strawberry springtime

Got a yen to do another little setup with some miniatures. Recently I dressed Fidelia and Beatrix in some duds from the Strawberry Shortcake fashion sets I blogged about here (and which I scored from Five Below). I really, really love this plaid dress with the double ribbons at its drop waist! I'm not sure that it's a drop waist on the doll for which it is meant, but on Beatrix, it sure is.

(Other outfit roundup deets: Fidelia's skirt is from PrettyBomb and she's wearing Didee Eureka's stock Mary Janes. Beatrix's sneakers are from thehandflower.)

Another Strawberry Shortcake thing I got from Five Below recently is this Teeny Tinies! Strawberry's Bake Shop Set. It was $5, of course, and came with 20 pieces, some of which I like and some of which I don't. But that's a great price for a handful of miniatures I do like. I'm kinda miniatures-crazy right now so I actually got three sets of Teeny Tinies! miniatures... Anyway, I used several items from this specific set here!

Most from the Strawberry's Bake Shop Set -- the cart and everything on top of the cart -- but the doughnuts on the lower tray, the teacups, and the pink lemonade bottle are craft store miniatures.

I got out one of my Michael's not-doll-furniture benches from a couple of years ago, some 1:6-ish scale cushions I hand-sewed eons ago, and this little bunny! Because of course! Easter!

I was pretty tickled just setting all this up and taking photos. But I decided to take some footage with my phone, too, and edit together a small reel or short or whatever you want to call it. Here 'tis:

Notes on this little video:

• I don't know how to edit videos on my phone. I must admit my ignorance here. I have abandoned social media several times since 2016 (due to mental health/feeling unable to cope with the state of the world at large), don't use TikTok at all, etc. I'm not a short form content girlie. So I kind of missed the boat on editing together content for platforms that have made strong moves towards it. Like, I do not know what app people are using to make their videos?!!?! iMovie? Capcut? What is the proper workflow for that? I only know how to use Adobe Premiere on my desktop computer. So I used that to edit this, uploaded it to the cloud, and used the Reels app on my phone just to put a slight lighting filter over the finished product, to try and get the virulent colors to be more true to life.
• Yes, the background music is me playing my Omnichord!!! Because I am really interested in using it for stuff like this. I just placed it on my desk where my keyboard is and aimed a mic at its speaker! So, you can hear not only the output, but you can actually hear me pressing the buttons. It sounds to me like a music box with that kind of clicking. And I am just playing through the first verse of "In the Golden Afternoon" from Disney's Alice in Wonderland on it. I'm really tickled this worked alright.

I'm spending so much of my time on band stuff -- pretty much since I joined it, last summer, my time's really been sucked away by it -- but lately I'm feeling a lot of desire to try and pack my own individual hobbies back onto my plate. I want to do doll stuff, I want to sew more little cushions and pillows for my doll furniture, I want to sew some little clothes!

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lofty ambitions part 1

So I know I said that I felt like doing some more doll-dressing, but what I actually ended up doing is taking off all my dolls' clothes. All twenty-one Neos are standing around nakedly in my room this past week.

I did this because:

• I wanted a blank slate for all the girls. Some of them have been wearing the same 'fits for a really long time (over a year) because I liked them, and I just realized all of a sudden, "I'm never going to want to change some of these outfits, but I should anyway."
• I wanted to see every single pair of shoes I have, specifically!
• I wanted to see if I had proper storage, still. All my dolls being totally undressed is a thing that never happens, really, but I wanted to see the state of my storage options. I need to change some of what I'm doing; boxes are overflowing as it is.
• I wanted to see if all my girls had underwear. A couple don't! I don't strictly think they need panties. Some things fit better without that layer in the way, taking up valuable space. But I also irrationally don't want any of them to feel less loved because they don't have undies. Hahaha.
• Just really want to do Blythey stuff right now. I want to do dressups I've never done before. Revisit my doll wardrobe and find pieces I've never used (I have many, haha) and use them, finally. Maybe even declutter??

