Let's Talk about February

Hello Dear Readers,

February is over and we’re pretty far into March and I figured I should at least try to keep everyone updated. It’s not the most exciting thing in the world, but it does help me. Even if it bores everyone else to tears, it at least gives me a record where I can look back and see what happened in the month.

February started off rough. That first weekend was my Grandfather’s funeral. That was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. I might have already talked about some of this in the post I shared about his passing, but I don’t want to go back and see if I’m repeating myself. Honestly, I have no intention of reading that post again. I am glad that I could be there for my family, but it was rough. I miss him. I try not to think about it a lot, but sometimes it just hits me. I know the rest of my family is missing him too.

I have been trying to be better about keeping in contact with my Grandmother, but I’ve fallen into my old habits where I’m not calling. I seriously have to force myself to call. It’s just tricky because I have nothing new to talk about, work is boring and I don’t talk dolls with extended family. However, I really need to get back into it. I figure that if I can be a distraction for her that would help take her mind off things even for a little bit.

I have been working a lot this past month. The week after getting back from Connecticut I started putting in overtime. Since then I’ve started doing a little over 51 hours each week. It’s awful and really sucks up all my time, but I need to. I’m saving up for the next step in my life plan and quite honestly, I need the money. It’s going to be rough and it’s certainly not fun, but I need to do it. Right now, I am projecting the second week of August for when I’ll have enough saved up. Hopefully I’m able to keep saving up and won’t have to dip into savings.

I have been doing a lot better on doll related purchases for February. I did buy some dolls at the thrift store when up in Connecticut. I found a TLC Jewel Secrets Whitney and a played with but not too much 2015 Birthday Barbie. I already sold Whitney, her outfit, and the Birthday doll’s body and dress, and more than made my money back. I also bought a cheap Dollar Tree clone doll that was wearing a very nice condition vintage Barbie Registered Nurse outfit. There’s some rust stains on the hat and the zipper needs to be tacked down on one side but it looks really nice. It was so white in the bag I thought it might be the reproduction from a couple years back. I got the hat, dress, and cape. I’m not looking forward to hunting down the little accessories, but it might be nice to have. Still haven’t found a doll to wear it yet.

I was fairly good with doll purchases this month. I bought seven dolls at the thrift (it was Savers where they bag up their dolls in multiples). I sold two, and will be using some of the others for the doll donation project at the end of the year. I also bought the Mary Poppins’ Returns dolls, the standard Mary and Jack. Per usual I am just keeping parts of them. I’m keeping Mary’s shoes and body and Jack’s shoes and hat. Hopefully the parts I don’t want sell and I can get my money back. I also got lucky and bought the Pink Haired Silkstone doll when she came back in stock at Barbie Collector at the end of January. I don’t like paying 75 for a doll not in a formal dress, but I was super smitten with her. I’m planning on reselling her outfit and she’s already been rebodied onto Mary’s body since I hate how delicate the articulated Silkstones are. I wish I could have given her a belly button body but she’s that super pale almost white color and I didn’t have a match. I really like her. I also bought another of the “Blue Chiffon Dress” Silkstone, but only because I needed to spend 100 to use my Barbie Collector coupon. I’m most likely going to sell her off piece by piece to get my money back. I also bought the Barbie Celebration doll for her shoes and sunglasses (I’m a sucker for heart shaped sunglasses). I also way overpaid for a vintage doll. It’s my first vintage doll since December! I was looking for a different doll, found this one online and fell in love. I’m going to be mean and not tell you who she is and keep you in suspense (even though I doubt I’ll ever share her since I can barely do a once the month update). How about this, if I get 3 people commenting on this post asking to see it before I post another post, I’ll do a quick and rough introduction post for the doll.

Despite working so much, I am still working on eBay. I try to do one weekend day each week getting about 8 things done. I have had some decent sales, but with me it’s never enough. My goal for the month of February was to have more single sales than full dolls come in. I was ultimately hoping to make more sales than individual items (Head, body, and clothes), but it was not meant to be. However, I did do my first goal, so that means for my tallies for next month, the first doll doesn’t count!

