Happy Friday Doll Friends!! Recent Doll Photos!

Greetings and Salutations Doll Friends!

Just a quick hello here and a greeting of Happy Friday! 

We've made it thru another work week! Hallelujah! 

I've taken three sessions of doll photos since I posted the last ones... So I am just sharing them all in one loooooooong post. Well, long in that it has a lot of photos. I only have about five minutes to write what I am going to write here before I have to dash to work. 

Sisters at the park! 

I'm a bad doll mom in that I can't recall what I named these two beauties... Or if I even did? The taller one is an Our Generation doll and the shorter one is a City Pals doll (from Sam's Club last year)

I was playing with using the portrait feature on my camera phone. I love how it turns out. 

Then again there is something to be said for the non-portrait ones too. You get more scenery in the background. I took these photos when I had about 30mins before I needed to be at Bible Study on Wednesday! 

I had to go get something from my Jeep and thought it would be funny to show you how I took the photos above. They were all taken on a table like this, so the dolls can stand well. Perspective is everything, huh?

This one had a strange light...? I guess it's the rays of the sun? Never had that happen before. 

I took these of Maplelea Leonie last week... There setting isn't really all that pretty but I made it work. 

Then we have Lilly and Z. I took these yesterday outside the grocery store when I went. LOL I've totally gotten over worrying about people 'staring' at me when I take doll photos. Mostly, when people say anything, it's to talk about dolls and.... Well.... I can talk about dolls! Hahaha

That's it for now Doll Friends!

Thanks again for your faithful readership! It means a lot to me!

Have a fantastic weekend!

XXOO
Heather 

Feeling A Bit Better and Thrifting Sights Lately... Also The Story of God Telling Me To Write Blog In First Place...

Hi Doll Friends! 

Thanks so so so much for the kind words of encouragement so many of ya'll sent me after my last post, they really mean a lot to me! I am happy to report I am feeling better and better and while I still feel like I am walking in a 'valley' in my life, I am getting to where I can see the incline to the mountain again. Maybe I'm not climbing yet but I can see it and that, after the last few months, is improvement! Sometimes improvement is all you can ask for, eh? I'd like to tell you more details about the reasoning behind my post and/or who it is that hurt me and made me question myself and my worth in the first place... However, my disclosing that information would likely just beget even more drama and I'm just wanting the drama to die down and be over.  I promise I won't delete my blog... I've been really sporadic about posting for the last few months and that is bad enough! When I would get the inclination to come delete it I know it was just the enemy (or satan or whatever name you want to give the father of lies) trying to get in my head and make me go against what God originally told me to do. 

That story is a good one. About five years ago, I went to my annual womens retreat thru my church and my prayer all weekend was to get a 'word' from God. Be careful what you pray for I guess because God showed up, as He does, but with only ONE WORD. The word?

"Write"

I'm like "Write?! Ok, but write what?!?" 

I'd started my doll blog a year before but had kind of ran out of steam in writing it after an argument with a person I thought was my friend who gave me all manner of grief about the name of my blog. Penniless Caucasian Rubbish was my chosen nom'de'plume from clear back in my Myspace days... I explained how it came to be in the post I just linked to. However, my friend took it as some manner of slight or something because it contained the word 'caucasian' and... Well... Sadly, after much trying to mend, we stopped being friends. It kind of ruined the fun for me for my little blog and I just stopped in January of 2014. I didn't really know what else to write about though... I mean, I'd written loads of somewhat depressing poetry and that is where my pen name came from originally... But poetry isn't something I 'actively' write, it's more like words that come into my head, unbidden, and I just capture them and write them down. Not something I can force really...

So... Being as I had already started the doll blog and that I still loved dolls so much I thought, "Well, it's writing and God being who He is, perhaps He can use a doll blog to His glory somehow...?"

I figured I'd at least follow what He told me to do until He gave me a different direction with it. 

So, low and behold, God being who He is, He has made some amazing things happen in my life from this little blog. I've met a couple of friends here over our mutual love of dolls and I am certain they will be friends for my entire lifetime. I have also, as much as I can without being obnoxious about it, tried to share Jesus's love here and how much He means to me. 

One of the more delightful places I've found that this shared the Gospel and Jesus's love was a Podcast from Kenneth Frankly where he talks about my blog and him liking it and, then at the end of what he talks about, he repeats something the Holy Spirit told me to write the day that he happened to use it in his podcast; "Jesus loves you" at the end of what he talked about. It literally made my day/week/year when I heard it. He starts talking about it at 11:29mins in and portion about the blog runs till 15:10mins in. I just listened to it again and it made me smile again. So give it a listen to it again if you are so inclined. WARNING: It has a bit of curse words in it. But it still makes me smile that someone who I likely never would have thought would like my blog enjoys it. 