I kind of had fun grouping my girls somewhat, as I put them all back where I keep them (atop my desk and on a ladder shelf). All the blondies and peachies. The gingers. The sandies/brunettes. I love seeing new (old) girls like Olive betwixt Fey and Zasha. I love seeing Lamb and Holland side by side -- those curly girlies. It's inspiring me. And the utter hilarity of Klara and Tiphanie sitting on the same bench when they have scads of hair that fells them so easily...

So, I'm going to have to dress all these girls again, when I hardly have the time to even do so right now! Because I am trying to do a lot of stuff right now. So as ridiculous as that sounds: Dressing all these gals again officially falls under the heading of Lofty Ambitions. I'll post about another Lofty Ambition I am undertaking quite soon. I feel insane for trying to load more onto my plate these days, when I have sort of bitten off more than I can chew already.

Finally -- and this has nothing to do with any of the rest of this post -- I did some light Halloweening with some cat ears and makeup for a family party. My mom took this pic of me and my nephew, who has grown so much lately. He is fifteen months old, a big boy who has started walking and can say "hello," "bye-bye," "kitty," and "night-night," and I have been treasuring time with him especially of late because he and his parents are moving a few states away in just a few days time. So this is just an addendum of a memory, for my own enjoyment.

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It sure is April 2025!

Look at this cute dress I got a couple of weeks ago! Seems made for Beatrix! Here are the 'fit deets.

Beret: Dear Darling
Glasses: ChocolateHandmade on Etsy (seems to have closed)
Dress: AtelierPetitesfolies on Etsy
Shoes: eBay ~14 years ago

Beatrix is such a trooper because her pale face clashes with her more tan Licca body so much. Girl, same. Except my body is fishbelly white and my face is red.

Anyway, this whole year thus far has been "off" for me. For the majority of it, I have not been productive or creative. I keep a running list, every year, of projects I have completed in that year. By the year's end, the list is pretty long, populated with "wrote this story" and "crocheted this thing" and "sewed 45 of these items" and "made such-and-such video." It's not unusual for me to have 30-50 items on that list. But by the time the calendar flipped to April this year, I noticed I had only two things on the list, both of them small crochet projects.

I have had the desire to do doll sewing in particular, but have found it really difficult to start anything at all, even simple and non-demanding hobby things. And so, I just... haven't crafted, or written, or been proactive with regards to much of anything. All year.

My best friend said, "That's pretty unusual for you."

It really, really is. I am always up to something.

I think partially it's The Horrors. I talked about finding it hard to be online lately already, and I find that's evergreen these days. A lot of my creative hobbies are tied to the internet and thus even when I'm only trying to look at hobby stuff or keep up with friends, I wind up exposed to The Horrors.

A thing I have been doing is bullet journaling. And I have been really enjoying it, especially since my mom has been doing junk journaling and we have sat down together several times to work on our repsective journal pages. But it doesn't feel like a creative project, per se. It also is an ongoing thing, so it is never a completed project. Although I do enjoy making particular little pages.

Here's a Cure Touch page (left) with post ideas and housekeeping items listed, and an "ambitious ideas" page with a couple of personal/hush-hush things blurred out. The point is not for you to read the lists, lol, but to post an example of what little I have been doing. As you can see, I am not bereft of ambitions or ideas. I certainly am not bereft of hobbies. But I have been bereft of that critical link in the chain between "I want to" and "I will do it right now!"

Perhaps another aspect of this is that family time has been really important to me in the last year, with my sister's pregnancy and the birth of my nephew, and all the resulting family gatherings that have ensued. Nephew is eight months old now (!!!) and every time I see him, he's grown; he's learned to do something new; he has new quirks and tendencies. This first year of his life is just amazing. He is the absolute light of my life. All this to say: My focus has been doing things with my family a lot this year thus far, and my schedule currently prioritizes that above everything else. Sleep, for instance.

Here's some screen caps from a video my dad took of me and Nephew hanging out. I'm in my pajamas here and normally do not like to ever display my bare arms, but this is a video I revisit all the time these days, and I just can't help but want to put it here because of how much it makes me smile. Nephew's just squealing and cooing and giving me big grins, and I am listening, talking back, and booping him on the nose.

Happily, I can tie up this post by reporting that a few days ago I broke through the terrible executive dysfunction barrier and did a bunch of doll sewing. So I will post about that soon!!

