UFDC CONVENTION & DISNEYLAND PART II

Everyone is a kid again applies big time in Disneyland and on day two of our fabulous trip we hit the park using day one of our 3 day passes. The pictures didn't go in in order and I am getting tired of trying to move then into the right positions so will just work with how they inserted.

This photo is from later in the day and should be at the bottom...but pretty anyhow!

The tea cup ride at dark, the thought of spinning wildly round and round in these didn't appeal to us so we just took pictures!

Everyday in the park there are dozens of photographers running around with fabulous cameras taking pictures of guests having fun. All those thousands and thousands of photos are then sent to Florida if you can believe it and they are edited and using the best photos of the day taken by the photographers they make up a montage and each night they do a show with lights and things on the facade of it's a small world and they use the best photos of the day in their nightly show. Well, we were sitting on a wall watching the show when all of a sudden we were part of the show, the photographer had taken a photo of Loretta and I and both of our Bleuette dolls in their Minnie Mouse ears and we thought we must be seeing things as the picture they took was in the show!! I have a copy of that photo as of course we had to go and buy it as we were famous for a brief little interlude...we were quite thrilled to have been included.

This strawberry delicacy is offered for dessert in the Plaza Restaurant, Loretta and Robert shared one following dinner

This is taken in front of the main gates. Loretta heard a rumor that these gates are going to be done away with soon so we wanted pictures to remember what was

The pictures are out of order but we took our little Bleuettes in their Minnie Mouse dresses into the park and took many, many photos of them. Not too sure what the other guests thought but we did have a lot of folks wondering what we were doing. After many years of toting various dolls around for photo shoots for our various doll groups to enjoy, we are getting fairly good at tuning out the folks who tend to gawk and wonder what we are doing...lol

We had lunch in Critter Country at the Hungry Bear and I couldn't resist buying this to share. It was very sweet and very cute, they come up with the cutest deserts in the park.

Here is my Madeline in front of the rivers of America with the canoes behind her.

In New Orleans we were fortunate to run into one of the jazz musicians who graciously allowed us to take a photo with him and he gave us both Mardi Gras beads.

This is our traditional photo, each time we come we take a picture on these stairs in New Orleans Square. It is such a pretty backdrop and in a quiet out of the way place.

At the end of Main Street there was a vendor felling fancy ice cream bars. Madeline just had to get her photo taken in this pretty location.

This photo is in the concourse between the two parks, the pink flowering tree was just gorgeous!

These are the Anaheim transportation system (ART) shuttle buses that run you all over the resort. I believe the passes are currently 4 dollars a day for unlimited trips to wherever they go...the trick is that you have to go to the park on one and then transfer to another one going to the location you are trying to get to so it gets a bit tricky but quite a clever system.

Madeline and Yvette Marie pose in front of a flower display that matches their dresses!

The Tiki Room and show has become another of our traditions when we come to Disneyland...in the days when it was invented it was very state of the art, of course now it isn't considered so but the animatronics always amuse us and we love the show.

Dole whips are another of our favorite treats in the park and here Loretta is enjoying hers while waiting for the show to begin...yes the show is cheesy...lol...but still funny....

Here Madeline is waiting for her very first Dole whip...she loved it...

And here, at the end of a very busy day, Madeline finally got her Mickey Mouse ears and a new Minnie Mouse stuffed toy. What a fun day!

YOU ARE NEVER TOO OLD TO HAVE A HAPPY CHILDHOOD

Way back in winter, ladies on one of my doll groups starting humming about the UFDC convention. I had no idea what UFDC was...how can that be...I have collected dolls for so many years and had never heard of this organization. One of the ladies kindly explained it is the United Federation of Doll Clubs and they have an annual convention. the 2011 convention was being held....oh no it couldn't be...in one of my most favorite places to visit, Anaheim, California. Apparently the last time they held it here was 17 years ago!! Usually it is more towards the East Coast. Soooo....I joined the UFDC and crossed my fingers that this might be a do able thing. The membership comes with lovely magazines that arrive in your mail box quarterly.

 Early in April my friend and doll buddy Loretta suggested we go to the convention, it might be our only chance to ever go to one. So we started doing some online checking and found an incredible deal with Alaska air (which is also our favorite airlines to fly to that area). So we booked. The next month my Mom had a stroke, my little dog died, life was awfully hard all of a sudden and I thought for sure I wasn't going to be going on this trip of a lifetime. The months passed, the social worker at the hospital told me I needed to take my trip and that my Mom would be fine while I was gone so I did get on that plane...but right until the last moment I was sure I was going to be cancelling.

The picture above is of my little Bellette Madeline who came on the trip with me, she was the first Bleuette doll I bought and she remains my favorite girl. She came out of her carrier on the plane as Loretta had brought a little treat along for her, a tiny doll size rolling suitcase with pencil crayons just her size, it was a wonderful way to begin our journey.

