My Favorite Things tea

Yesterday my mom, grandma, little sister, and I got together for a tea. We haven't really done this in a while, for a lot of reasons, but we used to it with some regularity! It's a phenomenon that predates my blog, even. I'm sure we've been doing it for at least twenty years at this point. (I think I have only posted pictures of a tea once and that was almost ten years ago.) It's really an excuse for my mom and grandma to set a pretty table, which they adore! And of course we get to have little treats!

Any excuse for a tea will do. It doesn't have to have a theme. But you bet we have had Valentine's teas and Halloween teas and have had some very specific themes, such as the old Disney cartoon, The Reluctant Dragon. Our theme for this tea was The Sound of Music, specifically the song "My Favorite Things."

I inivted myself to use two of my Blythes as a centerpiece! As you can see, Olive and Tiphanie are the "girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes," and they happen to have "snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes!" There are some flakes I punched out with one of those decorative paper punches that I stuck onto their faces and hair with small shreds of washi tape, and there are also tiny jewels I pressed on here and there, for additional effect! My mom made place cards that are "brown paper packages tied up with strings." And, I found some old fake roses that I've had for eons and stuck some of those itty bitty blingies to them, for "raindrops on roses."

This is the kind of theme we could have gone overboard with, trying to represent everything mentioned in the song. But we came up with the idea only a few days before the tea, so we just did what we had time to do!

My grandma hosted the tea in her tiny and very dark dining room, so mostly, my pictures didn't come out. I didn't take too many, either. I felt self-conscious making people move aside for me and stuff, and of course I had a heavy bias towards mostly just wanting to take pictures of my dolls, hahaha. I did not get any good pictures of the food; they just didn't turn out at all! The following couple of pictures are from my mom's phone:

The treats were pretty! There were petit fours from a bakery, tiny cinnamon rolls, cheese on wheat crackers, a few varities of tea sandwiches, scones (blueberry and cranberry orange), and fruit skewers. I don't drink tea so I had some cranberry juice, haha. And it was so hot that nobody wanted hot tea. Iced tea was served instead.

After the tea, we four ladies sat in the cool living room and had a family sing-along. So von Trapp. I know y'all are not surprised that we do this with regularity. While it does depend on who's present for the sing-along and who knows what songs, as to what gets sung, it's very often folk songs from the 60s ("Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Teach Your Children" and such) that older members of the family know, or other songs that at least a couple of us know and can sing through. And family songs, you know? For us, a family song would be "The Ugly Bug Ball" from Summer Magic. A beloved staple for us, but maybe not well-known to most.

You better believe we sang "Edelweiss," "My Favorite Things," and "Do-Re-Mi."

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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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now i'm your daisy

Happy July. No sense in not mentioning it: I've started a new med (ya girl takes like a dozen pills every day) and it's made me feel real wonk in a startlingly wide variety of ways. So this post, while it does have a running theme, is not going to be my most coherent. Just a small collection of different Things Of Late. Whee!

As pictured above, I recently got some daisy knobs for my guitar! Y'all remember Karma, surely! Well, Pinterest totally got my ass. That's where I saw them. They were cheap enough to seem like a fun purchase, and it was definitely an impulse purchase on my part! I rarely actually plug in my guitar to my mini amp, so I don't use the knobs frequently. That's good, because I don't think these knobs are super functional. One of them doesn't seem to turn the dial it's supposedly gripping onto. However, these are just a little something that makes my guitar look and feel cheery and me-ish, so I really like them nevertheless. They make me happy whenever I pick up my guitar.

I've been making these crochet flowers the past couple of days. Another throwback to an older post: I crocheted around a phone charging cord to give it a vine-y appearance. It is just to cute-ify things, you know! A whimsical touch to an otherwise boring and ugly thing. I always thought, "It'd be even cuter with flowers." Since that post, the cord pictured has met its final end, so I've crocheted two more cords, and may well do even more, if I need things to do during knitting club. And I have decided to go ahead and experiment with sewing flowers onto the cord. I'm still in the flower creation stage right now. I'm using this pattern for these flowers. But I'd like to find a few more so I can get in some variation.