See everyone in March (Most Likely April!)

A Sad Update

Hello Dear Readers,

My apologies for not blogging lately. I would say that I'm hoping to get back into it, but I just don't think I'll have the time. Back in October I started a full time job and that just takes up all of my time. I do get weekends off, but I've been working really hard on eBay trying to get a handle on the excess stuff I have around here that I want to sell. I haven't been doing much with dolls, but that certainly didn't stop me from buying more. I did keep a running list of how much came in versus how much I sold and the bought side was a lot more than what I got. I will just say I cannot be trusted around Walmart's after clearance Christmas especially when I find out the Harry Potter school uniforms look pretty cute on my Mimi dolls and they had Ginny for 5 dollars. I bought all six they had over the course of two days.

I did think about starting a monthly post where I talk about my top addition to the collection this month, but I can't this month. Despite buying a lot of dolls, I mainly bought them for their shoes, or their bodies, or their clothes. I only bought one doll head to actually join the collection, but he doesn't have a body yet since the one I bought for him, doesn't work. I don't have anything I like better for him so he's been banished to where I keep the other doll heads and who knows if he will ever get a body. I don't even want to admit to myself how long some of those heads have been waiting for bodies.

This post isn't just about me talking about dolls. This month I also lost my Grandfather. He passed away exactly a week ago today. I won't lie, it's been extremely hard for me. He was fine until two weeks ago . He had been having some health related issues in recently year but nothing major but two weeks ago he fell and fractured his arm. He was on the mend and did come home, but a few days later he had a massive heart attack and things went from bad to worse. He hung on for a few days, but started to get worse and on Monday he was gone.

On Friday my family and I went up to Connecticut for the funeral. That was one of the hardest experiences of my life. All of my Aunts and Cousins were there. I'm glad we could all be together at this time, but it was such a sucky situation for why we had to get together. I am very glad we were able to go, but I never want to relive this experience. I barely held it together myself and it's even more heartbreaking seeing everyone you love being in so much pain and not being able to do anything.

My Grandfather is playing the banjo. I never heard him play it, but he still had it.

I am absolutely gutted for my poor Grandmother. We are all rallying around her and she's dealing with it the best she can but my heart is absolutely broken for her. They were married for 68 years since she was 19. I've been working with my mother to think of ways how we can help her. We are at a disadvantage since we are so far away but we are going to work on making more of an effort to call my Grandmother and just keep in touch and we were thinking of things we could send her to help keep her mind off the situation. It's tricky since she's never been a stay at home kind of person, but the things we're thinking of are things to help her at home. She and my Grandfather lived in the same house since 1952, there's a lot of memories that she won't be able to escape from. Right now we're talking about any types of hobbies we can send her supplies for, books we can get her, and movies we can get she would like. 

My Grandparents at their 25th Anniversary. He was not usually so silly in pictures.

It's hard to explain my relationship with my Grandfather. It's been hard to communicate with my Grandfather my entire life since he had massive hearing loss. He had gotten sick as a child and lost a lot of his hearing and as time when on he had some genetic hearing loss. Despite always having a hearing aid, they never found one that was perfect for him. We would talk and when I got older our relationship changed where we did communicate more, he was one if the smartest people I know. He was incredibly mechanically gifted and would come up with amazing solutions to problems. I was talking to my mother about him and I just couldn't come up with words on how to describe him, he was just Grandpa. The best I came up with was he was a consistent, he was just who he was and his presence brought us all comfort. It's hard stating exactly what's changed, but everything has changed.

We weren't able to stay long, and we never went to my Grandmother's house. Part of me wanted to go and get that over with, but part of me just couldn't bear it. It's going to be rough figuring out a new normal. It's going to be rough.

I'm going to miss you Grandpa.    

You can really hear the echo without any posts...

Hello Dear Readers,

I assume people have noticed the lack of a blog around here lately. You see, I was having some issues regarding the blog and had to .... retire it for a bit. Everything was reverted to draft form so I am hoping to eventually restore everything and get it back to as what it once was. I can't say it'll be any time soon, but hopefully it won't be too long.