This is my room at the Anaheim Hilton, it was lovely with a view of Disneyland and the pool and I even had a microwave and fridge in my room. I could have lived in this particular room forever!!!!

Robert and Loretta and if you look closely or click on the picture and enlarge, you will see Yvette Marie, Loretta's bluette alongside of them. We arrived in town a bit earlier than the convention was scheduled to start but then found out that the Rowbear Doll show was being held just a short ways across the parking lot at the Sheraton Park Hotel where we have stayed in the past. We had no idea what this would be like but headed there to check it out. WOW...is all I can say....this was the doll show to end all doll shows....two rooms of vendors and an entire hallway. Dolls and doll stuff everywhere your eyes could see....

This little doll in a presentation box was complete with miniature accessories and was one of many similar displayed. If you enlarge the picture you might be able to see the tiny goodies she would come with if you purchased her.

This is the parking lot on the way to the Rowbear show. There was still a Jacaranda tree blooming it's gorgeous purple blooms in the background.

A funny thing happened while I was strolling around the showroom. I heard an announcement on the PA system and it sounded like my name. But it couldn't be, no one knew I was here. So I continued strolling....and heard the name again and decided it had to be me so I went out to the registration desk to see if it was. I won a door prize...I was so surprised...in the picture above I am holding my door prize, it was a little Madame Alexander doll and a great way to start the fabulous week ahead of us!

On our doll groups we often hear talk of all the famous folks out there in dolly land, authors, artists and experts on the dolls we love. We had no idea that this week we would be meeting a lot of people we had only heard of before. In the picture above is Sylvie Bravot, a lovely lady who owns the Bravot Company in France and she and her daughter had flown in with their merchandise to sell in a booth at this show. Her doll clothes are exquisite, her doll wigs fabulous and then there were her dolls...sigh...the one in front in the white and blue sailor suit stole my heart but I never did buy her. Enlarge the picture and you can see how beautiful her dolls are.

I had to sneak this photo in as it is of my favorite palm tree and impatience flower garden at the Sheraton Park hotel.

My little door prize Madame Alexander posed amongst the flowers.

Here is Loretta perusing Sylvie Bravots sales booth. She eventually succumbed to the lure of the fabulous dolls and went home with a lovely Jumeau doll. But she held strong right till the last day!!

These were a couple more little Bleuettes we saw for sale, the dark haired one has a very unique look to her and we both thought she was lovely.

I am not sure what this little cutie is but gosh she was cute, there was just so much cute everywhere you looked. We went day after day and I don't think we even made it all the way through.

We were on a mission that first night, we heard that The Doll Peddlar of Arkansas had a booth at the rowbear show and we wanted to buy resin dolls. We located them in the far back corner and met Judy from the Doll Peddlar and Ms Cholong from Ruby Red Galleria in Hong Kong, the company that makes the resin Bleuettes. So we did not come home empty handed (far from it actually...lol) I bought the basic Bleuette as I already have the one in the fancy dress and Loretta fell in love with the Bastille Day Bleuette and bought her. She is now known as Robinette. The picture above is a picture at the end of day one I believe. I will have to do this in sections as it was a very full week....and I have hundreds of pictures.... thanks for visiting and I will try and get the next instalment up soon!

ROAD TRIP - DESTINATION AMERICAN GIRL!!!

In July a new store opened in Lynnwood, Washington. My girlfriend and I were very excited as we had been to this store in LA on a couple of vacation trips to that area. We thought it would be kind of neat to now experience it through the eyes of a child and as Dakotah my granddaughter is now 7 and the perfect age for this type of store, we talked about taking her when we went. On the last weekend in September my girlfriend Loretta's husband Robert offered to take us all on a road trip to visit the new AMERICAN GIRL store just outside of Seattle. The weather forecast was pretty grim all week and much to our amazement, when we set off at shortly after 7 am on Friday morning it wasn't raining...bonus! We got through the Douglas border crossing very quickly and were on our way!

Above is Dakotah buckled into her car seat, car seats are the law in Canada until the children are about 9 years old. Our first stop we decided would be Joanne's fabric store, much of our fabric stores have vanished and it is always nice to browse the fabrics at Joanne's. We were a bit early and the store wasn't opened yet so we stopped at Starbucks and Missy D had their version of an egg McMuffin and promptly lost one of her baby teeth....the picture below shows her holding it. Uncle Robert patiently showed her his phone which has GPS on it and assured her that the tooth fairy would be able to find us using the GPS...very important stuff to a seven year old!!

Joanne's finally opened and we spent some time checking out the Halloween isles, great fun!

Auntie Retta was suddenly scared...lololol...spiders and noises and scary masks...