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family portrait 2024

Yooo! Class picture!

I've actually gotten a few requests for an updated family portrait in the last couple of years, but even with five less dolls than I have now, I have been like, "I have no idea how to accomplish such a thing..."

I used to take my dolls out into the backyard and pose them on a bench we had, but we don't have the bench anymore, and ~20 dolls makes a quick hike to the backyard not terribly feasible anyway. It took long enough with seven dolls, and now I have just one shy of twenty. You might not think it's a lot of work to wrangle them, but just moving them across my bedroom to line them up here took sooo long.

(I know that people have far larger Blythe collections and manage to photograph all their dolls at once, but I don't know how these people do it!! Lots of time?)

For this, I turned some plastic storage boxes upside down in order to create a riser, like this is choir class, and draped the boxes in fabric so they wouldn't be too distracting. The dolls aren't in any particular order per se, except that the back row is RBLs, the middle row is FBLs, and the front row is RBLs again. Also, Aury is in front because of course she is!! The newer dolls are in front just by virtue of having been farther away from the desk, and so the last to be placed on it.

There was nothing on god's green earth I could do to keep the dolls' hair from sticking to each other and falling in their faces. I tried to fix Gavin's hair so many times, but it just wouldn't cooperate! So, what you see is what you get, in terms of all that doll hair.

Speaking, you might notice that Drew has her original scalp back on, even though the fading on it is so atrocious.

As a bonus, I have a couple of other group pics to share:

The redheads! The gingers, really, as Fidelia is certainly a redhead too. I have been seriously wanting a little pic of all my gingers together since I got Citron!

Also:

The blondes! Are you seeing these ringlets on Holland??

I thought of breaking down the family into groups by hair color and doing a whole series of portraits, but the rubric breaks down by the time it reaches dolls like Gavin and Miette. I didn't want to have a group I was mentally thinking of as "the leftovers." I know they are just inanimate objects and cannot care, but I still would have felt bad! So I stopped here.

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B/P OTP

I often think of Beatrix and Miss Petaline as a pair, so I have several pictures of them together being a bit matchy-matchy that I've taken over the years. I thought I'd post a little collection.

(Licca-bodied Beatrix is always in those green shoes, huh!)

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video: Vintage Ken Doll Duds

Hey there! Here's a video I just recently uploaded about some vintage Ken doll tops that I scored for Beatrix via eBay.


On a technical note, some reason the video is really cool-tinted and it's bothering me so much. It looks normal on my desktop (where I do all my video editing), but that monitor has a warmer tint, and my laptop monitor is more cool-tinted. So it looks like it has this major gray cast to me now that I see it on my laptop. However, my last video didn't have that issue, so I don't know why this one does. Furthermore, I often notice color differences between the video file and how it looks on YouTube, so this extra and random degree of color variation is super annoying!!!

Since everyone has different monitors/phones with varying settings, I'm sure it looks different to everyone. Yikes.

As of late, I've been:

• studying frequently
• exploring my new Nintendo 3DS XL (I've never had a handheld gaming system before, and I'm from the Gameboy/Game Gear generation and literally everyone I knew had one, so it's pretty exciting for me; my birthday's coming up and I'm going to ask for DS games!)
• dealing with a super stressful health insurance situation
• wasting time on the Miitomo app

I'm unspeakably exhausted from this health insurance thing. I feel like I am neither eating nor sleeping enough, like I just can't recharge fully. If I don't resurface again till May, don't be terribly surprised!

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Cave core. Glitter mom. Geode trash.

As of late I've been in a tactile and deeply introverted sort of mode. I want to color (in my adult coloring book, a picture of which I've linked rather than post because MY COLOR COMPULSION WON'T LET ME), draw, journal, stamp, read, and listen to Carly Rae Jepsen in the dark all by myself.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but for Lent, I gave up lounging on my laptop.

I realized a while ago that I've started associating sitting at my desk with a) work, and b) editing YouTube videos and all that entails (also work).

I used to use my desktop for everything! I crafted at my desk, as well. But now I like to sit on my bed while I craft, regardless of whether my laptop is open and playing me some Netflix or closed and across the room, and even though I love the coziness, I also don't think I should spend so much time on my bed. It makes me feel like a bump on a log, even if I've been crafting like a maniac.