I've had some changes in my life the last time I've made a post. I have a new job! I haven't started it yet, but training begins at the end of the month. I'm a little nervous about the job (it's a customer service job) and I don't love the drive but the pay is a lot more than I was making (and more than I've ever made before) so it certainly has some perks. It's also Monday through Friday! It was funny, in the interview they asked how I'd feel working some additional Saturdays I was like, "I've worked retail, weekends mean nothing to me". And really, I wouldn't mind working overtime since it's a really good rate. It's especially good since I have a very large (non-doll) purchase to save up for. I got hired through a hiring agency and it's a six month contract but hopefully they will keep me after that. Either way, it'll be a job for six months and I can figure out what to do after that.

Even with job hunting and several interviews I've also been putting effort selling stuff online. I haven't been as good as I should be, but I've been spending some time listing things in the hopes that it sells. I still have a lot more to go, I really let it build up more than I should have, but I've made quite a dent in what I had for resale. And if I'm being honest, I keep beating myself up for having too much stuff, but in a comparison with some collectors I know they'd look at my collection and my resell pile and say "Is that it?". Things are kind of slow right now, I've found that spring is when people are really buying but I keep listing stuff. It doesn't even have the chance to sell if it's just sitting around here gathering dust. I haven't started working on trimming down the collection just yet, there's still a lot of things to sell before I get there, but I'm making a mental plan for what I want to sell. In a situation like this is a lot better to mentally say goodbye to something before I actually do it, just to make sure I'm ready for it.

I have been kind of at a weird impasse with my doll collection, I know I keep saying that but it keeps being true! I've been kind of bored with Barbie and other 1:6 fashion dolls. I still have my favorites but things have been changing. I'm kind of taking a break from vintage. I have a lot and I've gotten several of my grail dolls so the drive just isn't there at the moment. There's still several grail dolls I don't have, but those are very expensive which are just out of my price range at the moment. I'm always still looking for a bargain, but I'm being a little more selective as to what is a good deal for me and the collection. Not saying that I haven't been buying things, but I've certainly slowed down and changed what I buy and for what reason.

I have been focused more on antique dolls lately. It really started when I won that bisque doll at that luncheon in April. It's a little tricky delving into this new dolly genre, I'm finding I have some of the basics (or at least figure them out using internet searches), but there's so much to learn. It's kind of frustrating going from Barbie where I have a lifetime of knowledge to antique dolls where I'm very much a novice. I'm having a hard time figuring out good resources for information. I just want to know it all now! If anyone has suggestions for resources or books I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

I'm trying to be smart with my antique doll purchases. I don't want it to be like Barbie where I wake up and find myself surrounded with them and overwhelmed. Also, I like them but they're fragile and I'm clumsy. I'm planning on keeping my collection very small (another reason to keep it small is they tend to be bigger than Barbie so space is a factor). As of right now I own two bisque dolls, five china head dolls, and two wooden dolls. I would like to add a male china head doll to my collection as well as a small felt doll like a Lenci but that's all that I'm really wanting. I did see a really cute bisque doll on eBay I put an offer in for but it was ignored until it aged out of the system. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. She was cute but nothing I had to have. All in all I'm hoping to keep the antique doll collection to about a dozen in total. I know I've added a lot to it recently, but even as the focus of my collection right now, I'm still not buying a lot. It's a lot of window shopping, which isn't a bad thing.

I think that's the big things that's been going on lately. I can't say for sure I'll be around that often, but hopefully there will be more content sooner. And maybe one of these days I'll actually take a picture to share!

February's Update, and so soon?

February was another up and down month just like January, but I think I at least broke even, if not came out slightly ahead.