 It really touched my heart. 

If you still read Kenneth Frankly, Hi! Thanks for the mention. 💗

I've also heard from many other readers that they appreciate my blog and it's been a very amazing thing in my life to meet other people who love dolls as much as I do. The internet makes the world such a small place! 

So, thank you dear readers, for your words of encouragement all along thru the time I've written here. Especially on my most recent post! I mean to come and answer all those sweet comments one by one but am still treading water in my real life and haven't had a chance yet. Don't think I haven't read them and that they haven't really really helped me feel better because they have!! 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

All the photos here are of items I've 'left behind' lately at thrift stores... I didn't really get into the details but this will have to be one of those 'let the photo tell the story' times because I have got to go herd the cats take the teens to high school! 

Thanks so much again dear readers! I promise I will never ever delete this blog no matter how crummy I might feel about myself at any given moment. 

Love ya'll to the moon and back!

XXOO
Heather 

PS I've been trying all day to get this to post... For some reason it would niether post nor save and I finally had to resort to copying the whole text and pasting it into a different draft paragraph by paragraph. So I am actually posting this at like 8:09PM :)

Our Generation Doll Buying Spree... Of Sorts...

Greetings and Salutations Doll Friends,

No, I'm not dead.

 Life nearly killed me recently with it's painful heartbreak but... 

I'm still here. 

It's been one of those 'rock your entire identity to the core' kind of a few weeks (months?) but...

I'm still here. 

That's about all I got with regards to much lately.

I'm still here. 

If not for Jesus, that wouldn't be the case. 

I'd have been broken into a million little pieces with no hope at all of ever being put back together again. But I showed up at church over and over again during those weeks and praised Him in the storm and, being Jesus, He showed up right there and walked me thru it. 

It's still raining but the storm clouds have cleared a bit, if you will. 

And 

I'm still here. 

One fallout of the hell-storm I found myself in was to question my worth at all...

I mean I know of my identity in Jesus, as His daughter and that alone was enough to make me get out of bed at all in the last few weeks.

Beyond that though, I have been questioning my worth, my intellect, my appeal at all in any way...

I still am. 

More than once I came here to just delete my entire blog because I felt ashamed of it by seeing it through the eyes of some of the human beings who hurt me crushed my soul into the dirt.

 (People or 'family' who were/are supposed to love me...)

Jesus kept reminding me, when I got here to delete it, that He was the one who originally told me to write it. It occurs to me as I type that that perhaps I've never told that story here... It's a pretty great story and good testimony so if I haven't, I'll have to do that sometime soon. 

In any case, I am still here. 

Sometimes that is the best you can do in life, just keep showing up. 

I'm still here. 

During this miserable valley of my life some small part of me still loved dolls.

In an attempt to make myself happy for a nano-second during that time, I noted that Target had a sale on all thier Our Generation stuff. I might have gone a bit overboard since I bought three dolls but... Oh well... 

As I said in this post Our Generation has really outdone themselves this year with their new dolls. I loved this face sculpt when they released it last year with Blue. I have her here with the three new dolls with the same face sculpt as she has. 

These are some of the first doll photos I've taken in weeks... I had to force myself to do them. But once I got started I kind of enjoyed it. Which is saying something lately. 

They came in two shipments... The first was the light blonde with light blue eyes. I opened her without even taking photos because... I am out of sorts and can't keep order in anything lately. 

When these two came, I literally didn't even open the Target box itself for days and days...

Just kept hearing, from the mean voices in my head, that my whole hobby life was a total joke and why bother...

But I finally did open them. And even re-dressed them in some of the adorable dresses I got from Frann once upon a time... 

These are photos I took when I opened the blonde gal (above)... Not much to them, just threw a background up and snapped a few photos. 

Dolls were not my only purchase at the sale either... I bought this accessories set too. I have finally opened it but it is just sitting there waiting for me to be inspired enough to do something with it. 

I'm sure I'll feel like it eventually. 

So for those of you who are the praying sort, I'd love it if you could lift me up in prayer. That I can continue to walk through this valley in my life... Until I get through it. 

Thanks!

Gotta run.

XXOO

Heather

PS This song has been on repeat for nearly a week... It's my anthem for this valley...