Let's have January's update before the end of February, shall we?

Hello everyone.
 

January was kind of an up and down month. It was extremely cold which just absolutely destroyed my productivity. I do have plastic on my windows and a space heater but this year even those two things did not do much help when battling some freezing cold temperatures. I spent a lot of January bundled up and under covers trying to maintain a decent temperature, which has not been easy. We have had some mild winters the past few years so I guess I can't complain too much, but boy has this winter been brutal. It warmed up a bit at the end of the month, so that did help me be a little more productive.

My productivity did not apply to sewing, I honestly did not get any sewing done. I have to be in the right mood for it, and freezing cold temperatures are not it. There are a couple things coming up I need/want to sew for so I should be doing some soon.

I was better with spending in January compared to December (which was not hard to do since I was SO bad in December), but still not great. I did manage to avoid buying any dolls for their bodies, but did pick up a few vintage dolls. I bought a Titan American Girl head on Etsy for 57 dollars. She has some paint wear to her lips and darkened vinyl, but is still so pretty. Despite a general feeling of having too many vintage dolls, I don't think I can stop buying American Girls if I find them for a good price, Swirls have that same mindset I just seem to have less luck finding them at what I consider a reasonable price. That would have been my only vintage doll, but I did hang out with a friend during the month where I bought Sun Tan Dodi and a lovely brunette Sindy (who for an impulse buy I adore). I also managed to finish up the Hello Kitty clothing set from Mattel. This year has been so expensive for doll clothes. I usually don't buy doll clothes, but I've already spent a disgusting amount of money on doll clothes and plan on spending a lot more. I plan on getting the pretty much all of the licensed sets from Mattel. They're pretty cheap until you start adding them up. While I like them, (some more than others) I really don't have a lot of dolls to display them on. I don't have a ton of modern dolls to dress them in. I feel bad buying so many things and never really displaying them properly. I'm not helping myself when I say I have too many things by buying them and never using them. Also earlier in the month Walmart sold off their leftover Fashionista dolls from Christmas for five dollars and I went a bit overboard. I bought the ones I had my eyes on and several that I kinda just liked parts of since they were so cheap. In conjunction with that I was pretty bad with Korean dolls. I did a big splurge on a Korean website and bought four Mimi dolls. They're cheaper when you buy more at once, but they're still not cheap. I plan on talking about that experience in an eventual blog post in the future. Not all of the Mimi dolls are staying, but there's still several more I'm planning on getting. I'm hoping to quell my Mimi doll addiction in the near future. It's almost as bad as the American Girl Megablox addiction from last year and those were a lot cheaper per doll! Mimi already outnumbers Jenny and Licca dolls in my collection. Not the combined total just yet, but she's creeping up there. (And honestly, a couple of the Mimi dolls I bought just for their accessories, so I will be reselling some of them eventually).

I did make some progress on eBay. I really made myself focus and got the majority of the things that had aged out relisted. I wish I could say all, but a small amount of listings I couldn't find parts of and will have to redo. I have them set aside, so they will get worked on but I'm going slow for that. I did manage to get several new things listed, so I'm making progress in that aspect but there's still so much to work on. There hasn't been a lot of process since it's been so cold. I bought a lot of stuff in December for resale (bits and pieces of what I didn't want), so there's quite a backlog to work through. I really haven't kept up with it since earlier in the year so there's a lot to work thru.

January did bring an unexpected addition to our family this month, a kitten! In late January my father went out grocery shopping and found the kitten on a stretch of road where there's no houses darting across the road in front of some cars. My father stopped and chased him around in the snow trying to catch him. We posted online about the kitten, checked Craigslist, and called the local humane society about him and gave it a week for any updates in case he had a home and was just lost but got no replies, so he's ours now. He's incredibly friendly and docile (other than when he wants to play). I've never seen a cat who was so calm when dealing with a new environment. Usually cats kind of hide then gradually warm up to a new house, but the same day after getting here he was demanding people pet him and was curled up in my mother's lap. I was very worried about him with Willow since Willow is so skittish, but they've been getting along well. Willow's even been more playful since he showed up. Mato doesn't seem to be a fan, but he mostly just hisses at the kitten and tries to stay away from him.

Here he is a few days after we got him, he had missing a patch of fur on his nose.

At first we weren't sure if my dad found the kitten or decided we needed one and made up a story, but now we do agree he found it. I wasn't in love with the idea of a new cat (especially since it was just the one year anniversary of Simba's passing), but I do like him. He's a little nuts at times, but he is a kitten. I still haven't named him yet. I have a couple things in mind, but I haven't found the perfect name yet. Right now the top choices are Tanner, Tandie, and Fennel. However they don't feel perfect. It might be a while until he gets named, Willow took a while to get her name too. It just has to feel right.