I failed my goal of avoiding dolls just for their bodies way back on the 1st when I bought some Disney Descendant dolls at Walmart that were on clearance. I don't know why I bought them since the last ones I bought for their bodies over a year ago are still in the closet and I don't really even like those bodies. I'm just addicted to articulation. I'm trying to not beat myself up over it since there will be stumbles along the way in any goals to better oneself. I did get all the things I didn't want from the dolls listed on eBay so at least they're not sitting around while I get around to listing them. I want them gone! (And I want my money back!)

My vintage doll spending was also pretty bad for the month. I made it pretty far into the month without buying a single vintage doll, then the universe offered me a lovely swirl ponytail with nasty great ear, even green face for just 21 dollars including shipping and you just can't ignore a lovely swirl ponytail with nasty great ear, even green face for just 21 dollars including shipping. I'm still waiting for that doll to come in the mail, it takes time when you get the cheap shipping from Japan. If that had been my only vintage purchase I'd have been doing pretty good, but at the end of the month I went a little wild and won on auction one of the grail dolls I've been wanting for this year. She also hasn't arrived, but she was a pretty expensive buy. I had some money saved up for her, but 2/3 of her purchase price came out of my bank account and I need to repay it. I also did a big purchase at the start of the month of some more Mimi dolls. They're still on their way too (they were supposed to be here yesterday, but the post office never delivered *harumph*). This will be the last Mimi dolls for a long time, I still want some from a different line of Korean fashion dolls, but I should be done with Mimi for a while. I also bought a few dolls and doll clothes at the start of the month when I went to my doll meeting. I was on the hunt for the Care Bear outfits, which I did find. I also found a doll on clearance I wanted for her dress and some two dollar fashionistas. I bought 4 of the same doll because I needed her shoes (the Emoji Fun doll's pink heels are one of the only shoes I've found that fit Mimi doll's feet). I also went back at the middle of the month and bought more two dollar dolls, because they were two dollars.

I know it sounds like a lot of spending, and it was, but I've also been really good about working on eBay. I got a lot of things listed this month. I got everything that I bought this month for resale listed, except for doubles, one doll I need to clean up, and a dress I don't have room for. I also worked on a lot of other stuff. There's still plenty to go, but I've spent a lot of time working on eBay and getting stuff listed. And I had a pretty good sales month. There were some issues and problems (some my fault, some from other reasons), but I had one of my better eBay months. I was able to keep some of my expenses down with the profits from sales, not all of them but a decent amount. And I've even paid my bill for the month with what I've sold. There's still plenty to go, but day by day when I work on it, I get a little more done. I would say, for the first time in a while, I had more things leave than come in. I got lucky since eBay gave me several weeks of free listings so hopefully they keep doing that since I want to keep selling!

I still have plenty to list. I have tons of stuff that I bought for pieces or just one thing, but I've decided to also sell parts of my collection. I've realized that I just have too much things to really enjoy what I have. I'm nowhere near that point but I've been giving it a lot of thought as to what makes me happy and what I just have. Right now I know some things are safe; Charlotte, Joe, other named dolls, Japanese exclusives, the Hommes, Silkstones, but there's a lot of things I can trim down. Like the Tammy dolls, I don't have very many but I don't really love them, so they're going to move out in time. Same with Jem, I'm going to keep my first issue Jem, but Kimber, that Starlight Girl, and that other TLC doll can go. Vintage is also going to get trimmed down. Every vintage doll is different, but I have a lot of similar dolls so I think it's time to pick my favorites and let some of the others go. I also have a lot of  "well loved" beauties and it might be time to refine the collection. I know way back when I said I'd never run out of room for dolls, but I have and I want to cut back. It's going to be a lot of work, but I feel happy with that decision. The collection has been getting a bit unmanageable and I haven't been enjoying it. I like buying and getting stuff, but once I have it, I haven't been giving it the attention it deserves. It's time for someone else to enjoy them. But like I said, that's a long term goal since there's only so many hours in the day and there's still so many other things to sell first, but now that I've come around to that idea, it's going to happen.