And then we arrived at the store. It was huge, we weren't expecting something of this size as it is a "Bistro" store. But it surprised us by it's size. Everything is laid out on one floor so it is easy to get around and keep track of everything and everyone. I had a very sore knee which for some reason was making me rather slow getting around and Uncle Robert volunteered to be Dakotah's shadow as she darted from here to there all over the store (thank you Robert...)

A/G is celebrating their 25th anniversary this year and above are the mini dolls they have put out to commemorate the special year. We had considered them....until we got near the 18 inch girls and that idea flew out the window...

A/G introduced two new girls to their product line this summer and both are gorgeous with stunning clothing. I think the Marie Grace one is also a new face mold. It was very hard to leave her in the store as she is so cute.

Dakotah bounced from display to display, it is a doll lovers paradise....she didn't know what she liked the best. I told her I would buy her a doll of her very own as part of her Christmas present...and then began the hunt for the perfect doll for her. So many choices...she finally decided on one of the girls of today rather than a historical because she loves to do their hair. She loved Marie Grace but she had an intricate braid across the back of her hair and Dakotah didn't think if she got her she would ever want to take it out and she really wants to do the hair so we found one that she can do that.

This was her final choice, I think it is #35.

Here Dakotah and Auntie Retta examine the dolls, Auntie Retta has the best "eye" for picking out dolls and having them be perfect without a wonky eye or bald spot or something!

Kaya's camp especially the log fire really fascinated Dakotah

And here is our very patient and kind driver/kid chaser/luggage helper/ and all around good guy, Robert who never got to browse the mall or get his coffee as he stayed and helped us out while we were in the store.

Dakotah and her new doll, her very first American Girl

We went out to dinner and of course the dolls had to come too!

This is the display booth they had set up for Kanani, American Girl of the year whose story line takes place in Hawaii. We took along the Royal City Record newspaper as they have a section they often post travel photos in if you take their paper along. I submitted the photo but so far it hasn't been printed.

To our absolute amazement, as we drove down to Lynnwood the temperatures soared upward and not only did we not have the predicted rain but by the time we arrived it was in the 80's and balmy tropical breezes were blowing. We heard it was a tropical front from Hawaii that had come in and it sure felt like we were in Hawaii or someplace other than the Pacific North West land of rain and wind...lol  The Best Western Alderwood where we stayed kindly let Dakotah take a dip in the pool...I say kindly because I am sure the pool is probably closed for the season by the end of September and there were painters working in the area however they were very sweet and let her have a swim.

Our first day at the store was Friday and it was very quiet because it was a school day. Dakotah luckily was enjoying a professional development day and her school was closed, timing is everything. Being the store was quiet we got to see everything and do everything, Dakotah and Uncle Robert had a blast with this door...it revolved and they went round and round...the next day at the store was so busy you couldn't do anything remotely close to that....

I had Dakotah try on the Kanani dress as she is part Polynesian much like Kanani the girl of the year...in truth I wanted to check out their sizing because at some point I would like to get her this dress, she looked so sweet in it....

Thanks for taking us Auntie Retta and Uncle Robert!!! It was another fabulous trip and treat of an outing!

FABULOUS TEA AND VISIT WITH DOLLY FRIENDS

Last Thursday my friend Loretta (aka Martha Stewart of the North) whom I originally met through the Internet when we both were collecting Chatty Cathy dolls had a tea. Through the years our doll collecting has morphed into "other" collections as well as our beloved Chatty's. Along the way we met another doll collector named Isabelle and she has come along with us into our new doll passion, Bleuette dolls. Last Thursday Loretta hosted us both for a Bleuette tea. As some of our Bleuette dolls are at camp on the good ship Amitie (a fun project hosted by Gael from the Bleuette sewing group on Yahoo groups), we took the opportunity to pose a few pictures so our little campers can earn their badges for their uniforms. No...we are not insane....not even close, we have just discovered that you are never too old to have a fabulous childhood and while we did have them when young, us empty nesters (well sort of...) are going back to times of old where life was slower paced and dolls were synonymous with fun times. With the Internet, we are able to access a ton of other avid collectors and we have formed online families and friends with similar passions/obsessions(?). It is such fun, if you have a hobby and would like to share, check out Yahoo groups because I just bet you will find many others, even thousands of others who share your passion for collecting and would love to come out and play with you. Thanks Loretta for hosting another fabulous event! These soiree's just get better and better!

I haven't blogged for quite some time but I had an interesting summer and will try to post a few posts regarding what I did on my summer vacation...a little hint...we joined the United Federation of Doll Clubs earlier this year and they held their annual convention in a place that was close for us to get to and also happens to be a place dear to our hearts, Anaheim California, home of Mickey, Minnie, and this year home to thousands of dolls collectors and sales people from all over the world...I will post pictures soon of that once in a lifetime event.