It can't be helped much. I deleted all the TV shows and Sims game data/downloads that were on my desktop so I'd have room for gigs upon gigs video footage, and that really made the splitting of my time much more obvious. I've gotten to where I do all my lazing on my laptop -- TV and movie and Buzzfeed video-watching, Tumblrin', playing Spider Solitaire, general internet surfing -- and just use my desktop for work. Work-work, but also stuff like editing photos for blog posts... so, hobby stuff as well, but not for just kickin'.

So for a month now I've been trying to do everything I can on my desktop, and just use my laptop for legit TV-watching -- like, to catch up with my shows in real time, not to laze and just watch Netflix sans purpose. When I'm done with my shows, I close the laptop and try to do something else.

I have not been in the mood to make a YouTube video lately. Although I have a sense of guilt about that, I'm trying to mute that beeping alarm in the back of my brain that is telling me I am being neglectful. I just feel introverted and in my own world, and like being in a little dark cave doing cave paintings, but I will emerge again when I feel up to wrangling equipment and doing voice overs.

Right now my jam is stamping.

Scored all these ink pads (and a set of alpha stamps) from a dollar bin at Michael's. Last year for my birthday my mom got me some similar pads and an alpha set, which I love and you can see in this blog post, so I was really happy to find some more! I've been doing a lot of stamping for my journal and other tangible projects.

Just really randomly, because I was enjoying myself so deeply, I did a page of bonkers aesthetics from this aesthetic generator. I love that thing. Any "dad" aesthetic makes me laugh automatically. I just stamped all the ones I liked. "Sun goth." I can't.

Still real into my geodes! I didn't get any colorful ones from my "break your own" box, but I don't mind. As I said, I am feeling very tactile right now, so I just like to touch them and look at them.

Finally, here's my dumb cat, Smokey. He's grown up so much since we adopted him in November. He's like a young adult now. He had his big operation recently (you know the one) and he can go outside now, which is hugely exciting for him, so he's still adjusting to this new stage of his life. His cuddles are rare gifts.

On my mind is spring cleaning (my desk really, really needs cleaning!), my little notebooks and writing projects that I'm stamping all over right now, and an unexpected doctor's appointment I have tomorrow!

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September styles

Right now, a bunch of my girls are wearing a particular combination: sweaters + shorts. I'm so ready for fall, but acknowledge that it's still summer out, so I wind up compromising with a little of each.

Beatrix's vintage Ken doll sweater is actually too big... the sleeves come down over her hands, and I have a bobby pin cinching the sweater in back. But it's such a gnarly retro look! I love it! She looks ready to get back to school and nerd out in the library.

Still doting on Wisp. This is only her second outfit change. I'm sure I'll put her in something other than lovely browns, but her hair is swaying me big-time.

Wisp and Aury (I love taking pics of my first girl, Aury, with my latest doll!!) are wearing mimundoblythe sweaters -- I highly recommend them!

I haven't just sat around taking pics of my dolls in what feels like a good while. I enjoyed it so much!

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Separation Anxiety (Blythes as Comfort Objects)

Something that's been on my mind lately is the fact that I clearly have Separation Anxiety.

This isn't a mental health post!! Don't worry! I'm not going to be talking about problems, woes, medications, or anything like that! I do think that Separation Anxiety, for me personally, is part of my Generalized Anxiety Disorder as a whole. But I don't think this is the case for everyone.

When you think of Separation Anxiety, you think of little kids because it's normal for them to have a fear of adults leaving them behind. They don't necessarily understand that their usual caretaker will come back or that things will return to normal; they have a fear of being in a new or overwhelming place without the person or people they know. Time is very long when you're a child and an hour can seem like an eternity.

I definitely had Separation Anxiety as a child. I remember breaking down in abrupt tears in front of my kindergarten classroom and not wanting to leave my mom, even though I'd been in kindergarten for two months and had been going to preschool and had baby-sitters over the summers while my mom was at work before that. The teacher talked me into the room and let me sit by a boy who was my neighbor at the time because he was a familiar person to me.