Just from yesterday, he's hard to get a picture of since he's always moving around. He's already doubled in weight, he sure loves his kitten chow.

Right now my goals for February are to stop spending so much (spoiler alert, not happening so far), work on eBay a lot more, and get things more organized around here. Things are kind of all over the place and I'm not doing a stellar job keeping the mess at bay. Fingers crossed I'll make progress on that!

Aliexpress Shopping, Was it Worth it? - A Review!

Hello everyone,

I'm already falling short with my blogging goals for the year and in the first month! It's already February 9th and you've heard nary a peep from me. I've been flip flopping between being incredibly productive and being a lump that's unmotivated to do anything. I need something to light a fire under me!

But that's not what this post is about, it's going to be a review post! It's not going to be a Korean fashion doll review since I've been very slow on working on that. I started it and took the pictures, but haven't worked on it recently. Today's review is going to be a quick and short one (or at least as short as I can manage).

Around the middle of January I found some Barbie shoes over on Aliexpress. They were Barbie sized, but looked very different than your usual Barbie shoes. I asked around and it turns out they were recasts from an Ever After shoe. I ended up buying them because I thought they looked super cool, and with shoes like that they usually don't keep getting made. Once they sell out, they're gone. I had already missed out on some shrunken down Monster High shoes, so I was not going to let these pass me by. I bought them, but since I was already placing an order I spent some time looking for the Monster High shoes I had missed out on, since hope springs eternal. No luck on those shoes, but I did find a couple shoes I was interested in so I ended up buying those. Partly due to the fact that Chinese New Year is coming up and if I didn't buy them now, I'd have to wait until March to buy them.

This review isn't about the Ever After High shoes (they have yet to arrive), but another thing I purchased. One of the things I found was a small set of  doll accessories. It looked extremely cheap, but that's what kind of drew me to it. There's this twinge of childhood nostalgia that comes with certain quality clone items. I was also hoping that the shoes would be big enough to fit Joe's larger than Ken sized feet. I paid 1.78 for it including shipping from China and it arrived super fast. I don't think I've ever had something from China arrive so quickly. I'm still waiting for something I ordered in the end of November and despite the seller swearing they shipped it, I don't think it's actually coming.

Anyway, despite the items super quick arrival time it was a little disappointing right off the bat. In all of the picture listings they showed pictures of two sets, one white and blue and one blue and white. The listing said it was for one piece, but I wasn't sure if the set together was one piece or two pieces. Turns out they consider both items as separate pieces and send you one randomly. I got the one that's mostly blue with white accents. I don't know if I would have paid so much for them knowing I'd only get one item, especially since I now see they're selling it for 30 cents cheaper. Oh well, live and learn.

Here's a picture of the listing showing the item in the package 

(since I tore mine open the moment it arrived):

I will say that they packed it very well. It arrived in a simple plastic envelope, but it was wrapped in two layers of thick bubble wrap (which I reuse for my shipping).

The package is simple a cardboard backer with a molded plastic bubble that houses the contents. The front is pink with the image of a castle, butterfly, some flowers, and the text "Fashion Shopping". They don't look to be the same art style, so I assume it's cobbled together from a variety of sources. The majority of the text is in English, but there's a decent amount of another language. Unfortunately, I'm no linguist so I don't know where it's from. The back of the card is simple blank cardboard with three stickers. One with a bar code with Chinese characters and some numbers, one in English with the choking hazard information, and one with another bar code saying it was imported for Formosa S.A. and includes Paraguay, so I assume that's where that company is from.

Inside the package you get the following; a suitcase, a smartphone, a visor, a baseball hat, a pair of women's high top sneakers, and a pair of men's sneakers.

What's interesting about this set is that all of the items in this set are hard plastic, even the shoes. Also nothing is painted in this set, any color differences are separate pieces of plastic (or stickers in a few cases). I'm going to break down the items and discuss them one by one.

Staring with the woman's shoes, these shoes are designed to look like high top sneakers. They have a white upper part with a blue sole. They're kind of oddly shaped and don't fit. I tried them on Charlotte (first wave Fashionista) and had to really jam her foot in and couldn't get them in very far. Even if I could, I don't think they'd get much use, they're a pretty ugly sculpt. I'm not a fan of shoes that compensate for the fact that lots of fashion dolls feet are designed for high heels. I'd rather have a more realistic shoe even if it meant it looked like the doll was standing on tiptoe. I ended up breaking one of the posts when taking off the soles from the top part, so you can take them apart, but they are fragile. They're just going to end up in the pairs of shoes that I'll never use, but can't bear to throw
 out.

