Love's pink hair bows and Didee Eureka's stock socks... remember how one of them didn't even fit?? I turned it inside out and cut out a bunch of fabric along the inside hem. Now it will fit, but it's still noticably smaller/snugger than the other sock. I actually don't think it's too noticable in these pictures, but just look how the hem where the lace is attached to the top of the sock bulges around the ankle! Why so crazy thick??

The primary reason Holland's hair is up in these odango (buns) is just because her hair is a real mess whilst down. Holland and Wisp are both in desperate need of hair treatments, and while I'm at it, I might as well give Lamb one, too. Curly girls need a lot of help! Holland's hair is not as curly as Wisp or Lamb's, but I don't think I want to eradicate her waves.

What I've Been Up To This Week:

• worrrrkk
• making deer hats!
• watching anime while I cut felt for said hats (Puella Magi Madoka Magica; Wolf Girl and Black Prince; Kimi ni Todoke)
• working on a channel trailer for YouTube... so much harder than it sounds!
• playing around on my electric guitar, which I just realized I've had for nearly a year now -- I still mostly reach for my acoustic guitar, but really jamming out is just a must sometimes, and when one must jam, one must reach for the Stratocaster!

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video: Blythe Clothes Haul

Happy Sunday!

My Friday/Saturday was spent putting together this Blythe clothes haul video!


I actually had to film it twice... which isn't the first time that's happened to me, or anything. Hauls are the easiest things to film! Yes, I still have to drag out my lighting kit and mess around with the setup and probably record a bunch of footage out of focus (wah-wah-waaah), but just talking about cute Blythe clothes is a joy. Also, I don't truly begin to relax in front of a camera for about a half an hour, so sometimes I just have to waste some time.

It's been a long time since I've bought so much Blythe stuff. I usually don't place several orders at a time. Seriously, there have been years past where I've only bought maybe two things. But I do have twice as many girls as I used to! And since I made that styling tips video and then got rid of a lot of stuff decluttering, I was really able to take stock and see everything I had. I was able to see I was in desperate want of more socks (not mentioned in this haul, since I had gotten them by the time I actually decluttered my socks), tights, and separates in particular.

I did get a few dresses also -- one especially for Wisp! You can see it in the video, but here's a picture of her in it anyway that I took the day I changed her from her stock.

My heart could not have squeezed tighter than it did when I saw her out of her stock for the first time and in this really cute dress from NinaBella9. And look!! There's a rainbow touching her stand! I assume it was the morning sunlight coming in and bouncing off my camera lens, or something. There's something so perfect about Wisp being a rainbow magnet.

Regarding Wisp, though, even though I love Andi's Didee Eureka so much, I couldn't have predicted how pleased I would be with my own. Especially in that stock of hers!! Her beauty radiated out at me once she was out of it and I am still in a honeymoon phase of admiring her daily. I need to fix her hair a little; it's not terrible, but I know a spa day would improve things. Holland's hair needs some help, too.

Oh, I want to take pictures of Holland and Wisp together!!

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video: Get Klara Ready With Me

Here's the latest video in my "Dolly Dressup" series -- Klara! This was also a request.


This dressup had several technical difficulties, so definitely watch it if you want to witness me breaking headbands some more.

I believe Beatrix is next in line for a dress-up, if I'm remembering my YouTube comments correctly. I also have a couple of other requests that I do want to try and do, but I'm not totally sure how I'll tackle them. (I puzzle about the technical side of video production a lot.)

However, before I do anything else, I think I need to do a channel trailer. My camera's SD cards are full of footage that I keep on them rather than on my very small hard drive, but I'm out of room on the cards, so I really can't film another video until I clear those off anyway. (I need to get another external hard drive!! But my money must go towards therapy this month.) YouTube tells me on the reg to create a channel trailer, so I also want YouTube to shut up.

I've watched several trailers for different types of channels over the past month and I have yet to see one that I really like, that gives me some inspiration as to what mine could perhaps be like... I'm also bad at trying to summarize and sell myself or anything I do. I wonder what to say, et cetera.

Originally, I started Cure Touch because I really wanted a place to talk about my Blythes! I didn't have any fellow doll friends then; I was only out the outskirts of the community -- still am, to be honest. But I could tell RL people didn't grok Blythes and didn't want to hear me talking about them. I just had to gab to someone, somewhere, even if it was just to Blogger.

At the moment, I feel bad for talking about videos here what seems like a lot, but I don't have anyone to talk about videos/YouTube to and so my thoughts want to spill out here. I should feel okay, since this is my hobby blog and I'd post about crocheting or hair dyeing or whatever relatively guilt-free. But those are pretty pleasant topics for me, and you can illustrate with pictures, at least, whereas video-making is more technical/boring, and I'm usually not showing something I'm pleased with, but instead perpetually bemused and riddled with a feeling of uncertainty or frustration for a myriad of reasons. Usually I keep that kind of thing to myself and just post happier things to Cure Touch.

I definitely never meant to have a YouTube channel in the sense of producing content specifically for a YouTube audience. For instance, in terms of the haul video I'm going to film ASAP, I would normally have put the new clothes on my dolls immediately and maybe taken pictures to post here or on Flickr, but now I'm saving them most of them to film for the video. I actually quite like haul videos. But it's a change...

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