There is such a thing as Adult Separation Anxiety but I really can't tell whether some of these symptoms, for me, are specifically Separation Anxiety as opposed to a normal aspect of having Generalized Anxiety.

What's put this realization about Separation Anxiety on my mind is that I am taking a trip next week, and I've been thinking about which Blythe I want to bring... and then considering, Do I really need to bring a Blythe?

I've traveled with Blythes before, but they've all been roadtrips with friends who didn't mind my dolls being around. I once took Aury, Beatrix, Plummery, and Gavin to Eureka Springs. Aury's been with me to Dallas and Kansas City. It's always been fun to have one along with me. Taking a Blythe with me on a plane will be a new experience for me, though, and I am feeling a little stressed about the idea of plane + being around people who might judge me for bringing a doll with me.

My question is, Why don't I just go without a Blythe?

But then I realized that dragging my stuff around me is a lifelong pattern for me. It's so ingrained that I hadn't really thought about it before now. I take familiar things with me everywhere. It must somehow be comforting to me, although I don't totally understand why I should be in need of the comfort sometimes... Just knowing I have whatever it is I'm feeling attached to with me makes me feel less adrift and alone.

I wasn't in traditional daycare as a little kid, but there were daycare spots available for when my parents wanted to go out for the evening, or whatever, and I would bring things from home even though I was told not to. I would bring my teddy bear at the risk that some other child would steal it (which they did, although I did get it back when my parents confirmed it was mine). I was simply unwilling to be separated from it. I once had a sheet of totally awesome holographic She-Ra stickers with me at the same daycare. My parents warned me not to take them. But to keep other kids from just taking and using them, I kept it them in my coat pocket, and my coat was kept out of the gated-off playroom area. I crept out of the playroom to go look at and feel the stickers several times. I can't explain why. It was like some kind of talisman for me. By the time my parents picked me up, though, they were gone. I can only guess some kid saw me looking at them and nicked them from my pocket. I've never forgotten those She-Ra stickers!!

In elementary school I would take various things with me to school, just to have with me and look at throughout the day. I took Pleasant Company catalogues (you know, the company that sold the American Girls dolls), cassette tapes (I really have no idea why!! It's not like I could listen to them!), family pictures, books, cereal box prizes or other similar small plastic toys, one time a specific bar of soap... which in hindsight makes no sense. When I'd spend the night with friends, I had to have one of my own toys with me. I also often took my own blanket, even if it was unnecessary. While it was normal to bring things like movies to watch with others, as this was back in the day of VHS tapes, sometimes I would take a movie that I was all hung up on and not tell anyone. I'd just have it with me. You know! Because!!

I never stopped doing this, although the objects changed and varied.

In middle/high school I took heavy reams of my own writing and art to school rather than leave them at home where they belonged, brought CDs with me (again, even if I couldn't listen to them, just being with them made me feel comforted, and I would look at the art/lyrics), lugged around my Hello Kitty stationery junk with stamps and stickers and other things I could not use for school at all. I carried around letters from pen pals and other tokens of friendship rather than leave them at home.

When I started carrying a purse circa age 15, the concealment and carrying of items became easier, and maybe also normalized carrying stuff around, a bit. Lots of purse-carriers wind up carrying extraneous things with them everywhere, every day!

In my late teens/early twenties, when I had pet rodents (I had hamsters, mice, and many many rats), I would sometimes take them with me overnight to friends' houses. Even if their cage was large and it was a pain!

As I've grown older -- and I'm a full-fledged adult, mind you -- I have never ceased carrying around comfort objects. I have remained Linus with his security blanket all these years. And sometimes that blanket is a literal blanket.

Now it is Blythes that I am wont to take with me away from the comfort of home. When I first got Aury, she went everywhere with me for a long time.

Even if they stay concealed in my purse the entire time I'm out, or they merely stand on the bedside table of wherever I'm visiting and I don't really "play" with them, it's like they assure me that all is normal and well. I absolutely think of them as comfort objects in my daily life, so they are even moreso when I am away from home, too. I can think, "I am okay, since Aury is with me. I am not that far away from home." I can't explain it any better than that.