The men's sneakers have the same construction as the women's shoes, they just have a blue upper and a white sole. I like these in theory, just not in practice. They are so, so, so close to fitting Joe. But the posts that connects them actually make the shoe too small fit on his foot. I tried these on a pivotal Ken doll but couldn't see if they fit, the hard plastic actually scuffed up the doll's foot and didn't have enough give to put on the doll. They fit Joe better since I could take his foot off, separate the top from the sole and put them around his foot. That's the only way he didn't get scraped trying to put them on. It's a shame because they're actually pretty cute. I just wish I had someone who could wear them without getting damaged. I'm toying with the idea of removing the posts to see if I can get them on Joe's feet, but I'm not totally sure if they'd fit even if I did that and I'm not sure if I'd be able to figure out a way to keep the soles and uppers together. They'll probably end up in that same bag as the women's shoes.

The visor is made from a simple white plastic, I think this visor mold has been around forever. It's got a sticker on it that says "Vogue" in large pink letters with two images of highly stylized strawberries. It's okay, nothing special. A lot of these style visors have slits in the back to fit on the doll's head, but this one is all one solid piece. You can actually see on the back where they patched over in the back, I assume they reverse engineered these and used a visor that had the cut and they covered it. You'd need a doll with a pretty small head to wear it (another example of them reverse engineering since you end up with a copy that's smaller than the original) . I tried it on Joe and it didn't fit over his short molded hair, and he has a pretty small head. I did try it on Tommy (90's era Tommy doll) and it fits his head pretty well. It also fit's a Classic Kelly doll. It does have a pretty sharp bit of flash on the side. In fact a lot of the items have small bits of excess flash on them that need to be trimmed off. I don't recommend this set for a child, but if you did, I'd say a parent needs to go over all the pieces with an craft knife or file and trim off all the point pieces. It wouldn't take too much work and would make them a bit safer.

Tommy needs a reroot and some spot removal, he's well loved and from my childhood.

 

The blue baseball cap has a similar sticker like the visor, it just has a blue background instead of yellow. Same "Vogue" logo with the strawberries and everything. I bought this set partially for this hat, hoping it would fit Joe, but it's far too small for him. However, like the visor it does fit classic Kelly dolls, so it's not a total loss. I'd say this was my favorite piece from it. I like the male doll shoes, but since they don't fit and can actually damage a doll this hat is much better. I will say that the plastic on these items, while thin still feels pretty sturdy. I'm not worried about them cracking under normal play. I wouldn't try to force this hat on someone since I think then it might break, but just putting slight pressure on the sides it's not going to break. I do plan on removing the sticker before I use it, it's just silly.

Next we have a suitcase, this suitcase is tiny, I have bigger Barbie purses. It's made from white plastic and has a working handle you can actually raise and lower. It's designed to look like those wheeled suitcases. On the front is has a sticker with some flowers, grass shoots, and lots of circles. It does actually open, but the hinge is just bent plastic but over time it will wear down and break. It's also a pain to open. It uses the post system like the rest of the pieces, but in conjunction to having two small posts on the outer corners it has to massive posts on the inside. This makes it really hard to get open and it takes up a lot of space. The only thing that fits inside the suitcase are the women's shoes, everything else is too wide or too tall. I have no plans on using it, it is scaled for Kelly sized dolls, but mine aren't really the traveling bunch (and besides I do have Barbie sized suitcases I'd pack their stuff in if I was going to do a travel scene).

The last item is a blue plastic smart phone. This item is way oversized for the set. It's even too big to work for a tablet for the dolls. It's made out of the same plastic as the rest of them and has a sticker on the front that has some rather blurry looking apps on it. It's hard to tell, but it looks like the text on the sticker is in English. The phone is made up of two pieces that you can take apart, it's not easy but it's doable. There is a small empty space inside so you could keep things in there if they were tiny. This might work well for American Girl sized dolls. I don't have any to compare it to, but it looks like it might be the right scale.

So that's everything that came in the package. Was it worth it? Not really, even for the inexpensive price of 1.78 there's really not much I can use. I like the baseball hat, but didn't really need it. I was hoping the things would be better than they actually were. I'm not too upset since I didn't pay very much and now I know, but I would have liked it better if things were better. At least I don't do impulse buys like this too often, and hopefully you have gotten 1.78 in entertainment out of this blog post!