COUPONS AND ME!

Walmart is having their yearly Anniversary sale and strangely enough I haven't been near the place....today I had to spend time at my Mom's waiting for the fire alarms to be tested by the strata and I figured it was a good time to clear out the junk pile otherwise known as "my purse". I ran across several great coupons that correspond with what Walmart has on sale but as I was at the other end of town, I piled up "stacks" of coupons and took Walmart's ad over to London Drugs to price match. I price matched the Tide and the Lady Speed Stick, London Drugs had the Pantene on sale and it was a bonus bottle! I presented my ad and my stacks of coupons (love London Drugs who allows you to stack coupons as long as the coupon UPC's are different numbers) my final total for all of the above including the 12% HST tax was $5.05. I came home very pleased with myself!



BUGS AND CRITTERS OF ALL SORTS

I read and enjoy Dawn Meehan's blog and her new column on Babble, the link is here

http://blogs.babble.com/babble-voices/because-im-the-mom/2011/07/10/drinking-driving-and-the-dmv/

I really enjoy her humor, today's column has some things I had forgotten about having lived in a tropical local for 7.5 years, she has recently relocated her family to Florida and her paragraph " Of course, it was raining by the time it was my turn because it rains every stinking day in Florida. The heat, the rain, the cockroaches, lizards, frogs, and locusts of biblical proportions have me convinced I’ve actually moved to the Amazonian rainforest and not the theme park capital of the world. Anyway, after two hours, I left with nothing."
brought back some memories of when I first moved to Hawaii, her words made me laugh as I remember the foot long cockroaches that flew around at night and dive bombed in to attack....this west coaster wasn't used to bugs that size and aggressive ones at that. Then there were a couple of instances I had forgotten about until Dawns post jogged my memory, one was with a praying mantis, I went outside to do the laundry, or attempted too...on the other side of the screen door was this huge and I do mean huge bug...looking at me with big bug eyes...and not moving. I threw stuff at him and quickly shut the screen door as I didn't know if he flew, hopped or charged. He just batted his big bug eyes at me...so I resorted to whatever was under the sink, I sprayed him with Windex, he didn't move, Fantastic spray, still wasn't leaving, spray starch...he just batted his big bug eyes at me...nothing phased this bug.(of course for some reason we had nothing like Raid around)  In the end he won, I didn't do the wash that day (and yes, our washer and drier were outside in that mostly sunny locale but under an awning. My preying Mantis was more brownish and much larger than this one and he had big antennae coming out of the top of his head but you get the idea, picture credit is displayed on the picture.

Now on another occasion I came home late one night and when I came through the gate I could see a critter in front of the front door....the area was undercover, well lit (thank goodness) and "it" looked like a rock. As I approached slowly on tip toes it moved and let me tell you so did I. People kept telling me about these "buffo toads". They said be very careful they can kill your dogs with some kind of poison they spray...well just my luck I had to meet up with one in the wee small hours in the dark....first I tried scaring it...scared myself more than it and no it didn't move. Then I tried going back out the gate and getting rocks and throwing them at it...still he wasn't going anywhere and we had a standoff, I had no way into the house without going over him and that just wasn't happening. Eventually he hopped off into the night but I spent the next few months wondering where exactly did he hop too....(photo credit displayed on photo)

Then there was the time I discovered a bunny living in my yard. Well, what harm can a bunny do...right? Well this one was devouring all the vegetation in the yard. Our yard was completely fenced. Actually I think it was safer than Fort Knox's as the fencing was concrete block and at least seven feet tall. The big mystery was how did it get in the fully enclosed yard. Anyways, I ended up getting a trap from animal control and eventually I caught the bunny and took it to animal control to be relocated.

On yet another occasion I went out to hang laundry on the clothesline and something moved...it was a big chameleon sunning itself on my clothesline...sheesh it never ended....and then there were the odd bird noises I heard all day and night, mostly night when I was there alone....turned out they were being made by gecko's....who knew....but the gecko's I were familiar with as I had seen them in hotels in the past, if they come into your room it is said to be good luck...or at least that is what the hotel staff says, probably so you don't spazz out on them when you find them in your room...lol   So these were the down sides to living in a place that is often referred to as paradise...but luckily in Hawaii we had no snakes...many years ago they brought in mongoose to rid them of snakes so now there are no snakes....millions of mongoose but no snakes...and luckily no mongoose ever found their way into my yard. Thanks for joining me in my trip down memory lane and please visit Dawn's blog when you have a minute, she is really funny and you won't be sorry you did. Her link for her blog is

http://mom2my6pack.blogspot.com/
or just go ahead and visit her at Babble and see her column there!