Yes, I think if I had a fun photo op, it'd be cool to have a Blythe there with me on my trip! I don't want to weird anyone out, nor do I want to put any of my dolls in danger of getting damaged, but I can't help thinking about taking one. I'm undecided at the moment.

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video: Blythe Styling Tips

The past few days for me have been dedicated to getting this video finished up! You wouldn't believe how long it takes to make a ten-minute video when you are filming so many small things, working with so many shots, and have so many gigs of HD footage that your little ol' computer starts warning you that you have no space left.


Anyway, I made this in response to a request for such a thing, and before I went ahead with it I put a lot of thought into whether I really had any styling "tips" at all. As I say in the video, this kind of stuff is so subjective! It's not like there's a right or wrong to any of it. I was wondering, what are legit ideas I can share, and what are the things I do that simply boil down to personal preference? Do I really have advice to share that is useful to anyone? Like, literally helpful? I feel funny saying this video has styling tips, when really, I think it's more like me saying, "Well, this is what I do and what I like..."

This was hanging around half-finished on my hard drive for a month so I'm really happy to have it done, even with my general tendency towards mixed feelings in regards to my videos.

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Bea and my new gear.

Oh, you know my color compulsions! My new Fender Squier Affinity Stratocaster arrived a couple of days ago and I've been like, "Oh, I have to take pictures of Beatrix with it!" Haha! I want to do a series with all my instruments!!

But about this guitar: I'm really ridiculously happy with it! It's so pretty and cheery. I must confess that, aesthetically, I like having guitars that really feel like me (and not like I'm a 15-year-old boy starting a garage band). Although I haven't decided on an amp yet, I've been enjoying jamming on it without an amp enough to feel like I have to get one ASAP.

And I'm really wailing on it, for some reason! I tend to play very gently, and I only "ghost strum" -- I have ever since I began to learn how to play the guitar three years ago. That means I only strum downwards, and not up and down, like, you know... you're supposed to! I've never minded this, as I play the guitar strictly for myself and for its therapeutic benefits to me. I'm not joining a band anytime soon. But for some reason I feel more comfortable practicing strumming upwards on this instrument. And I feel comfortable really letting go on it. I can already tell it's helping me with my bar chords (although that is a constant work in progress).

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girls in their summer clothes (rêve love, part two)

I always love taking pictures of these two together... I just feel like they are unlikely kindred spirits. And I love Beatrix with a Licca body! I always knew she should have one! But now, standing next to the prim and always elegant Petaline, the differences in their personalities shine even more.

Both of these dreamy duds are from, yes, the wonderful rêve de Rui*. Petaline is showing a lot of leg! And wearing sandals. Truly relaxed!

Bonus Track: Bruce Springsteen - Girls In Their Summer Clothes

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New family portrait!

(click here to embiggen!)

From left to right: Gavin, Lamb, Aury, Klara, Mallow, Bonnet (the Middie), Clarke, Plummery, Petaline, Beatrix, Fey, and Drew!

It was about darn time for new family portrait, seeing as how it's been a little over a year since the last! Oh my gosh. Toting eleven Neos (and a Middie) out into June heat, trying to find shade, is quite an undertaking. And now that I have so many girls, they're kind of hard to fit into a line up-style picture! There I was, taking picture after picture where Aury looked like she was about to fall over, and I didn't even see it in real life.

It is definitely amazing to see how my gaggle of girls has grown over the past four years. They each have special memories attached. Some were gifts (Plummery, Petaline and Lamb were given to me by friends!); some have traveled with me; some have been my muses; some had technical difficulties; some have been deboxed on YouTube; some have been called particularly creepy; almost all have worked as models for Etsy.

And it all started with my Ice Rune, Aury. I love her so much. My favoritism is absolutely blatant. If my house was on fire, she is the one thing I'd grab to rescue.

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toadstool ornaments

It seems I've started a small collection of toadstool ornaments this year. These go on the big tree, not my pink tree. They're heavy!

Our tree is pretty much dripping with all kinds of ornaments, handmade and gifted and store-bought. My mom collects snowflakes and there are a number of them on our tree, and she also has a second smaller tree that she fills entirely with snowflakes. Before this year, I've never attempted to have my own holiday decor, as we have more than we can even really fit on our tree -- and I like our kitschy hodge-podge.