Just for fun: Olive in a drawstring dress printed with daisies! I'm gonna freakin' squee just looking at her!! I have yet to dress her in anything other than green. Maybe someday.

Also just because I think it's fun/cute: I got this pink and daisy-print heating pad last month. I'm super rough on heating pads. I use them all the time. And of course eventually they give up on me. I've gotten the same plain gray heating pad the last three times I've had to replace my heating pad, and this time I decided to switch it up. Maybe this one will last longer than a couple of years. Or maybe it won't. But I'll find out! It's very cushy and fuzzy, which I'm not used to. But I gotta say it goes better in my room than the plain gray one I keep replacing over and over.

To be honest this is not even the only daisy-ish stuff I could have added into this post. But like I said, I'm feeling pretty wonky right now, so getting pictures of things is a challenge for me. Just sitting here at my desk, I feel like keeling over and yartzing.

Hopefully these side effects will ease up soon.

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finally, a girl i can drink with

Today's cause for happiness: my new (old) girl has arrived! This is Olive, an EBL Tea For Two originally released in March 2003, and I adopted her from Amber, aka amberblythelife on Instagram. Amber has quite the collection and posts beautiful, varied, colorful Blythe photos! Olive was given her name by Amber. I'm keeping it because I think it suits this girl really well. It calls to mind her green stock! All of which she came with, in her original box! Most of it's still taped to the cardboard, too, NRFB!!! Amazing!

She's in perfect condition. More than perfect! Not a dang scratch on her, and her hair is lovely!

This box was so fun to open, not only because she was beautifully packed with several additional outfits that Amber sent along with her, but because all these little flowers had been sprinkled amongst the packaging. I wanted to remember that fun detail by taking Olive's first portraits with them.

She was also fun to unbox because I did it with my mom! So I did not film it. I was sort of intending to, but when I picked up the package, my mom asked, "Can I see her?" and I opted for the experience of opening her up with my mom instead.

Tea For Two is my very first EBL (!) and definitely the oldest release in my collection, by many years. (Simply Peppermint is technically the oldest girl I have and she's from 2009, released before Ice Rune who was my first ever Blythe.) I haven't actually seen any of the earliest face molds in person until TODAY! All of my girls are RBLs (or RBL variants) or FBLs! So to me, the difference in appearance is very striking and fascinating. The lashes on this girl are super light and delicate compared to the typical eyelashes we see on later releases. It gives her such a waif-y look! I love it! But very immediately, while taking her picture, I was like, "Wow, I don't know how to photograph this face mold." I'll have to learn!

I have been thinking about getting this particular girl, Tea For Two, for literally years now. I know I've talked to my friend L about it several times! In fact, I found instances of her name in our chat logs as far back as 2021.

As you can see, I decided in favor of other dolls almost every time I had the Blythe Gimmes (TM Lucy)! I bought Zyanya Remembers and Aurella Amphitrite instead -- and of course L was the one who gifted me Shelley Victorian, another girl I had wanted for years!! So when Amber put Olive up for adoption I asked for her right away. I felt like it was finally time to scoop this girl!

And aren't these pics of her from Amber's Instagram super cute??? I love the red-orange on her.

( pic one / pic two )

As of right now I have twenty Neo Blythes, and -- wow. That's crazy to me. I never would have imagined it even just a couple of years ago. I had a static collection of thirteen girls for a number of years. My family expanded by a lot in 2023, to nineteen, and I have wondered since if I should cap my Neo collection at twenty. But I must admit, I don't think I will. I am fifteen or so years into enjoying Blythe as a hobby and I still get so much enjoyment out of it. I do get the occasional rash of Blythe Gimmes but for the most part I think I approach the hobby with temperance. Especially since I overwhelmingly favor keeping the dolls I buy long-term.

To end the post: My cat would NOT leave Olive alone and almost every picture I took, he got in. He absolutely had to sit down on this backdrop and sniff her and purr like a chainsaw, no matter how much I kept trying to push him off, shoo him, distract him. Yet he had the nerve to refuse to look at my camera?!

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