I also did some sewing this month. Not much, but I did make a couple dresses for the raffle for my doll club's birthday meeting. I usually made two and donate them together, but I decided to package them separately and made a necklace to go with each them. I also made a dress for an event my friend is hosting, but haven't finished it yet. I also plan on making another dress for that, but haven't found the right thing yet. The theme is mod, which is not my strong suit. The deadline is quickly approaching, so I better get into gear.

The next doll meeting is the 10th, the birthday meeting. I'm hoping it's better than the last meeting. The February meeting was not my favorite, basically it was sitting around listening to the woman in charge and another woman talk about all the behind the scenes stuff that's been going on with convention. I could have skipped it and sent one of those bobbling bird things in my place and no one would have been the wiser. For a club who only has about half of their members having gone to convention we spend a lot of time focused on it. We also spent a lot of time at that meeting talking about that event the woman who runs it wants to do in 2019 where nobody is willing to say they don't want to do it and she wants to do it so much she's willing to overlook the lukewarm at best reception she's been getting. I still like the club and most of the people in it, but it's so different than when I started and I do feel my interest waning in it more and more. It just feels so stagnant and can't see it getting any better. I'll just have to see how things go during the rest of the year and see if I want to continue. I know there's other clubs in the general area, this one is the most convenient, but I'll have to see how I feel. It's not like I'm planning on being here forever.

For March, I am hoping to keep making progress on eBay and moving stuff out. It would also be nice if I could spend less. I am planning on skipping popping into all the Walmart locations on my way to the meeting (I'm on the hunt for the Minion outfits, even though I don't like Minions), but I am planning on stopping into a Toys R Us since I have a 5 dollar voucher to use, if I can find one that's not closing. I do know that I will have to place an order on Barbie Collector this month otherwise I loose my quarterly reward, but hopefully the dolls I do want (Chris Pratt from Jurassic World and the Women of Achievement line) will go on sale and I can use my voucher on those. I'm also hoping there will be a sale, but I don't remember if they do a sale in March any more and if you can even bundle the credit and a sale. There's also several new playline dolls I want, but I don't they're coming out for a couple months so I don't have to worry about those until later. Hopefully I can keep the eBay momentum going forward and keep slowing down my spending.

And hopefully getting my stuff from the mail in a reasonable time!

(I am working on the reviews and stuff for the past two months, but work is slow since my photo taking energy and typing energy has been laser focused on eBay, but I promise I have been working on it.)

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!

Out with the Old, In the with slightly less Old

Hello everyone,

After coming back for December I wanted to touch base before seemingly falling silent again. I enjoyed blogging and sharing those calendars with you all, but as you all could see lots of time I'd fall behind and would struggle to get caught up. I don't think I'm ready to commit to a lot of blogging, but I would like to be more active than last year. Right now I'm thinking about aiming for two blogs a month, one where I talk about what happened the previous month and a dolls only blog. I'm thinking where I do a doll review, a doll introduction, or just doll opinions. If for some reason you miss my unique voice in my habit of being 10 years behind trends I do have a Tumblr now and am much more active on it: A Bit of Aubrey's Mind Tumblr

But this post I also wanted to talk about my collection.

Right now my collection is in a bit of a change of focus.

I have a LOT of dolls and I'm at the point where I think I'm ready to scale back some and let a few go. I do plan on buying some still, but I want to be more focused on choosing what I buy and buy things I want instead of things I get a good deal on.

For a long time I've been very focused on vintage, but for right now I think I have enough. In all of December I bought one vintage doll and even before that my vintage buying had slowed down a lot. I have been purchasing a lot of newer modern dolls, but really scaled back on vintage. For the past couple of years I had a pretty big focus on Japanese exclusive dolls, and while there's still several I want to get honestly they are way out of my budget at this time. However I do want to focus some time on getting some European exclusive vintage dolls that are pretty high on my want list. Luckily Europe mostly got clothes which aren't of interest to me. Right now my biggest wants from Europe are the Hawaiian Superstar Barbie, German Francie, and Superstar faced Equestrian Barbie. There is also two dolls I am looking for that were Mattel made but produced in Europe. Those I've been on the hunt for but haven't found for sale yet. I know they do exist because I've seen examples of them online. If I do find them, I'll talk about them but I'm keeping quiet about the details since I think they're very uncommon and don't want to create competition for myself. Hawaiian Superstar and Francie are both going to be pretty expensive so I'm going to have to save up for those. That's part of my goal to focus, by not buying the 5 inexpensive dolls that I kind of want I can afford the 1 expensive doll that I really want.