I feel like I'm gonna need a tag for toadstools on this blog!

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I'm a fool for April

Dressed up all my Blythes for a family portrait! Lamb (second to right) fits right in. Alas for Bonnet, I am not too great at taking pictures of Middies.

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Blythe goals

My gang of Blythe dolls standing in a row atop my desk has really been a source of great joy for me the past several years. They truly make me happy when I look up at them, and it can be relaxing for me just to spend time looking at them.

It's fun for me to style them and take pictures of them too, but they often reflect my aesthetics and current color passions, so I derive strange joy from just having them standing around and also being really particular and fussy with the way I have each girl dressed.

When I go places, sometimes I sneak a girl with me like a talisman of strength, or just a friend. I like to have one standing or sitting by me when I'm crafting. I like to make little hats for them, so they give me something to do with my hands. If I didn't have dolls to make hats for... well, boxes of other things I've made are still sitting around in my room, so in my nightmarescape my room would look much more like an episode of Hoarders waiting to happen.

So Blythes for me are a creative outlet, and also like art/decor and comfort objects all at once. I don't consider myself a collector, even though by now they number enough to be considered a collection; I just think of them as my Blythe family and I have such an affection for each one. I even had a dream about Beatrix last night!

Anyway, even when I haven't changed half of them in a month (or sometimes several months if I really like the way they're dressed), I enjoy them literally every day. I want to indulge myself in some focus after a year of spending a lot of my free time writing, and not buying too many dolly duds or taking too many pictures. So I have a little list of "Blythe goals," or just things I'd really like to do in the coming year...

Easy:

• do ADAD for a month (I'm thinking February or March)
• find a charm for Mallow's pullstring
• buy some more tights, socks, and separates
• give Gavin and Mallow a spa day
• new family portrait to include Lamb!

Medium:

• sew another felt A-line dress
• knit another hat!
• finally, finally do a closet cleanout on Blythe Kingdom... why is this so hard??

Laughably Ambitious:

• really make my dumb DIY lightbox more usable
• make a little scale doll room/diorama
• get a faceup for Bonnet and possibly Gavin

I have no hard, fast goals -- besides very definitely picking a month to do ADAD and sticking to it, no matter how boring I feel my pictures are or if I'm totally nocturnal and have no light -- but lots of thoughts/shoulds!

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like money

Ah, September, where have you gotten off to?? Side note: September is green to me. The number 7 is green, too.

Here's what I've been up to lately:

• yearning for autumn
• burning cinnamon-scented votive candles, in my yearning for autumn
• constructing lots of antlers
• writing
• Chore Wars
• planning a get-together with some long-time online friends in October! I hang out with L (a fellow Blyther!) about once a year, but I haven't met up with K in five years, and I've only met S in passing!
• listening to way too much Wonder Girls

Speaking, the Wonder Girls have a new song featuring Akon out, but "Be My Baby" is the one that I'm really playing the crap out of! Love it! It's hooky, melodic k-pop meets "Single Ladies." I'm so happy the Wonder Girls are trying to make it in America; I'm following them closely.


One more of my own little wonder girl... love this Reve de Rui dress! She's rocking Very Vicky's stock tights and her own stock boots (plus a bow from Forever 21).

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understated as ever

It's so incredibly lovely out on these April afternoons! Despite Miss Beatrix looking extra cute in a very vintagey orange and blue plaid (!!!) dress that suited her so perfectly that she wore it for a few months, I finally let her have first dibs on this fabulous charcoal-gray CannonBelle cardigan. She's also wearing one of my fave Reve de Rui dresses -- it's quite airy -- and Very Vicky's dark teal stock Mary Janes. The little bow keeping her side-part back in a twist is from a scrap of mustard ripple yarn. I just love Beatrix in yellows and mustards. Her front-facing chips are yellow!

Currently:

• listening to: "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" -- not gonna lie, I still love the music video for it!
• coveting: this J. Crew. sweater... in ruby!
• working on: laundry, writing, ripple blanket
• contemplating: what on Earth to ask for for my birthday in a couple of weeks!

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