MAY'S MIDDLE SUNDAY

 

Well I survived the infection that attacked me the other week , although it's taken a good week to recover from whatever it was ! But I am now back and starting to do more, although the weather immediately turned cold and rainy, so I have not managed to get back into the doll studio. But at least the garden's had a good watering over this last week.

At the moment it's been mostly about the garden, which is starting to fill up with all this sun and rain, although the couple of cold nights did damage a couple of the plants , but most we were able to protect.

Naturally while recovering from my illness, I was forced to wander the world wide web, popping into various places and I did land up treating my dolls to a couple of items from Ginny, at A Passion For Sasha on Etsy. She had some of her aprons reduced to half price, along with other reductions here and there, so of course I had to have a few bargains.

But I am pleased to say I didn't buy any dolls or props, which was a bonus! In fact I have been sorting out some dolls to sell, a couple of Sasha's and a Gregor, I just need to get my act together and put them up for adoption.

Today's headliner is Nancy , wearing a purple gingham dress set by Ginny and Rosie Bloom sandals.

She was pleased to finally be out of her Christmas dress ! and to finally have some ribbons to match. 

The doll's kitchen still needs to be finished and the washing machine and other bits put in place again. Then I need to work on the next section plus the cupboards below need to be checked and a list made of what's inside and taped to the door, which will save on time when looking for things.

 

Hopefully next week Paul will make the table /shelf for the twin's garden shed to go on along with their greenhouse.

On the downsizing, clearing side, I'm pleased to say that I have sold on a few of the Maileg furniture items and a baby Sasha and another non Sasha doll.  Selling the last few item I had on of Maileg furniture, meant I emptied out a large shopping bag I was keeping them in , so I didn't lose them, which was very satisfying. 

Hopefully I can find some more unused items, to help carry on clearing some space in the doll studio and the overspill. I will get back into the studio to carry on with the cleaning, tidying and finding this coming week. I definitely need to sort through the boxes and bags I have left on the patio table under the gazebo, since we asked Lauren's partner to come and take a video of the garden with his drone, along with some photos. I don't think it flying and looking around the gazebo with a massive pile of items filling the table is really what we want to see in the finished edit ! 

Sadly these two sweethearts are up for adoption , because they have had to stay in their boxes ever since they arrived as I had nowhere to display them. They are by Aldegonde Ceelen. I had originally bought them to do little stories with them but this is the first time the poor girls have been together and outside in the garden. If I manage to find them a place to display , they may well land up staying. The designer who made them, also made lovely clothes you could buy for them too.

So the sun is actually trying to shine out there and dolls are waiting to finally get out of the winter clothing, which means I'd best get on with it.

Have a happy healthy week ahead and hopefully, more will have been done to report on next week

Dee

NOT A DOLL BUT

 

 Just wanted to share this photo I took of some bearded Iris's that have flowered up on the raised bed near to the greenhouse. A lovely early clump of colour. 

CHILLY SUNDAY IN MAY

 

So this week I have been ill, all week. I'm still not 100% , which means nothing has been happening with regard to the house, the garden or the dolls. Although that's not quite true, the garden as been moving along slowly , since Paul does all the work.

I did manage to get out into the doll studio for an hour and get the larder cupboard and dresser back in place and that area is starting to look better, but now the temperature has dropped for the next couple of days, so any more work will have to wait until it warms up and I get better.

So today's headline photo is an old one of the dolls, Claudia , Ginny and Elizabeth. 

Three brunettes but only Claudia is still here.

One of the things I did think on this week is how many dolls have come into the village last year and some of this, so a couple of dolls will probably be going as I now have no space for them to stand. 

So some dolls will be back on the adoption market once I feel up to dealing with it all.

I'll end with this photo of the lovely Magda who will be going nowhere any time soon.

Have a lovely healthy happy week ahead

Dee

SLOW RESTART ON THE KITCHEN TIDY

 So finally got back into the doll studio today to get a little more done. Paul has sorted out the missing hinge to the larder cupboard door and added a couple of shelves to the tall upper cupboard.

Back in the kitchen and now filled with goodies.

Plenty of storage for those larder staples.

Now the older readers of this blog will hopefully know just what this is and may have even seen their mothers using one in her kitchen.