I'm also getting more into South Korean fashion dolls. Someone on Tumblr posted some pictures of a couple and I've fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole. I am by no mean an expert, but from my research for play line fashion dolls there's two main ones in South Korea, Mimi and Jouju (or Juju as I've also seen). They are very similar to the Japanese fashion dolls I already have but they're different enough to want to add them to the collection. Mimi reminds me of a Jenny and Licca hybrid. She's an older teen like Jenny, but her face paint reminds me of Licca. There's a couple of Mimi dolls I like and have been doing research on. Jouju is very similar, but looks to be a cheaper doll. Her face paint looks more like decals and her hair seems thinner and a cheaper quality (it also might be nylon). I'd still like a couple of them to experience them in person. Would either of these dolls be of interest to people to see reviewed? Luckily there is a decent amount of these dolls available online. Information is hard to find, but I think the online prices are fair. It's around the retail prices with 10 dollars added in for international shipping. It seems expensive to me, but I guess the market is higher priced in South Korea than in the US.

There's also several Mattel dolls coming out that I want. Usually I just want dolls for their shoes or for their articulated bodies, this has not changed but there are a couple dolls I am looking for. I am still on the hunt for the newest Look doll, the sweater dress doll, but she's been sold out everywhere and I don't know if she's coming back to retail prices. I'm also looking for the boy from the Skipper babysitter line. Someone on Flickr did find him in their local Walmart but I don't think he's been widely released yet. I am also looking for the curvy Made to Move doll, but so far she's only been seen in Australia. I'm going to be buying a lot of Barbie clothes this year. I'm still on the hunt for the remaining Hello Kitty sets I haven't found yet. That line is going to be very expensive for me. I'm also looking at some of the not yet released Care Bear sets, and I know I will be buying every single Mario item that gets released. Part of me only wants to collect the things I know I'll use but I worry that once they stop getting produced they'll be much more expensive to get so I should get them all at retail prices while I can. 

I think I'm moving away from Silkstones again. After buying pretty much all of the 2016 line, I only bought four Silkstones in 2017 and two of those were older releases that I got super cheap. I do like the articulated bodies proportions, but the construction leaves much to be desired. Lots of times the joints are hard to move, or frozen and they are just so fragile. I have not broken one but I have seen some stress marks appearing on joints from limited posing. Also, I think I have enough of them. I think I have 20 of them and while I don't think I'm ready to start selling them, I do think that I'm ready to stop getting more. For a while they were dolls I used to replace vintage when I couldn't afford it, but now I have plenty of vintage so I think it's time to cut back on them. I do usually buy the "budget" Silkstone doll, but we'll see what happens this year.

I think I'm also going to be taking a break from Integrity. I cleaned up at their Holiday sale and got several dolls I wanted and several dolls that were cheap enough to justify getting. I usually only get the homme dolls so I think I have enough for now. I am getting the urge to get another Poppy Parker, but that's pretty low on the list. I do have a spare body (I might have two) so if I can't resist getting one I can at least just get her head.

I'm also going to try stop buying so many articulated dolls. For several years now I've been hoarding doll bodies and I think it's time to rethink how many I have compared to how many I'll actually use. It's good to have an assortment, but there's only so many I'll logically use, especially since the material they're made of will eventually start aging and break down. Like I said I am looking for the curvy made to move doll, but I'm going to try to cut back on buying new dolls just for their bodies. The majority of the dolls I have are on bodies I'm happy with. There's no need buying so many that I know I'll never use, even when I keep some for spares.

I know there's going to be some surprise purchases, some impulse buys, and some over shopping, but if I can at least try to keep things in order that would be great.

Here's to a new year, and a constant collection!