Yes, it's a mincer. My mother had one , into which she would feed beef, turning the handle so it came out as mince. 

Here it is fitted to the larder cupboard side ready for use.

Also in the kitchen 

a few more treasures.

The great little wall holder for kitchen utensils, I found on the Ruby Lane website , the rolling pin I already had. The prefect addition to the working kitchen.

On the table is a lovely set of scales , kindly given to me by my lovely friend Jenni in Wales. It did have four weights but alas the smallest two have gone missing, but may hopefully turn back up over time.

On the left is a miniature Peek Frean's biscuit tin. I just had to have this, my Nan used to work for the Peak Frean's biscuit factory when I was a child and on the odd occasion, my dad would take us to meet her from work, she worked late in the evenings. The workers were about to buy paper bags full of broken biscuits for just a few pennies. The factory also made chocolate biscuits for the Queen, which my Nan would also buy a small bag of those broken ones. They were wonderful, similar to club biscuits but twice the size and twice the depth, a big chunk of chocolate at each end !  

Another tin I have.

The now painted dresser is back in place with the China back on the shelves and the cupboard full.

I bought this range stove off German Ebay a good few years back. It came with a good few brass/ copper pots.

Alas the kettle was minus it's lid, so at some stage I should really try and find/make a replacement.

I love the little rail that runs round the front and sides, perfect for the tea towels.

and of course one needs a dustpan and brush to keep the kitchen floor clean.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing some of the kitchen items. There are a few more which I will share next week.

JAPANESE STYLE AND A FULL STOP

 

One of the dresses I received from Ginny, needed , in my opinion, a Sasha with a shorter hair style.

Even though this dress does have a fair amount of orange in it, with the blues it's fine and the pattern is so nice I just had to get it. 

So Saffy was the perfect girl for this dress. I hope you all agree.

She says she'd like the little black boots to wear with it but she'll have to wait a while since I'm unwell at the moment and don't have the energy to go searching for her boots. She's lucky she's been redressed. Hopefully once the meds kick in , I will be able to get back out to the studio and carry on with my big clean. Then I'm sure I'll find her boots as I work ! 

IT'S THE FIFTH SO DOLL PHOTO DAY

 Yes it's already time for the fifth month's doll photos.

First up is this gorgeous photo from RoRoPo of the handsome young Otto, who is inspecting the apple blossom , all is looking good for a great harvest of apples. He can almost taste that apple crumble ! 

From Gill we have two sweet slate eyed Gotz girls, very interested in what mum is up to! Once Mum's finished , they get to use the camera and intend to do some voque-ing , I can even hear the music playing 

From up north we have a couple lads with their coke supply . . . . . naughty ! The drink coke.

I think these lads eyes maybe getting even tinier than normal, due to all the fizz they drink but 

they 'down' wit the crew in them baggy pants en it ! 

Ashley is waiting on Sienna to join her for a photo to show off their new Ginny  summer dresses but

Sienna has decided that she'd like a separate photo. But she'll have one with Ashley another time she says.

Sienna is wearing the second of the two new dresses in what the girls like to call the Audrey Hepburn

style. 

From across the pond we have Kaveh and Blake looking handsome in their sport shirts from Ginny's

While some of their sisters are showing off  their pretty pastel dresses. A beautiful line up of single fringe girls.

Thank you to everyone sending in their photos for us to enjoy. Still time to add yours, just send them in.

DECIDED

 

So finally I decided to paint the old dresser!

So then deciding on the colour , now the purple did appeal i have to confess but I thought it would be just too dark for this.

So I looked at my store of Farrow and Ball sample pots, singling out the blues and greens.

I settled on the colour Cooking Apple Green, a very pale green.

When I got near to the bottom on the first coat , I thought about whether to paint the inside. I decided I would as it would help brighten it up.

Not wanting to run out of paint, I decided to use one of the other greens, but when I started painting it inside I realised that it may be a better choice for the main colour.

So I checked it out by painting it inside the door detail. This one is called Breakfast Room green by FB, look at that depth of colour compared to the quite pale Cooking Apple ! Of course I then changed my plans and painted the inside with the cooking apple green.

So the final finish was Cooking Apple green inside the cupboard but also on the shelves and back of the dresser top and the Breakfast Room green on all the rest.

The back looks almost white, so I am assuming it's the inside of the cooking apple that have matched the colour to.

Then it's time to decide, do I change the handles, paint the existing handles, also do I leave the door panel's as is, paint a design in them or maybe find some dolls house paper to add? 

Well I thought I'd check out some plates on the newly painted dresser 

only to find I had got Paul to put the plate stays too far back and they could not go behind them ! This is because I was worried it would reduce space for other items to stand in front or between them. So now I have had to ask Paul to remove and reglue them, so will need to repaint the shelves once the glues set.

Typically once it was all painted I decided that the uneven top needed to be replaced . There I was sooo close but no just had to throw a spanner !

So wood was purchase and Paul was soon cut and carving a new piece to fit the top, then glued in place.

So the dresser is now finished , just need to put the other door handle back in place , along with the cup hooks I removed and then it can go back into the dolls kitchen and be re loaded up with China.

I do have plans for Paul to make me a wider one later in the year ( don't want him missing the Chat N Snap makes ) which if and when he does, I'll have to be good and sell this one on and not try and keep it.  What's that saying . . . . . Less is more . . . .  If only I believed lol

OUR FIRST SUNDAY THIS MAY

Well the weather's been good the this past week, but I did have visitors on Tuesday so no heading to and clearing out of the doll studio started until well Friday. I removed the majority of what was sitting around on the floor one afternoon.

Then went off on a tangent as usual and decided to ask Paul to put a couple of strips of wood on my small wooden dresser , so the plates would be more secure. Then I decided maybe it needed painting, so time was spent on the dresser and not in the studio cleaning up, although I did manage to get back in and decided to start with the kitchen area.

Which like everywhere else , things had been dumped and needed sorting out and putting away or selling on.

But I did manage to start clearing the kitchen space, ready for a good clean . So talking to a friend about what I'm doing, I decided to share some photos of some of the items I have acquired over the years for my kitchen set up.

So first up is this amazing 1950/60's Triange kitchen cupboard in it's original blue paint. Complete with worn out sign on the top.

Unfortunately it does have a missing hinge on the top right hand cupboard, we did search for one when I bought it but did not fins anything small enough or similar but I'm going to look again and try and find something which can do the job even if not exactly the same.

It' s had a few changes of handles over the years due to the assortment now on all the different door.

But one of the special things about this cupboard is this extra work surface that pulls out from under the top ! 

I just love this little hidden section based on a cupboard available no doubt at the time.

Seen from the side you can see it's quite deep , it's also quite heavy. You can just see the little round feet it stands on.

Which means the bottom cupboard and the drawers are quite deep. 

No idea what it's supposed to be used for , maybe storing slightly bigger items that children could play with in their kitchen.

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The drawers.

Again with this long tall cupboard space at the top, why no shelves ? Was it a case of saving on cost by not adding a couple of shelves or at least one on this side ? 

I think I will now get Paul to add one shelf in this long tall cupboard or maybe two since it can then be of more use. Filled with food for a larder. I will leave the bottom cupboard big and deep for storing kitchen pots and pans etc.

So there it is, a perfect larder cupboard for the dolls kitchen.

Well it looks like this doll studio clean up, is also going to be a look at everything and repairing, if needed, along with a change around possibly. So what was supposed to be a week long job, will now probably take a good bit longer but at the end it will be worth it .

Today's headliner is a Sasha who came and went ! But she is a beautiful 68 girl , so well worth a second look.

Unfortunately I came down with some bug last night , so was not up to taking new photos today. But it is lovely to see some of those doll's who came to live in the village , if only for a short time, again now and then.

On the doll front, I have sold a big piece of my Maileg , which is great as I had saved the box I could post it in as well and it was taking up a big space in the studio before I moved it out and now it's sold it's saved a lot of space.

I have to confess that I have bought a couple of dresses for the Sasha's and some shoes for my Roche dolls. But at least dresses and shoes do not take up too much space.

Things are slowly going and it may take a couple of years but sooner or much later, I will get my doll items in order and back to a much more useable state. Unless of course I come into money , then I'll buy a bigger studio !!! lol

On that note I will wish you a happy healthy week ahead, remind you that it's almost the fifth, so doll photo day, one is already sitting ready and waiting and it's not mine. I usually slide in last thing by the skin of my teeth ! 

Dee